HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/18/2017 Item 14, Christie
Christian, Kevin
From:Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club <sierraclub8@gmail.com>
Sent:Monday, July 17, 2017 3:21 PM
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:7/18 Council meeting: Sierra Club comments on San Luis Ranch
RE: 7/18 City Council Meeting, Agenda Item #14 - San Luis Ranch/EIR
Dear Mayor Harmon and Councilmembers,
We agree with those who have noted that the San Luis Ranch project’s “project objectives” appear to have been
deployed as a bar to the analysis of scaled-back alternatives. This position appears to be based on the assumption that
a) the City may not consider a project alternative unless it meets all of the project objectives, and b) the developer's
objectives are the project objectives.
Both assumptions are incorrect. The project objectives should be stated in terms of development options within the
range of intensity of residential and commercial development called out in the Land Use Element, not just the high end
of that range. The California Environmental Quality Act does not require you to analyze only a project design that will
assure the maximum level of residential and commercial development allowed in the General Plan and dismiss anything
of reduced scale as infeasible solely because the scale is reduced.
As with any General Plan amendment, it would behoove the Council to require alternative project designs that could
result in a reduced project, in this case, one that does not require the substantial roadwork and intersection
improvements proposed and that could alleviate the project’s significant impacts on traffic and air quality.
We commend the desire to achieve a higher level of affordable housing than the project currently proposes. But if that
goal is realized at the cost of significantly worsened levels of traffic and air quality, the people who come to live in those
houses, and in the city surrounding them, will likely find themselves living in a place where they do not wish to live. The
City will not secure a sustainable future and protect the quality of life for residents by approving projects that impose
multiple significant unmitigated impacts on the environment.
As CEQA was not designed to force communities to choose between affordable housing and an eroded quality of life,
and as such a trade would be untenable, your Council should not consider making it. Instead, we urge you to require a
broader EIR alternatives analysis that would include project designs at the minimum end, not just the maximum end, of
the range of commercial and residential housing intensity allowed by the Land Use Element, and that could eliminate
the project’s significant potential environmental impacts or mitigate them to a level of insignificance.
Thank you for your attention to these issues,
Andrew Christie, Director
Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club
P.O. Box 15755
San Luis Obispo, CA 93406
(805) 543-8717
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