April meeting will be postponed

Our planned speaker is Wayne Lowery, General Manager of the El Dorado Hills Community Services District. Wayne has a very challenging schedule -- we'll announce meeting details when we can confirm a date with adequate advance-notice time.  Until then...

• Would anyone like to get together for informal talk about EDH public affairs at the regular meeting time?  This would be Thursday, April 19th at 7:00 p.m. If you'd like to do this please let us know with a quick email to alliance@edhca.net
• The Community Services district has a new 1-page flyer with quick facts about the CSD and notes about upcoming meetings. These include meetings of the County Planning Commission and the County Board of Supervisors which will discuss El Dorado Hills Park Impact Fees and community facilities.
  

EDCTC public hearing on Citizen Participation Process for public transportation:
Wednesday April 11th

Public participation is one ways to help give EDH a voice in regional planning, and sometimes in local planning. It doesn't supply our own seat on the planning agencies' boards of directors, but it does give us a chance to be heard. Results depend on how well we in the public participate. Without the voting memberships that similar communities have through their city government. Sometimes participation works, even if it earns  recognition as "squeaky wheel democracy".

We have an opportunity to "squeak about squeaking" on Wednesday, April 11th. The El Dorado County Transportation Commission will hold a public hearing on its Citizen Participation Process for Public Transportation. This is a timed agenda item, set for 3:15 p.m. in Placerville, in the County's Building C Hearing Room. Additional information is available on the EDCTC web site at this link:  Web page with agenda and meeting location We think this will be an opportunity to talk about how to improve EDCTC focus on EDH and its relation to regional traffic and transportation issues. Please consider attending and participating in the public hearing if you have an opportunity to do so.

Notes from SACOG Public Participation Plan meeting

On Wednesday, April 4, the Sacramento Area Council Of Governments held a meeting of its Technical Advisory Committee to consider a draft Public Participation Plan (PPP). Most attendees represented public agencies involved with traffic and transit planning. El Dorado County was represented by Jerry Barton, Senior Transportation Planner for the El Dorado County Transportation Commission. The EDH Citizens Alliance was represented by Paul Raveling.  Important points in the discussion included these:

• A stated objective is "To ensure SACOG's transportation related programs are genuinely reflective of the region's values". The Citizens Alliance emphasized this point, noting the need for better interactive dialog among members of the public and public agencies. We noted oa particularly good example of such dialog: An outreach process by the County of Maui, which conducted 167 focus group meetings with about 1,700 residents to assess values and goals in Maui County's current General Plan update process. This was in a county whose permanent population is just over 140,000. Their new draft General Plan clearly reflects this citizen involvement, emphasizing human and environmental goals before economic goals, while still including economic development as an important objective.
  
• Several at the meeting, including the Citizens Alliance, noted that public input provides maximum value at the earliest stages of planning, when recognition of public values and vision can be most effective to steer the direction of planning and project design. Standard public review processes such as public hearings and written comments on draft EIR documents are of limited value: Most occur in late stages of planning, when projects and proposals are already in near-final form.
  
• The Citizens Alliance briefly noted one specific example of a fundamental regional planning decision which we feel is inconsistent with the values and needs of not only EDH citizens but also of the SACOG region as a whole. This is the Blueprint/Master Transportation Plan decision to permit increased traffic congestion. Instead of reducing congestion in the face of growing population and development, current SACOG planning targets a less demanding goal: Reduce average traffic delays by reducing average trip distances. This is accomplished with land use planning which emphasizes techniques such as clustered infill and mixed-use development. We think SACOG needs to recognize that to most of us increasing congestion is not an option. Reduced mobility is a liability for all purposes, no matter whether the cost is declining quality of life for our residents or actual economic losses for businesses.