The Contra Costa venue for the Winter 2012 Public Workshops for Plan Bay Area is Monday, January 24, 5:45 PM at the Richmond Auditorium. Although the workshop is being advertised as overbooked, the Richmond Auditorium can hold thousands, and it is likely that anyone who shows up will be admitted. To be on the safe side, sign up for the waiting list and just show up.
The workshops have generated publicity because organized and jeering protesters described as Tea Party types have disrupted public workshops being held around the Bay Area to get public input on how to balance housing and transportation needs with a state mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Attendance guidelines have been established to ensure access to the workshops by the maximum number of people:
- If you are already registered for one of the workshops, please arrive on time or (if possible) early to secure your spot. If you arrive after the posted start time of 5:45 p.m. (or 5:15 p.m. for the workshops in San Carlos or San Jose), you risk losing your spot to someone who is already at the venue and waiting to be admitted.
- Please attend only one workshop, preferably the one in your county.
- If you are registered and can no longer attend, please let us know so we can free up your space for another.
- If you are on the waiting list, please arrive as early as possible. People will be admitted from the wait list in the order in which they sign in at the meeting. We will begin seating people on the wait list five minutes prior to the published start time of the meeting. Please know that we will try our best to admit you. Arriving early will improve your odds of being seated.
- Walk-ins will be accommodated as space allows.
Participating Online: If you can’t make the workshops, there are still many opportunities to participate. Materials will be posted online here at OneBayArea.org, and you can email your comments to info@mtc.ca.gov. And stay tuned for a virtual workshop where you can view the workshop videos and other materials, and vote online for your preferences.
Workshop FAQs (PDF)
Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions at the workshops.
Let's join together!
One Bay Area is an acknowledgment that we can do this — all 101 cities, nine counties and 7 million of us! We need to join together to address issues like climate change, sustainable growth and development, transportation, and protection of our air and water. Through this initiative, we hope to harness the creativity, resources and force of will to build a better Bay Area today, and for future generations.
One challenge for our region is to develop a Sustainable Communities Strategy called for in 2008 state legislation (SB 375). This law calls upon our region and other areas throughout California to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. The Bay Area’s regional agencies, together with their local government partners, nonprofit organizations, business and community groups, and interested Bay Area residents, are working together through this effort to tackle pressing issues such as accommodating population growth while keeping the region affordable for all our residents, preserving open spaces, protecting our environment, and getting residents where they need to go, when they need to get there.
About One Bay Area
One Bay Area is a new initiative meant to coordinate efforts among the region’s nine counties and 101 towns and cities to create a more sustainable future. A consortium of regional agencies—the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) unveiled the initiative at an historic summit on Earth Day, April 22, 2010. One major effort now underway is the development of Plan Bay Area, the region’s long-range plan for sustainable land use, transportation and housing.
All four agencies already work on a host of issues to protect our region’s precious resources for current and future generations. Examples include:
More information is available about these and other programs on the agencies’ respective websites:
Planning workshop brings circus atmosphere to Marin
By Will Jason
Marin Independent Journal
Posted: 01/18/2012 05:40:08 PM PST
A regional planning process typically met with yawns from the public has been transformed into a three-ring circus that is drawing big crowds around the Bay Area. The show pulled into Marin on Tuesday night for a workshop that drew more than 150 residents and public officials.
"Sometimes it's hard to get a dozen people there, and we don't have that problem this year," said John Goodwin, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional planning agency that helped organize the workshop.
The MTC has long planned for Bay Area transportation spending, but its work has been newly linked to land use and housing under a state directive to cut greenhouse gas emission from cars. The agency is developing a plan, called a Sustainable Communities Strategy, together with the Association of Bay Area Governments.
The new initiative, which is called One Bay Area and is required by the state law, SB 375, has drawn criticism from a range of opponents including advocates of local control and individual property rights.
"You people who are calling yourself Democrats are leading the charge to put an end to what has made this country decent and great," Mill Valley resident Clayton Smith told a panel of local and regional officials at Tuesday's workshop at the Marin Center in San Rafael.
Smith was one of dozens of people who spoke into microphones designated for public comment. Others shouted out questions and interrupted officials to attack the process.
Little was said at the workshop about the details of the sustainable communities strategy, which is aimed at promoting bicycle- and pedestrian-oriented development near jobs and public transportation. Up to 70 percent of the Bay Area's discretionary transportation funding — some $175 million — could be awarded in the coming decades to areas of high-density development as part of the state-mandated process.
Regional planners are asking the public to weigh in on transportation and land use. Shortly after Tuesday's workshop began, the crowd dispersed when participants were given the option of attending smaller breakout sessions, where they could vote on multiple-choice questions such as, "How should the Bay Area accommodate projected population growth?"
The tone of the evening was set before the breakout sessions began, during an introductory video shown by officials to the entire crowd.
"We're not buying in," audience members shouted as a narrator described the planning process and laid out the premise that car travel is contributing to global warming.
The video's narrator concluded with a call to action: "Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and work together to plan how the Bay Area might grow over the next 25 years?"
"No," a chorus of audience members shouted as private security guards and sheriff's deputies stood by.
Among those who shouted out at the meeting was Rosa Koire of Santa Rosa, whose group, Democrats United Against UN Agenda 21, had 20 to 30 members at the workshop.
"These meetings are conducted like a kindergarten session where you give the question at the end and no one answers it," Koire said in an interview Wednesday.
"We are in the resistance, and sometimes it gets a little loud," she added. "Civil disobedience and being vocal is an essential part of who we are as Americans."
Others criticized a series of housing projections included in draft One Bay Area documents, which will eventually be linked in state-mandated allocations. In particular, Novato residents were critical of what they said is a push to force high-density development upon their city.
"We don't want high density in our town," said Pam Drew, chairwoman of the Novato Community Alliance, who criticized a roughly 100 percent increase in her city's housing projections in planning documents released in August.
Drew said that her group did not support the "disruptive tactics" of others at the workshop.
Some Marin public officials have criticized the public comment process, saying regional officials have not provided sufficient answers to questions at workshops.
"It was unfortunate that there wasn't enough time nor the right staff from these two regional agencies (MTC and the association of governments) to answer specific questions," Dianne Steinhauser, executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin, said of Tuesday's workshop.
"It was hijacked by folks that don't live in Marin that have an issue with government in general," she added.
Marin Supervisor Susan Adams, who sat on the stage at the workshop with colleague Steve Kinsey, promised to correct what she said were "missteps" in the public process but defended the need to plan for growth.
"We have an obligation to at least have a conversation about it in a respectful way to solve the problem," she said.
Contact Will Jason via email at wjason@marinij.com
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