HomeMy WebLinkAbout8/14/2018 Item 1, Otto
Christian, Kevin
From:Chenin Otto <cheninotto@gmail.com>
Sent:Thursday,
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:8/14 Planning Commission Follow Up
Dear Planning Commissioners,
I need to express my disappointment in the commission's actions on Tuesday night. You let a room dominated by
outspoken retired upper middle class white residents cloud your vision of what is best for the entire community. You let
them act like misbehaving school children, clapping when they agreed with people, laughing out loud and sniggering
when they did not agree without ANY attempt to ask them to please respectfully follow the rules of the chamber. It was
infuriating. You let ONE representative from ONE group of neighbors speak for 10 minutes, claiming that he's speaking
for the neighborhood, then the 15 people that he represents spoke after him as well and wasted all of our time
repeating the same half-truths and flat out non-truths. Then you made a recommendation to go against staff's guidance
with a traffic-calming-only pilot when staff's presentation clearly showed that this will NOT get us into the realm of a
safe comfortable shared street situation.
I understand that you are exhausted from voting on housing developments and issues that are a tough call to make and
often against the wishes of the majority of the people in the room at the mercy of our state regs. That does not mean
that you should give up your responsibility to the greater community. Given the choice to make personal sacrifice for the
greater good, most people will not make the change on their own accord, so it's up to our leaders to guide us in the right
direction, even if the decisions are not poplar. We are facing growing pains here and many people don't want to face
it. We can't go back to 1970, the world is changing and the population is growing, so to move forward we must rely on
our planning documents and the knowledge of our experts to shape our future. We're not asking everyone to get out of
their cars and on to bikes, but we are asking for a change in how we use our public right-of-way to accommodate all
users of the roadway in a safe manner, which may come at the expense of some of the conveniences that people are
used to. It's a paradigm shift that must happen.
Our group didn't rally our troops to your meeting because we didn't think your purview would affect the potential to get
protected bike lanes, which is what we want. We were not asking you to reclassify the street and we didn't want to
waste your time or the precious time of those who supporter change for the benefit of safe streets for all users. Our
supporters are mostly young families that don't have the time to show up at public meetings. Instead a few of us came
to try to dispel the conclusion that you must have come to that the entire neighborhood doesn't want change and say
"hey, we live here too and something big needs to happen". Apparently we needed to fill the chamber and waste more
of your time.
As a commission that is supposed to represent our entire community and weigh in on matters affecting our planning
documents it was in your purview to accept or deny the recommendation to reclassify the street designation. It was NOT
your purview to recommend traffic calming only without full understanding of the history of this project or to
recommend that an education program reach out to CYCLIST on how to share the road with cars (you are missing the
point entirely there).
Here's to hoping that you will open your minds to the changes that are coming and help us make the tough decisions
that will guide our happy healthy community into a sustainable future.
Sincerly,
Chenin Otto
Anholm Resident, SLO Streets for All supporter, Civil Engineer
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