Date: January 21, 2014
To: Crown Harbor Board of Directors
From: Dave
Val Boone and I attended the first meeting of the Friends of Crown Beach initiative drive. They are challenging the zoning the City has placed on the GSA property creating housing on the site. The petition will replace the housing zone with an open space designation. That opens the door for Regional Parks to buy the property from GSA and put their plan in place. That plan has been widely circulated and Scott has it on the website.
The meeting was fairly well attended, and there was a good question and answer period. Val and I noted that there was a good group of people who have done this type of political process in Alameda on prior issues. The Friends of Crown Beach certainly have the expertise to successfully pull off the petition drive. Once on the ballot it will hard to convince people to vote no on a park addition.
The legal work on the petition is close to being done. As Scott pointed out in his calendar, they will be holding another meeting on Thursday the 23rd. They are now actively seeking recruits to circulate the petition and collect the necessary signatures. They will need over 6000 valid signatures. They have a fairly well thought out plan for gathering those signatures.
The Sierra Club has changed its support of the housing zone and now have endorsed the Friends of Crown Beach proposal.
I had a chance to talk with the facilitators of the meeting prior to the event. We both agreed that the site has been cleaned up to a much better state. I thanked them for helping us arrange the meeting with the Regional Parks District. If you review the notes Scott and I made of the meeting, we had made it clear some issues that needed to be remediated. Clean up being one.
I was also pleased to hear that Parks has paid attention to our concerns about the nature of the fence when and if it is moved. Again we had talked to Parks about just leaving the current fence line. We would continue to have and maintain the landscaping along that area. I was told that Parks has mentioned to the Friends of Crown Beach that might work.
So I think it is in our interest to keep this on the front burner. Keep working with Doug Siden and the Administration from Parks on solutions that we would need.
Of course this whole issue with all of the legal ramifications will not happen overnight.
Dave
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