General Plan Rewrite at the Board of Sups has begun

2:00 Public comment on non-agenda items is over and Kirk Girard has begun his presentation.

Going to be interesting. This time Lovelace is on the other side of the podium. During the TPZ debacle he was leading the "coalition" of speakers, all carefully prepared, each delivering a piece of the argument in the measly 3 minutes allotted to citizens who come to speak. This time, he faces the juggernaut.

Looks like the room is packed. Can't tell how well represented each faction is -

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PREDICTABLY, Lovelace's contingent wants the plan process to go forward now, Natalynne DeLapp speaking for EPIC as if she knows any of the history of this region, the Baykeeper chick and Jen Kalt for Lovelace's "Healthy Humboldt project of Humboldt Watershed Council/you name it" all in a row. Bringing up the watersheds - not paying any attention to the community organizations all saying that they were not brought in to the process, that they cannot plan for their own community's long term plans when Planning arbitrarily dumps their latest quick fix in their laps. It's a joke.

Surprise of the day - Agree with David Elsebusch on the Headwaters farce. His bashing of the MCSD is not productive but he ends up agreeing - a citizens advisory committee is needed.

Tone of observers comments seems to discount the overwhelming message from the communities and CSDs - they weren't kept in the loop - and they not only should have been in the loop they should have been consulted before decisions were made - especially in McKinleyville where the ludicrous decision would have landed homeless and low income housing in our business district. Not that there's any infrastructure for it, or any approval by any segment of the community, it's simply to fill Girard's numbers - a quickly grabbed at solution, and it is always to use McKinleyville as the dumping ground. Also ignored, the MCSD really does plan ahead, and the disrespect of that body shows that the people involved don't really care about "Planning" in the planning sense, else they would understand the complexities involved in the infrastructure. How many people can the system serve? Will there need to be expansion? Should they declare a moratorium? The Planning Department should be working as a partner, not as an adversary.

What a lot of this comes down to is artificial - a pox on the house of the man who came up with the "affordable housing" mandate. Meeting that illusive and imaginary goal leads to nothing but grief for all concerned - and "low income" housing around here is anything but. None of this would be happening, much of the divisiveness would not exist but for that.