3 Base Reuse Plan Assessment meetings left for public input: |

Our brief window to participate in the Fort Ord Base Reuse reassessment is closing fast. .?We are asking you to attend as many of the FORA workshops as you can manage:

Tuesday, 5/29/12 ? Monterey Conference Center, Monterey
6:30-9:00 pm ? Ferrante Room,1 Portola Plaza, Monterey

Wednesday, 5/30/12 ? Oldemeyer Multi-Use Center, Seaside
6:30-9:00 pm ? 986 Hilby Avenue, Seaside

Saturday, 6/2/12 ? Carpenter?s Hall, Marina
9:30 a.m. ? noon ? 910 2nd Avenue (off Imjin Parkway), Marina

Your input must reach the FORA board of directors accurately and intact. Previous meetings made it clear that the best method of communication is to put it in writing.

PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO FORT ORD REUSE AUTHORITY TODAY.?

1. Cut and paste arguments below?or compose your own.?Your emails on Whispering Oaks had a tremendous impact?speak out again.

Following are a collection of demands, talking points, and information from user groups, local residents, and visiting lovers of the land.

1. Preserve the 3,340 acres surrounding the National Monument by means of a permanent open space designation.
2. Protect the Beach-to-BLM recreation/open space corridors (Fort Ord Dunes State Beach to National Monument in Marina and Seaside).
3. Stop wasting taxpayer money on Roads to Nowhere such as the proposed Eastside Freeway.
4. Create the Veterans Cemetery at a location which may be incorporated into the National Monument.
   
5. REVISE the Base Reuse Plan, using today?s population and economic forecast data, to be consistent with the needs and interests of our region as they exist now.
   
6. Stop the blood sports horse racing and gambling proposal. This is not appropriate economic development near a Nat?l Monument and a university.
   

I request these important considerations be included in the Reassessment Report and recommendations are made consistent with them.

• The Army gave a functioning base to the public that has since become acres and acres of ?urban blight??in the Army Urbanized Footprint. The overwhelming consensus of the community is a resounding DEMAND for development on the urbanized footprint?NOT ON OPEN SPACE.
• The infrastructure for a well integrated trail system with beach-to-BLM access is prescribed in the Reuse Plan (see ?Trail/Open Space Link? in?approved?Map 3.6-1).?A total of 75 acres within Seaside is designated as community park, including 25 acres intended as a major trailhead access point into the BLM Lands at the south end of Seaside, and a 50-acre park just south of Gigling Road, adjacent to the county boundary. Recreational network, open space, and aesthetic provisions of the Reuse Plan must be followed in all development decisions.
• The Eastside Parkway devastates the northern oak forests and severs biological and rec corridors from CSUMB, Seaside, and Marina. There is no economic or demographic justification for this road to nowhere. An EIR is imperative.
• The 1997 Reuse Plan was premised on forecasts of substantial increases in population and commercial/industrial demand in Monterey County.?Population growth since 1995 is substantially less than predicted, with significantly lower demand for expansion into undeveloped areas. The data does not support implementing the Base Reuse Plan as written.
  
• ?Job replacement? is a fallacious argument for unnecessary building. The soldiers didn?t lose their jobs, they took them with them to their next assignment. The 30,000 soldiers housed on the base barely had spending money. They were not buying cars, houses, looking for jobs, nor in most cases, supporting families on trainee pay. The university population, if allowed to expand, if the outdoor laboratory surrounding the campus does not become strangled with strip malls, hotels, housing, and an unimaginable horse race and betting track, is on its way to creating long term jobs lost now a generation ago.
• With the national economic downturn, demand for?additional?residential and commercial development does not exist in Monterey County today. Values of existing homes have declined sharply and will further?decline if the supply is increased by new subdivisions. Monterey County has a large inventory of unsold homes, due to foreclosures, short sales, and overbuilding during the bubble. Previously approved subdivisions remain unbuilt. There is no demand for new residential projects.
• More than a million square feet of vacant retail and commercial space vie for occupants. It is not in Monterey County?s interests to build more empty office space and business parks.
• Plan reassessment requires recognition of the changed demands and interests of those who live here.?Nearly 18,000 voters opposed the needless development of a 58-acre oak woodland.?This community movement secured a National Monument designation for the Bureau of Land Management property.?The community is demanding a different vision from its elected officials, including FORA.
• Through citizen activism a portion of former Fort Ord is now a National Monument. This BLM land is no longer just a ?regional park.? Its use and attraction is of interest to our entire nation. This demands reassessment as to appropriate and desirable development and protections of adjacent lands.
• A Base Reuse Plan Reassessment is mandated. FORA has scheduled 5 public meetings, yet failed to effectively promote and advertise the meetings. Were all jurisdictions with representation on the FORA Board included? How and when were these FORA meetings noticed? Where are the public service announcements? Where were the announcements in print media? What email lists were notified? The meeting procedures are designed to be self-limiting in that the public has not been appropriately noticed. Secondly, there are no public meetings scheduled after the consulting company prepares its ?draft recommendations.? Make the work product subject to review prior to being submitted for FORA Board action.
• Five public meetings between May 21 and June 2 exclude participation by a large contingency of stakeholders. CSUMB held its commencement ceremonies on May 19 and students and faculty have dispersed for the summer. CSUMB faculty and students are one of the most affected groups and are excluded by the scheduling of these meetings.
• The same company that is doing the reassessment, EMC Planning Inc., also wrote the Base Reuse Plan, is managing Monterey Downs, the proposed Seaside Resort development, the Vet Cemetery, and did the CEQA for Fort Ord Transportation Network.? This has the appearance of a serious conflict of interest. Can EMC do a fair reassessment of the Plan they wrote?
• Open Intergarrison Road from the Jerry Smith Corridor to Reservation Road and alleviate some or all of the traffic congestion on Imjin Road. There are insufficient justifications for closure of this public road. The posted sign on the barricade claims that the road is closed due to ?illegal dumping.? And is dumping a reason to close roads or a reason to patrol roads? FORA doesn?t seem sensitive to the highly visible and continuous dumping going on right next door to the FORA offices.
  
• Open South Boundary Road to alleviate traffic on Highway 68.
• Allow CSUMB to achieve its intended growth to 25,000 students before encroaching on its campus with unsound and unneeded development plans. CSUMB is intended to be an environmental magnet school. The CSUMB campus is projected to create a level of economic activity almost equal to that of the military departing the area. It will employ 3,000 with an estimated annual budget of approximately $200 million. The full-time students are projected to spend an amount equal to that spent in the local economy by the soldiers that relocated. Preservation and enhancement of recreation and natural habitats on the former Fort Ord must be sufficiently attractive to enable CSUMB to meet these goals.

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