Stanford’s proposal to expand the Alpine Road sidewalk is out, and can be viewed here. No big surprises, but plenty of hints remain that the “poison pill” that Stanford inserted, giving it control over San Mateo County’s review of alternative trail locations, will be firmly enforced. Welcome to Stanford’s concept of environmental review.
Actually, giving Santa Clara County Parks Department control over changes is interesting. Looks like a future exercise of discretionary power to me, meaning Santa Clara County would have to do the environmental analysis they’ve tried to avoid. Maybe they’ll continue avoiding it though.
We drafted our response in advance, printed below.
-Brian
—–
March 6, 2006
Dear Members of the Town Council and Board of Supervisors;
We understand that
The Alpine Road sidewalk expansion fails to serve the public interest, even at the most basic conceptual level. In addition to that central problem, some crucial details will likely make Stanford’s proposal even worse. First,
Second, while Stanford will likely claim that it will pay for agency staff time spent on that proposal, this cost recovery will presumably not occur until some process has been agreed upon between the two governments and Stanford. The Town and County should not take a single step forward with this proposal until Stanford clarifies that it will pay for all of the initial staff time taken up to decide whether the project should be considered or rejected outright. Given the complication of achieving true cost recovery, however, a better approach is to simply not spend any staff time, and reject the proposal out of hand.
Third, based on Stanford’s experience bullying
Fourth, in the 2000 General Use Permit, Stanford committed to maintain the C1 trail, but no maintenance was mentioned in the agreement it signed with Santa Clara County in December last year. Stanford’s failure to include long-term maintenance (presumably foisting the cost on to the taxpayers instead) would be yet another reason to reject its proposal.
Fifth,
To be clear, the problems listed above only make a bad proposal worse. Even in the unlikely event that all five issues were resolved, the best outcome would still be to reject the proposal so the money will be spent on something that actually mitigates Stanford’s impacts on land uses. We request that
Please contact us if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Lennie Roberts
Legislative Advocate,
Brian A. Schmidt
Legislative Advocate,
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