Dear Editor, At last night’s council meeting (Wednesday, Nov.
16), the council voted unanimously to approve the project ($11.5
million in fee waivers to the new Cochrane retail development),
despite concerns raised by local residents regarding traffic
impacts.
Dear Editor,
At last night’s council meeting (Wednesday, Nov. 16), the council voted unanimously to approve the project ($11.5 million in fee waivers to the new Cochrane retail development), despite concerns raised by local residents regarding traffic impacts.
An issue that was not properly addressed in the EIR was the fact that only current homes that have been built or permitted in 2005 are included in the traffic impact analysis.
The short coming of this EIR is that Mission Ranch, Coyote Estates, and Alicante are not 100 percent built, they are only partially built (and can only be built on a limited basis per year, per city’s permit requirement).
The City approved plans for these residential developments years ago and have now approved the commercial development at Cochrane and 101 without any realistic mitigations to address the traffic impacts once these residential subdivisions are built out.
The City Attorney at one of the Planning Commission meetings indicated that the City does have the authority to require the developer to include all traffic data (future and current) in the EIR analysis.
The chair of the Planning Commission (Mr. Lyle) agreed that the EIR was not adequate in addressing this traffic issue (and voted against approving it) but the majority of the Planning Commission was either too blinded by the potential for development dollars, didn’t care, or didn’t understand the impacts and voted to approve it.
The City Council also unanimously voted to approve the EIR, even with this traffic issue.
As a resident of Morgan Hill, I am in favor of keeping the shopping dollars in Morgan Hill and in favor of this proposed commercial development, but I am deeply disappointed that the Council did not require the developer to perform a supplemental EIR to accurately determine the potential traffic impact once the residential subdivisions are 100 percent built, as approved, after all, these subdivisions were already approved before the proposed Cochrane Development came into the picture. Instead, the Council and Mayor all were too fast to obliged!
Khoa Vo, Morgan Hill
