Future, coalition, development, growth, land-use planning, transportion -- but some of the words rendered meaningless

 
As foreclosure and unemployment gnaw away at the social fabric in the crumbling tract housing of the Valley, like highly trained, professional rats babbling our language, the usual suspects of Valley leadership met and scampered through their consensual maze inside a mausoleum of commercial real estate hubris in Modesto, a city that has been ruining its promised land for 40 years with no end in sight for its wanderings in darkness. -- Badlands
10-10-10
Modesto Bee
Building a Future: Planning experts share wisdom at summit
By Garth Stapley - gstapley@modbee.com  Buzz up!
 
Standing alone may have served a romantic image of the great American West in years past. But for today's San Joaquin Valley, isolationism is death.
That's what planning experts said over and over when asked how the historically undervalued valley can expect to climb out of California's center rut and into a bright, vibrant future.
"The most important thing is coalition building," lobbyist Mark MacDonald said last week at a summit in Modesto, where planning specialists from near and far gathered to ponder valley strategy for hitting up money powerbrokers. "All your battles (must be) internal, before you get up to Sacramento."
 No county is an island, these growth gurus said, urging hands to join from Stockton to Modesto to Bakersfield and all points between to create strong coalitions, develop sound land-use plans and build efficient transportation systems:
COALITIONS
• "Legislators are going to say, 'How come you can't get your act together?' So start at home and get those things worked out (before) you come to Sacramento."
— Jerry Jeffe, deputy executive director, California Association of Councils of Governments (Sacramento)
• "Coalitions have access to a larger audience."
— Charlotte Hrncir, senior associate, Alcalde & Fay Lobbying (Virginia)
• "We are a family. And just like in a family, we may have arguments and disagreements, but when you walk outside, usually a family tries to put on a face that's acceptable."
— Dejeuné Shelton, interim executive director, Great Valley Center (Modesto)
• "The beauty of meetings like this is drawing us together and giving us a seat at the table, which regionally we haven't had in the past."
— Bill Spriggs, chairman, San Joaquin Valley Regional Policy Council (Merced)
• "Jockeying for better position is one of the oldest human endeavors. We've made two trips to Washington (D.C.) and three trips to Sacramento. We've done a good job introducing ourselves and our issues. Now it's time to evolve."
— Robert Phipps, division director, Kern Council of Governments (Bakersfield)
• "It would be great if the valley could prioritize and make a (road) submittal as opposed to us doing it."
— Bimla Rhinehart, executive director, California Transportation Commission (Sacramento)
LAND USE
Disputes over growth often come down to where and what. Planning gurus generally urge patterns that keep people close to work, play and each other:
• "Your best bet for tax revenue is mixed-use downtown development (combining homes, stores and services). It's better by far than a big box and actually better than a mall because you get higher tax revenue per parcel. It's so helpful to city government to do this kind of stuff."
— Judy Corbett, executive director, Local Government Commission (Sacramento)
• "Density is OK if it's planned well. What people don't like is poorly planned density."
— Tom Cosgrove, mayor, Lincoln
• "It's not all about numbers; it's not just about modeling. It's, how do we prepare for a more sustainable valley? How long are we going to quibble about targets? All the money in the world is not going to solve our problems if we can't agree on which way we want to go."
— Julia Lave Johnston, planning policy deputy director, Gov. Schwarzenegger's Office of Planning (Sacramento)
• "Our task is not to create a lot of new tools but to mine existing tools and bring together what's workable in the valley. We're setting the scene for a toolkit that can be dynamic and effective."
— Jim Harnish, planning consultant, Mintier Harnish (Sacramento)
TRANSPORTATION
Another key is moving people and things from place to place. Inefficient transportation brings things people hate — pollution, traffic and headaches:
• "We have to figure out how to drive less, and that's a pretty frightening thought. … We are so auto-oriented in the way we've built our communities."
— Bill Fulton, founder, Solimar Research Group (Ventura)
• "Traffic is the thief of your time."
— Robert Grow, founder, Envision Utah
• "We need to invest much more money in transportation infrastructure. We're far behind China, Russia and the European nations. It will lead to a steady erosion of American prosperity in the long run."
— Fred Aboulesman, executive director, National Association of Regional Councils (Washington, D.C.)
• "You (cities and counties) are all competing against each other for tax dollars. If we want to plan for a regional transportation system … can we get groups of communities to work uniformly for this objective?"
— Shawn Kantor, economics professor, UC Merced
• "In reality, goods movement brings wealth into our communities and can pay for all the other things we need to do. Transit is great, but it needs to be sustainable. If fare box revenue is not exceeding the subsidy, it's not sustainable."
— Paul Van Konynenburg, managing partner, Britton Konynenburg Farms (Modesto)
Source: San Joaquin Valley Regional Fall Policy Conference, Oct. 5-6, DoubleTree Hotel
 
Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2010/10/09/1376914/planning-experts-share-wisdom.html#ixzz11zoE37ME