Bay Area Dictatorship

Plan Bay Area – A Shocking Theft of Our Democracy

Posted on November 23, 2014 Written by berkeleydailyplanet.com

Our local media has been drop­ping broad, con­fus­ing hints about some­thing big, some­thing immi­nent, com­ing to the greater Bay Area.

A front page arti­cle in the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle in March 2013, titled “Hard Choices for a grow­ing S.F.” begins, “San Fran­cisco res­i­dents will be get­ting thou­sands of new neigh­bors in the next 30 years, and it’s time to start fig­ur­ing out where they will live and work. (??) The arti­cle goes on to say “Com­bined with the Asso­ci­a­tion of Bay Area Gov­ern­ments’ (ABAG) esti­mate that San Francisco’s pop­u­la­tion will soar from the cur­rent 812,000 to at least 964,000 by 2025 it’s clear great change is ahead for the city.”

Tim Red­mond, edi­tor of the San Fran­cisco Bay Guardian, lays out sim­i­lar pre­dic­tions in his arti­cle, “The Zero-Sum Future”: “Streets may have to be torn up, and redi­rected … ABAG, accord­ing to its most recent pro­jec­tions, would like to see some 90,000 new hous­ing units in S.F. That’s got plenty of prob­lems, par­tic­u­larly the like­li­hood of the dis­place­ment of exist­ing residents.”

East Bay Express edi­tor, Robert Gam­mon, pulled out all the stops with his arti­cle, “How an Envi­ron­men­tal Law is harm­ing the Envi­ron­ment”, argu­ing that we need to gut the Cal­i­for­nia Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­ity Act (CEQA) because it gets in the way of “smart growth”.

So thou­sands of new neigh­bors are com­ing to our cities, even though there are nei­ther jobs nor hous­ing for them. Streets are going to be torn up and res­i­dents will be dis­placed. Thou­sands of new hous­ing “units” will be needed. CEQA will have to be revised to accom­mo­date “smart growth”.

What is going to cause all this upheaval? What are the media out­lets soft­en­ing up the pub­lic for? — It’s the Plan Bay Area due to be imple­mented on July 18 of (2013).

Most peo­ple in Berke­ley and other Bay Area cities have never heard of Plan Bay Area and only a minis­cule per­cent­age of the seven mil­lion res­i­dents of the nine Bay Area coun­ties who will be affected have had any part in the “plan­ning ses­sions.” But ABAG and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion (MTC) who have designed it to address SB-375, the Cal­i­for­nia Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties and Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Act of 2008, say they are respond­ing to the needs and desires of Bay Area res­i­dents. No vote of the peo­ple is planned.

Our Berke­ley Mayor, Tom Bates (as an MTC com­mis­sioner), along with may­ors and city and county elected offi­cials of the Bay Area, has been attend­ing public-private meet­ings along­side non-profit groups who have alliances with cor­po­ra­tions, devel­op­ers, non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies. A con­glom­er­a­tion of locally elected offi­cials should not con­sti­tute a legal gov­ern­ing body when they were not elected for that pur­pose. ABAG and it’s part­ners have effec­tively cre­ated an ille­git­i­mate regional branch of gov­ern­ment that trumps city gov­ern­ment, dimin­ish­ing the rights of aver­age cit­i­zens to affect their local environment.

The prin­ci­ple behind the Plan is to restrict future devel­op­ment in the Bay Area region to rede­vel­op­ment areas and Pri­or­ity Devel­op­ment Areas (PDA) only. Increase pub­lic tran­sit to out­ly­ing areas? No. It’s a cruel hard world now. By allo­cat­ing fed­eral grant money through ABAG and the MTC, the idea is to starve rural and sub­ur­ban coun­ties of trans­porta­tion money and restrict land use of prop­erty own­ers in order to cause a migra­tion of peo­ple to des­ig­nated city cen­ters close to mass tran­sit. Con­struc­tion in cities will be mixed-use, high den­sity “smart growth” build­ings. Wow! The cal­lous dis­re­gard for the aver­age person’s prop­erty rights, and rights in gen­eral, is breathtaking.

Other poli­cies include a car­bon tax which will force us to install GPS mon­i­tor­ing devices on our cars, elim­i­nat­ing even more park­ing, and pay­ing for park­ing at night down­town. That will be great for local business.

Peo­ple in other affected Bay Area coun­ties are mighty upset. A Youtube videos of a hear­ings in Wal­nut Creek is avail­able on line at: youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqWvlabnpc.

Some Democ­rats would have us believe that only anti-government Tea Party types would object to a plan like this. I won­der if Democ­rats have lost their minds over cli­mate change. Is it really envi­ron­men­tal­ism, or are the usual the money-bags and land grab­bers of the world sup­ply­ing self-enriching “solutions”?

Democ­rats, includ­ing Loni Han­cock, are actu­ally work­ing to gut CEQA, some­thing devel­op­ers have only dreamed about until now. Only deep-pocketed devel­op­ers have the where­withal to build giant multi-unit build­ings, and are get­ting rich off of fed­eral tax dol­lars doing so. I doubt that our law­mak­ers will be mov­ing from their sin­gle fam­ily homes to stack and pack “smart growth” hous­ing units any time soon.

If we want to con­tinue to call this a democ­racy, we in Berke­ley will have to join our com­pa­tri­ots in other Bay Area cities and coun­ties to say “Hell No!” to the ille­git­i­mate, tyran­ni­cal Plan Bay Area.

Related Posts

• How MTC sneaked Vehi­cle Miles Trav­eled tax into One Bay Area Plan
• U.N. Agenda 21 being imple­mented in Solano County, CA
• United Nations – Agenda 21 – Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and the Regional One Bay Area Plan
• Cit­i­zen Let­ter to CA Sen­a­tor DeSaulnier regard­ing SB375 and SB1
• A “Smart-Growth” Revolt in California
• The Dark Side of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and the Regional One Bay Area Plan
• Alameda County: I-580 polit­i­cal signs spark free speech fight
  Filed Under: Agenda 21, ICLEI, New World Order, Property Rights, Regionalism, Smart Growth, Sustainability, Transportation, United Nations, Wildlands Network
   
  Source:http://agenda21news.com/2014/11/plan-bay-area-shocking-theft-democracy/#more-3852
  Comments
  The soaring population projected includes adding ever larger numbers of third world country refugees, legal and illegal immigrant minimum wage workers to occupy the transit villages.
  The unelected, appointed Regional Commissars will listen to citizen complaints about the Bay Area Plan, but they will not change it or let it go to a vote, unless citizens swamp their county commissioners to quit the regional organization.
  Homeowners can look forward to more drops in their home values, coupled with added taxes, fees and fines to drive up the cost of home ownership. The government will take their homes and knock them down to implement the “Wildings” project.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader