During my four-year tenure on the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission -- 2003 to 2007 -- there were many occasions residents came to a Planning Commission hearing to voice their concerns about quality-of-life issues that would be forever altered by a particular development. Some call them NIMBYs. I call them neighbors.
Those resident concerns were mostly about traffic, safety, noise, glare, air quality, privacy and/or loss of biological resources, such as ancient oak trees or wildlife corridors. Sometimes speakers alerted the Planning Commission to impacts not contained in the staff report prepared for us by the city's experts or paid consultants. I believe the presence of the public at hearings always added an element of scrutiny that might not have occurred had those residents decided to stay home because "you can't change City Hall."
When questioned at Tuesday's City Council hearing, Thousand Oaks city staff said three letters from the California Department of Transportation specifying what the Home Depot environmental impact report should address were not received by anyone at City Hall. Three different letters from a lead agency, spanning the entire last year, gone missing! And it took a member of the public to bring that to their attention? How can that be?
There is no doubt in my mind that Measure B will add a more thorough approach to development in Thousand Oaks. Furthermore, I'm extremely confident that voters residing in our highly educated demographic can handle voting on large, traffic-inducing projects that don't sustain our quality of life.
I have already voted yes on Measure B, and I thank its sponsors for bringing it forward. I encourage you to consider facts, not hype coming from those who either can't bear to lose total control over the development process and/or are in line to gain financially from large-scale growth.
-- Janet Miller Wall, Thousand Oaks