To the Piedmont City Council:

My wife and I have been homeowners in Piedmont for 25 years and currently live in Piedmont. We oppose the plan to convert the current passive use of Moraga Canyon to sports fields on the following grounds:

1. Traffic Safety Risk. Moraga Road is a high volume, two lane, multiply twisting arterial that carries traffic from downtown Oakland and Piedmont to Highway 13 and to Montclair. Excess speed is common. Cars entering or leaving the parking lot at Coaches Playfield generate disruptions in this pattern now. Introducing significant additional traffic from parents entering or leaving the parking lots on the proposed site will create even more dangerous traffic conditions that are highly likely to result in accidents. Children (and sometimes thoughtless parents) will be crossing the street not realizing that they cannot be seen by drivers careening down the canyon at the S curve above them. These problems will only be exacerbated by the proposed mitigators of traffic lights or roundabouts, which will have the unintended consequences of generating road-raged drivers jumping lights or accelerating through roundabouts.

2. Loss of Quiet Enjoyment of Nearby Property Owners. The property values of the hundred-plus adjacent homeowners will be adversely affected, all by the noise and potentially the lights emanating from the playfields, and the immediate neighbors by the risk of landslides caused by undercutting the slopes below their homes. User parking will spill into adjoining neighborhoods. Proposed mitigations overlook the fact that the Piedmont Parks Commission routinely changes the use agreements several years after construction, hoping that residents will forget about the original conditions (e.g., newly proposed field lights at Coaches Playfield).

3. Unintended Excess Use. In each case of Piedmont playfield improvements in our memory, the original good intentions of the proponents for a quiet town venue have been superseded by excessive use by unscheduled non-Piedmont residents (e.g., at Dracena Park and Witter Field.) Would it surprise anyone if that happened at Moraga Canyon? Posting signs or locking gates will simply not work.

Piedmont has an unfortunate history of responding to well-intentioned initiatives by small groups of self-interested parties who propose private uses of public spaces, without the City examining alternative uses of the public domain. In this case, no one has looked at possible alternatives, including a small elder housing community that would generate a) a sale of property to a private developer which would restore Piedmont’s finances through the proceeds and property taxes, b) quieter use, and c) more limited traffic than the proposed sports fields. Or, better, just leaving it alone.

We can only hope that the City Council respects the unanimous vote of the City’s Planning Commission, which considered this proposal ridiculous on its face and said, in effect, that if we as homeowners proposed something comparable in scale and risk for our lot, they would laugh us out of town.

And if, somehow, the City Council overlooks that sound advice and approves this project, we can only hope that you will require the intrepid private funders to also pay the 100+ adjacent homeowners fair compensation for their loss of enjoyment and their diminished property values. 100 homes times a million dollars apiece times 5%-10% is $5-$10 million dollars that should be added to the cost of the project by the private funders. We can already see the lawsuits for improper taking of property, and the City has done such a fine job of defending the public’s financial interests in recent cases (undergrounding, for example) that we know what will happen, and who will pay. The taxpayers, who would rather pay for schools.

We say, enough. Stop the “Blair Park” proposal now! There’s no such thing as a free “gift.”

Will King