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re-printed from http://www.pontevistatruth.blogspot.com
Ponte Vista Blog - Common Sense
• My apologies for taking so long to get this post created. I just had to let things come together in a meaningful way. You know man, I just had to sit and groove with it for a while. I'm sorry it is late, but it will also make some points which could not have been made in a meaningful way if they had been thrown out there with all the other items being published.
• As I start this post, I will say up front I am sending it over to my friend who writes the RNeighborhoodsAre1.org blog. This is just too good to ignore. (In my opinion at least, and he will publish me as a guest columnist.)
• Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the CAC meeting last night on July 24. However from all the writing done about it, it must have been quite an event. I researched everything I could find, pro and con. As one would expect, there were numerous opinions about what happened.
• My purpose here is to write my opinion, only my opinion. No one else's. I really have come to not care what others to think about Ponte Vista. It has done me no good and I suspect not changed a single other person's position. Nevertheless, I still get to express my First Amendment rights to free speech. While concurrently managing to piss people off on both sides of the issue.
• Reading through the proceedings, it is patently obvious that Councilwoman Hahn's Community Advisory Committee completely abdicated the task with which they were charged. The entire proceedings were a sham and many people lost months of work for an outcome which effectively resolves nothing.
• As I recall, the CAC was charged with coming up with recommendations for a Specific Plan for Ponte Vista. Those plans would be used by Councilwoman Hahn when she forwarded the application up to the Los Angeles Planning Department. Instead, according to Jerry Gaines, "What it tells me is we don't have a project sitting before us other than the project we've just rejected. I do not have a project I can react to in front of me." Huh??... Isn't that what the committee was supposed to do? Form a Specific Plan? But perhaps even the most brilliant minds can't take that little leap of creativity.
• Yet once more, John Greenwood also had something to say which surprised me. "We're saying until we see some reason to change, we're going back to the existing zoning. We do not have consensus on any one plan. We're so far away from that, we're not even close." While I don't agree with much of his vision for San Pedro, I must applaud the fact he was willing to roll-up-his-sleeves, and got in there and worked. Originally I had him pegged as one of the R-1 goons. Instead, he worked hard and come up with a very well thought-out plan. Great job, Mr. Greenwood. Thank you. I only wish your work could have been reconciled with one of the other plans and something more concrete could have come out of the melding of them.
Nevertheless, in the end, it boiled down to a couple sentences I was told were muttered by Dan Dixon. "We could have done this in 10 minutes. Instead we wasted 10 months."
• Exactly, Mr. Dixon! Hours and months of people's time and effort were wasted because a few people could not, or would not, move off their pre-decided positions. They held their breathe and turned blue long enough that the other's on the CAC finally had to throw up their hands and vote along with a completely unexpected non-sequiter.
• And Councilwoman Janice Hahn sat there eating it all up with a big spoon and a big grin. After all, what does she have to worry about? Prop R has been upheld, so she has six more years to figure out what to do next.
Janice, don't you care at all that they did not follow your instructions in the smallest iota?
It seems you are happy with the outcome now. Let's see how that works out in a few years... But don't worry your poor little blonde head now. When it comes time, I'm certain Mike Molina, or Gordon Tueber, will be around to tell you what to do next. Better keep those guys close.
• Needless to say, the Bisno staff and supporters were stunned and the R-1 people elated. That's how it goes sometimes. That last minute "Hail Mary" football pass actually gets caught for a touchdown.
• Now look for the scrambling on Bisno's part to find an exit strategy. Good luck dude. You'll need it.
I guess it's a day for the history books.
The day that:
Outmanuvered:
Tom Field
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