Oakland Council Member Jean Quan has organized a special meeting at Montclair Elementary School on Monday, October 12 at 7 pm for interested Oakland residents to submit their list of Blair Park issues to Oakland’s planning and transportation services staff. Representatives from those departments will be on hand to explain the EIR scoping process, what types of issues are typically researched in the EIR, and to take notes on your concerns.

If you’d like to attend, please RSVP to edillard@oaklandnet.com.

Thanks once again to everyone who expressed their support for Moraga Canyon by writing the Piedmont City Council or attending the meeting. Unfortunately, the Council voted unanimously to move ahead with the EIR, despite hours of detailed testimony by attendees as to why it would be premature to do so. We will now need to engage with the EIR process to ensure that our concerns are addressed at that stage.

Here’s a report from the Council meeting by Sandra Pohutsky:

At the end of an extremely late meeting Monday, September 21, 2009, the Piedmont City Council voted to send the revised design of the “Moraga Canyon Sports Complex” to the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) consultant, despite numerous issues and problems raised by speakers who stayed until 2:30 am to be heard. Among the issues raised:

1. An EIR is not a substitute for a reasonable planning process. The destruction of Blair Park in order to erect the “Moraga Canyon Sports Complex” has not been widely discussed in Piedmont. There have been no community workshops. It has not been presented for review by the appropriate city commissions. The construction and maintenance costs are unknown.
2. No independent needs analysis has been conducted and no cost-benefit analysis has been performed.
3. An EIR only looks at a single specific proposal and assesses its deficiencies. It does not assess whether the proposed project is necessary, or whether there are better or lower-cost alternatives available.

Speakers requested that the City of Piedmont take the following crucial steps before conducting an EIR:

• Appoint an advisory committee to determine the wishes of the entire community
• Prepare a needs analysis
• If the community wants more athletic fields, consider all possible sites, including but not limited to new Merritt College fields, Mountain View cemetery, future joint use of Alameda Point, and the new field under construction at Havens Elementary
• Determine actual usage time of existing fields, not just “reserved time”, since reserved fields are not always used
• Publish the intended hours of use for any new sports fields
• Hire an impartial, highly experienced traffic consultant to prepare a traffic/pedestrian safety study
• Reveal how pedestrians will be able to walk safely along Moraga Avenue and how they will cross Moraga if they choose not to use the pedestrian bridge.
• Provide multiple realistic drawings of the proposed Sports Complex
• Provide clear illustrations of the proposed pedestrian bridge from all angles
• Explain how the parking lots are large enough to accommodate participants on two sports fields
• Work with the City of Oakland on traffic safety and other common interests
• Reveal what traffic safety measures are intended

Other speakers focused on the proposed high night lights at Coaches Playfield, reminding the council that the Piedmont City Council had agreed that there would be NO lights at Coaches Playfield when the site was built and that no nighttime lighting is specified in the Piedmont City Code. One asked how we could trust a future Council not to try to install night lights at the proposed Moraga Canyon Sports Complex if Councils felt entitled to break prior agreements.

After listening to extensive public comment, the city council voted 5-0 to send the revised design for Moraga Canyon Sports Complex to LSA Associates, Inc, Berkeley, to prepare an EIR.

Dan Marks, a professional city planner who has worked on numerous projects of all types, has written a detailed letter to the Piedmont City Council describing the many reasons why the City’s approach to the EIR process for the Moraga Canyon sports complex is deeply flawed. He also includes a brief assessment of some major problems with the current plan.

His full letter is available as a PDF; here are some brief extracts from the letter.

Many people have written eloquently on the flawed process the City has followed to get to this point in regard to the proposed project for Blair Park. As a city planner who has spent much of my career managing planning processes, I’m shocked at the lack of open public forums where a matter of this importance to the community and to neighbors could be discussed. The City of Piedmont engages in more process in regard to a simple home addition than it has for this massive project that would have profound and detrimental impacts on neighbors, and which would fundamentally change the character of this community. We don’t need an EIR to tell us that. City Council meetings where citizens are given two minutes to speak are not a substitute for open dialogue.

As a professional planner who has worked on Parks and Recreation Master Plans, Parks and Open Space Elements of General Plans, and on planning studies for parks and recreation facilities, I’m also disturbed by the City’s backwards approach to this major capital improvement project. A standard process that would eventually lead to a $8-10 M investment in a sports park (not to mention a half million dollars in studies for the sports park) would begin with a needs assessment and an assessment of alternatives for meeting that need.

…

As someone who has written, managed or supervised the production of dozens of EIRs, I want to say as emphatically as I can that an EIR is not a substitute for a reasonable planning process. EIRs do not generate an alternatives assessment of the type I’ve described; they only look at alternatives from a very narrow environmental impact point of view. At the end of the day, the EIR will tell the Council that one alternative has less or more significant detrimental environmental affects; it cannot tell you whether one alternative has a better chance of meeting the City’s needs at less cost than another. CEQA is a very expensive and poor substitute for good planning.

Read the full letter here (PDF).

Thanks to all who came to the 9/8 City Council meeting and/or sent email to show your support for Moraga Canyon. Because of your efforts, the Council voted 3-2 to delay moving forward with the EIR for two weeks to give the community time to review the proposal. Here’s a report by Jim Semitekol, who attended the meeting:

The Piedmont City Council was presented with the supplemental design summary and technical proposal for development of Blair Park along Moraga Avenue into a sports field complex which is to be the basis for the Environmental Impact Report (EIR). This supplemental design includes a pedestrian bridge with an elevator over busy Moraga Avenue, small and big play fields, concrete retaining walls to a height of 38’ (plus 8’ fencing on top), steep landscape berms along Moraga Avenue up to a height of 15’ (plus 12 to 15’ fencing on top), an elevated snack bar with roof viewing, restrooms and two parking lots with a total of 40 spaces on the 5.62-acre site.

Numerous concerned citizens from both Piedmont and Oakland voiced concerns over the size and scope of the project, traffic, safety, fiscal planning and destruction of the last open space in Piedmont asking that the project be referred to the Recreation, Planning and Parks Department for community-wide review before proceeding with an expensive EIR. Of major concern to at least 3 council members was the issue of the public access to the proposed plan. The plan was not made available to the public until its posting on the Piedmont city web site on the Friday before the long Labor Day Weekend. The city’s web site went down sometime late Saturday or early Sunday and was not back on line until Tuesday morning severely limiting the public’s chance to review the plan in detail prior to that evening’s Council meeting.

Councilmember Fujioka also asked for an estimate of maintenance costs and was told by staff that was unavailable within this timeframe. Although not indicated on the plans submitted, Councilmember Keating stated there are large drainage holding tanks planned for the site which he had questions about.

After more than 2 hours of presentation and comments, a lengthy debate by council resulted in a 3 to 2 vote to delay acceptance of the plans in order to allow citizens two weeks to review the plan in more detail.

The issue will be on the agenda for the City Council meeting on Monday, September 21st. Concerned parties are urged to attend the council meeting and voice their opinions.