City Council Continues Conversation About General Plan Changes

The City Council met Tuesday to discuss updates to the general plan.

The meeting was a public hearing only, .

“I would hope that this is a time for listening,” Mayor H. Abram Wilson said at the start of the meeting.

Residents brought up many of the same concerns they’ve shared at past meetings.

The proposed General Plan 2030 would allow the city to pursue the North Camino Ramon Specific Plan, a blueprint for making the heart of the city a bustling retail-residential district. But residents worry that the specific plan would crowd the city, its schools and choke traffic.

The specific plan would require its own series of public hearings before approval, however. The proposed general plan would allow the city to pursue only that specific plan.

An overarching worry for several residents is that the city’s population projections are overblown. The general plan estimates San Ramon will have 92,000-plus residents by 2030. That’s still 4,000 fewer than what’s laid out in the existing plan, which projects a population of more than 96,000 by 2020, Councilman Dave Hudson pointed out.

Even though it’s fewer residents it still may be more than people want in San Ramon, said Jim Gibbon, of the Sierra Club’s Mount Diablo Chapter.

“You need to reassess what our capabilities are and not project some dream in the sky,” Gibbon told council members Tuesday night. “Just because 10 years ago people thought 90,000 residents would be acceptable doesn’t mean they are now … you need to rethink your grand ideas about how many people can live in this city.”

Council members said those population projections are based on figures from the Association of Bay Area Governments, the state Department of Finance and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The general plan became controversial last year, when a version that proposed expanding the urban growth boundary into the Tassajara Valley went to the ballot as Measure W.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected it and the city went back to the drawing board. State law requires the city update its plan – a guide for future development in San Ramon.

The new plan must include a greenhouse gas component, which is lacking in the General Plan 2020.

The process of updating the general plan has created tension between some residents and city officials, and even between City Council members.

During Tuesday's meeting, Councilman Scott Perkins said if it were up to him, he'd have the North Camino Ramon Specific Plan removed from the city's planning area.

Wilson cut him off, saying he'd rather council members wait until the next meeting to share their opinions.

Councilmen Jim Livingstone and Perkins countered by saying they could share their thoughts at whichever public meeting they choose, but stopped short of saying more.

To read the 1,000-plus-pages of General Plan 2030, click here.