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Greenbelt Newswire
Your Five Minute News Flash
Greenbelt Alliance * Volume 4, Issue 11: November/December 2005

** This is the November-December edition of the Newswire. There will be
no Newswire at the end of December. Happy Holidays! **

	Volunteer of the Month: Carrie Sullivan

In this edition

Volunteer of the Month—November: East Bay Campaign Volunteers
Election Update— A Vote for Better Growth
Alert—Support the Bay Meadows Transit Village
Announcement—New Report Reveals Hidden Housing Crisis
Action Alert—Sprawl Threat to Millions of Acres of Public Lands
Upcoming Outings & Events

Volunteer of the Month—November: East Bay Campaign Volunteers

During the recent election season, countless volunteers contributed time and energy to Greenbelt Alliance's campaigns to defeat sprawl measures in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties.

Many volunteers, such as Carrie Sullivan (pictured above), had a personal connection with the areas at risk. A long-time Bay Area resident, Carrie often visited Brentwood to pick fruits and vegetables, and in recent years has seen much of that farmland lost under development. When Carrie learned about the sprawl initiatives that would pave over more farmland, she was inspired to take her Greenbelt Alliance membership to the next level. Carrie came to our phone-banking sessions in San Francisco, where she called hundreds of voters and urged them to vote no on local ballot initiatives. Although she was managing two cafés and training for her first Go Greenbelt! ride, Carrie found time to come to many phone-banking evenings, and even trained and recruited new volunteers.

Meanwhile, dedicated volunteers were also working in the field, calling voters, handing out flyers, posting signs, and knocking on doors. Our superstar field volunteers included Kathy Griffin, Nell Chadwick, Dee Vieira, Dick Anderson, Karen Kops, Kathleen Kerns, Dale Watson, Clinton Fields, Larry Tracey, Reggie Moore, A.J. Fardella, Susan Edgar Lee, Bob Baltzer, and many more.

Thanks to everyone who dedicated their time and energy to these campaigns. You're making the Bay Area a better place.

Election Update: A Vote for Better Growth

In the November 8th election, five out of seven measures went our way. In the East Bay, sprawl developers put measures on the ballot in four cities to open up thousands of acres of land to development. In the South Bay, opponents of smart growth tried to require that new development be sprawling and low-density. Voters cast their ballots for growth management and good development; unfortunately, in two cities, that's not what they'll get.

In Contra Costa County, developers tried to sell their sprawl measures to voters by saying they would control growth, reduce traffic, and protect open space, when in fact they would do the opposite. Fortunately, voters saw through the developers' promises in Brentwood, where the measure failed with 49.3% of the vote. Unfortunately, in Pittsburg and Antioch, developers spent over $1 million combined and persuaded voters to approve Measure P (51.6%) and Measure K (59%).

In Livermore, voters sent a strong message to Pardee Homes, which wanted to put a large development outside the city's urban growth boundary. The developer spent the unprecedented amount of $3.25 million ($500 per yes vote) to sell Measure D to voters. But voters were not fooled, and the measure failed with only 28% of the vote.

In the South Bay, Cupertino's Measures A, B, and C would have required low-density development, low building heights, and large setbacks of buildings from the street. These measures would have effectively required sprawl-style, car-dependent development. They would have pushed new growth outward and worsened the affordable housing crisis.

For more information, visit: http://www.greenbelt.org/regions/eastbay/index.shtml and http://www.greenbelt.org/regions/southbay/index.shtml

Alert: Support the Bay Meadows Transit Village

On Monday, November 8th, after five years of negotiations, the San Mateo City Council approved the creation of a new transit village on the site of the Bay Meadows racetrack and its vast parking lots. Unfortunately, a group of opponents is now gathering signatures to put a referendum on the ballot challenging the Council's vote.

Greenbelt Alliance has endorsed the Bay Meadows Phase II development as a model of the kind of growth the Bay Area needs.

The project's location is excellent: it is within an urbanized area, next to a Caltrain station, where residents can easily take transit. It will mix homes and shops to create a walkable new shopping district, and add new parks and a town square. The development will provide 1,000 new homes, 10% of which will be designated affordable, and the developer will also donate an acre of land to the City for 63 more affordable homes. It includes green building features and an energy-efficient demonstration home.

Other supporters of this project include the League of Women Voters of Central San Mateo County, the Sierra Club, and the Housing Leadership Council.

For more information on the Bay Meadows Phase II development, visit: http://www.ci.sanmateo.ca.us/dept/cdd/index.html or http://www.sanmateotogether.org.

If you're a San Mateo resident, you can support the new development by:

• Declining to sign the referendum petition
• Writing a letter to the editor of the San Mateo County Times at: http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/writealetter

Announcement: New Report Reveals Hidden Housing Crisis

Solano County is known for its booming housing production and for home prices that are lower than those in the rest of the Bay Area. So it may come as a surprise that Solano County is suffering from a hidden housing crisis.

Through the Roof: Solano County's Housing Crisis, a new report by Greenbelt Alliance, the Solano Housing Coalition, and the Non-Profit Housing Association, finds that local families and workers are struggling to find homes they can afford. Eighty percent of Solano County residents cannot afford the median-priced home, and Consumer Reports recently named the area the ninth-most overpriced housing market in the country, based on the gap between wages and home prices.

Solano County's housing market is unbalanced. It produces many more expensive houses than are needed on the region's outskirts, and not enough starter homes, apartment, townhomes, and condominiums within cities.

To include more affordable homes in cities, the report recommends that the county's largest cities—Fairfield, Vacaville, and Vallejo—adopt inclusionary housing ordinances. This would require all new residential developments to include housing that is affordable to people making less than the median income. This ensures that people like nurses, teachers, and retail workers can live in the communities they serve. This in turn cuts down on long commutes and the resulting traffic and air pollution, while easing pressure to develop the county's working farms and natural areas.

Learn more at:
http://www.greenbelt.org/resources/reports/report_thrutheroof.html.

Action Alert: Sprawl Threat to Millions of Acres of Public Lands

The federal budget passed by the House of Representatives includes a provision by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) that would allow the sale and development of at least 5.7 million acres of public lands, and potentially hundreds of millions more.

The provision would reverse a 1994 ban on any sale of the 5.7 million acres of public lands with existing mining claims, including 635,000 acres in California.

Also, Rep. Pombo's provision removes the requirement that the buyer prove there are valuable mineral deposits below the land. That could open up as many as 350 million acres of public lands for sale, including 45,210,000 acres in California.

The land could also be commercially developed rather than mined. The threatened land includes areas inside or near national parks, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, national forests and prized public assets. This land, already extremely attractive to sprawl developers, would be sold for only $1,000 per acre. This could open millions of acres of remote, wild lands to an onslaught of strip malls, subdivisions, and resort developments.

Take Action! If you live in Rep. Pombo's district, email Rep. Pombo and tell him you don't support his attempt to sell off public lands. You can also email Senator Dianne Feinstein and support her opposition to this land grab. Or email a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. For recent Chronicle coverage, see this story and editorial.

For more information, visit: http://www.ewg.org/reports/dirtcheap/index.php.

Upcoming Outings & Events

Sun Dec 18: Best of Berkeley

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