Note: What is shown below is a copy of the original letter, made for this website. It is included here only so that the contents of the original letter can be searchable. (The PDF received from the City is in the form of an image, and so is not a searchable document.)
What is below is not the letter sent by the letter-writer. It will contain typographical errors and other departures from the original. The PDF displayed above is accurate. The text below is not accurate. It is printed here for indexing purposes, so that each word can be indexed and included in the search.
The packet for the April 12th meeting of the Planning Commission contains 152 pages of correspondence regarding the Gateway Plan, described as “ATTACHMENTS: A.Public Comment Received to Date.”
I have attached here a summary of those public comments. Please open it and look at it. It is a PDF, set up to be printed in a landscape format. It shows the date, the sender, the page number in the packet, the number of pages, and a summary of each letter of from one to multiple lines.
I made this summary as a table of contents for the submitted letters. This provides an easier way for City Councilmembers and Planning Commissioners to absorb the basis of each letter and to be able to quickly seek out the full letter as desired. I hope this is helpful. If possible, the Planning Commissioners could have this summary prior to the Tuesday meeting, as it would be helpful to them.
Of the comments, SI want to emphasize — strongly — that although this grouping of letters is called “Public Comment Received to Date” it is definitely not the whole of the “Public Comment Received to Date.” The messages included in the packet are not all the messages received by the Community Development Department. I know this as a fact because correspondence that I have had with David Loya is not included. I can assume that there is other correspondence that also is not included. David was always thoughtful and cordial in supplying answers to my questions, and he provided a great deal of clarity on what are complex issues. Our correspondence might be helpful to the Planning Commissioners (and the public) and I can easily forward it to you for inclusion in a further packet to the Planning Commission.
More importantly: The public comments that were received during the Open House at the Community Center on January 21st and 22nd are not included. Despite many requests for this public comment, the City Council, the Planning Commission, and the general public have yet to see any summary or compilation. It is now over 11 weeks since that Open House — almost three months — and we have received no input whatsoever as to what the public expressed at the Open House.
I urge the City Council, the Planning Commission, and the City Manager to direct Staff to provide a summary of the public comments from the January Open House. If Staff cannot complete this task, I am willing to assemble and direct a group of private citizens who will take on what surely is a necessary component of public input for the Gateway Plan.
Thank you.
— Fred Weis