Odds and Ends 5

Another week has passed in the ever demanding saga of Ponte Vista.

During the meeting, absolutely zero people brought up the termination of the facilitator during the regular meeting time. It was almost as if Mr. Griego and company had never existed. Strange. I do want to thank Mr. Tony Torres of Mr. Griego's staff. He worked very hard for the CAC and he will be missed. The whole bunch from DSO will be remembered, I hope.

There is a tiny movement afoot by folks on all sides of the Ponte Vista to actually work towards a compromise number of units on the site. 1,700 units may turn out to be the next "ceiling" for the number of units built. That is a good step, IMHO, but it still is too many units for my liking.
If you add 1,700 (the ceiling) to 429 (R1, the floor) you get 2,129. Divide that number by two and you get 1064.5. How do 1065 total units at Ponte Vista strike you?

There is a lot more talk from all sides about having different types of housing on the site. One very strong supporter I talked to Thursday night thought some patio-style homes would work well at Ponte Vista. Thanks Joe for your good sharing of opinions with me. You made some good points and you demonstrated that even a strong supporter of Bisno's current plans is willing to make room for compromise.

"Affordable" seems to FINALLY be used less by supporters of the current plans. My table (at the earlier March meeting) and many other folks would like to use the words, "workforce housing" to describe the lowest prices housing at Ponte Vista. Bob Bisno also gave a credible description of what he thought "workforce housing" is. He described it as housing the teachers, union workers, and other middle-income folks would possible be able to purchase at Ponte Vista.

Workforce Housing might be the units Bob Bisno was referring to when he made the claim many months ago that he might offer a "3% rebate" to buyers who fit into certain categories.

I was finally introduced to the Seaport Homes Web site. "that MONSTER" with its Web site of
http://www.seaport-homes.com/ may actually be a real monster because of something I learned.

As you can read below, I have left the Community Advisory Committee. I need to get caught up to speed with my new duties as a member of the Rancho Palos Verdes Traffic Safety Commission, that I was just appointed to. I am one of two new members to the Commission and I need to devote many hours to catching up to where the five returning members are so I don't stumble through meetings and be an anchor to the group. I definitely will be working many more hours dealing with the Ponte Vista project and another big development also across the border from R.P.V., but in Rolling Hills Estates. This blog will continue and I no longer have to be as nice as I have been to the folks at Bisno Development. And of course, R Neighborhoods Are 1 is coming!

Please take a look at the post contribution from Tom. He has written his ideas down and has provided some very interesting proposals. We don't agree on the total number of units, but Tom has done a good job at describing what he would like to see.

With Tom's contribution and my comments, I feel anyone should not feel they would be attacked by me by creating a post to list his or her ideas about they feel should be at Ponte Vista. I like to think I am more fair than the folks at Bisno Development. I don't call folks who don't totally agree with me, "ranting elitists" and I discourage use of foul words no matter what side of the issue you are on.

Sometime tomorrow, visitor 5,377 will visit this post. Currently Mr. Bisno claims 5,377 folks have filled out cards supporting his current plans for Ponte Vista. Mr. Bisno is also continuing to pay petition gatherers to get more folks to support his current plans. The R1 petitions are still being circulated and the number of folks who demand keeping the site R1 surprises me to no end. Anyway, what do my 5,377 number and Bob Bisno's 5,377 number mean? Absolutely nothing! They are just numbers we both can use for whatever purpose we wish and they have actually no resemblance to anything true or factual, IMHO.