HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/19/2022 Item 7a, Schmidt
Delgado, Adriana
Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com>
Sent:Friday, July 15, 2022
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Agenda comment 7a, naming bikeway
This message is from an External Source. Use caution when deciding to open attachments, click links, or respond.
Re: Anholm project: Naming/July 15
Dear Council,
The newest (and fourth) name for the project, the “Cerro San Luis Greenway,” (or is it the “Cerro San Luis Neighborhood
Greenway,” since the city has been publicizing it under both those brands) is a bad name and should be dropped.
• There is no thing properly named “Cerro San Luis.” Presumably this refers to Cerro San Luis Obispo, our town’s
eponymous mount. If so, use the right name. Otherwise you may as well call the project the Madonna Mountain Pinkway.
• When a “way” contains a geographical reference in its name, properly it’s because the “way” is on, in or leads to the
referenced geographical feature. This “greenway” does none of the above. It in fact has nothing to do with Cerro San Luis
Obispo.
• The name is also confusing since on Nextdoor there’s a “Cerro San Luis Foothills” neighborhood designation for an area
totally unaffected by this project. Why confuse matters this way? The city’s newest name is inappropriate because it
appears to appropriate, and confuse itself with, another similar-sounding name.
• Why any fancy name at all? We have been informed, but never asked if we approved, of the city’s intent to “brand” our
neighborhood with this project. (Thanks, but we don’t want to be branded, marketed and sold to the highest bidder, or
used as tourist bait.) Perhaps, then, your name for the project is nothing more than unwanted top-down branding of
something the city has no right to brand. How about protecting neighborhoods with the city’s actual actions within
neighborhoods instead of “branding” over city mistreatment of neighborhoods with propaganda?
• I don’t understand use of “Greenway.” It seems a greenway is simply asphalt on which the city paints in really big type
“Green Way.” Why waste carbon-consuming toxic paint that way? (We have 2 trout streams in Anholm where your toxic
paint runoff will end up. Speaking for the fishies, I’m asking you not to paint our streets with anything.)
1
• This is the fourth name for this project: North Broad Bike Boulevard, Anholm Bikeway, Anholm Greenway, Cerro San
Luis Greenway. What the heck’s going on? Can’t the city spin machine stop spinning? Is nothing ever settled? Is “naming”
worth all the effort the city seems to be putting in on renaming this thing repeatedly? The list of alternative brand names in
staff report is hilarious. Enough of this highfalutin pretentiousness!
• How about something simple and direct, like using the names of the streets it’s on? Like “Blankety-blank Street Bike
Route.” That’s all this is, after all.
Sincerely,
Richard Schmidt
2