Developers behind Coyote Valley planning process refusing to cooperate with the planning process

(The Committee for Green Foothills submitted the following letter to the Coyote Valley Specific Plan Task Force regarding developers' refusal to let the City's experts evaluate the environmental consequences of developing their land. We have received no response from the City, although one smaller landowner said the information was wrong and that he did allow access. A developer representative told us that in lieu of letting the City's experts on their property, the developers' own experts can provide that information, but that is clearly inadequate for a neutral, unbiased evaluation. -Brian)

6/18/2001

Coyote Valley Specific Plan Task Force

Dear CVSP Task Force Members:

The Committee for Green Foothills learned just recently that owners of most of the land in Coyote Valley have refused to allow City consultants to access their land in order to prepare the Draft EIR. This contradicts a recent statement by City Staff that access was denied on 30-40% of the land, which itself was an alarming figure. The attached map from the City website shows that landowners who constitute principal movers behind Coyote Valley development are refusing to cooperate with the development process.

Given that the real purpose of this project from the viewpoint of those developers is to maximize the development potential, they appear to have concluded that they will be able to develop more if information about environmental impacts is constrained until a future point. That in itself is a major worry.

Beyond this problem lies a fundamental issue of why the City should even go forward with this project when the primary instigators and primary beneficiaries are refusing to cooperate with it. We recommend that the City simply suspend any further work on this project until those owners, or at least the owners of a majority of the land, decide they wish to cooperate. Any other course of action would be to hand control of the process ostensibly meant to benefit San Jose residents in general to the landowners who are impeding proper planning.

Sincerely,

Brian Schmidt
Legislative Advocate
Committee for Green Foothills