ALAMEDA COUNTY THROWS STATE PARKS UNDER THE BUS

Oakland, Ca    Alameda County Board of Supervisor Meeting 6-23-15

Today, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0, following the City of Livermore, to OPPOSE the Draft Environmental Impact Report [DEIR] and the Carnegie General Plan Revision based upon their County Staff recommendations to oppose.  Thus, the County has stated that they do not support the State Parks Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division – and the effort to finally open the 2 new areas that the OHV Trust Fund purchased on behalf of OHV users in 1996 & 1998.

To add insult, those of us that drove hours and hours to attend this meeting, were informed that ONLY 2 Minutes were allowed for public comment.  LAO feels this was very unprofessional, considering the seriousness of the topic at hand.

District 36 was taken aback when a “motion” was presented to oppose, as it was assumed it would be a “tabled” item based on comments that appeared at the end of a 6 page letter addressed to Dan Canfield at State Parks, from the Alameda County Planning Department which said, “the County believes the DEIR contains numerous inadequacies, and therefore Alameda County cannot support the project unless the stated concerns are addressed.”

Voting today, without allowing response to “stated concerns” seem very premature and thus the county made this decision which I believe is problematic, and political.  Language in some of the documents the county supplied identified additional input from the public to be incorporated into the comments, yet they voted anyway.

Of interest, on the Agenda today, it stated this:
Agenda Item #34
Community Development Agency – Conduct a public hearing to consider the information presented in the draft comment letter on the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA); take public testimony; direct staff to incorporate additional concerns raised during the hearing into the letter, as appropriate; and authorize the Board President to sign a finalized comment letter opposing the California State Park’s proposal to expand Carnegie SVRA.
This was not done.  Since they voted to sign it without adding in any new information provided in testimony there was no question that as far as they were concerned any of the additional concerns raised during the hearing was not important, at least to them.

The bottom line is this, I believe that a decision was made to oppose before any of us walked into the Supervisors Chambers.

We are NOT done with this at all and lots of steps still need to be taken to get the new Carnegie properties open.  Remember, the State owns the property and is also the lead agency in this process, not the other way around.  Legal Counsel at the meeting made that abundantly clear to the Supervisors.

Special thanks to the OHV organizations and representatives that came and testified today as well as everyone that sent in letters to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in support of OHV recreation.

Dave Pickett
D36 LAO