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February
18, 2004
TAMC
Board of Directors
Transportation Agency for Monterey County
55-D Plaza Circle
Salinas, CA 93901-2902
RE:
Community Development Principles
TAMC Meeting, February 25, 2004 – Agenda Item #10
Dear
Members of the TAMC Board of Directors:
LandWatch Monterey County was delighted to see that your Board will
consider a set of proposed “Community Development Principles,”
at your meeting scheduled for Wednesday, February 25th. LandWatch
believes that making changes to land use development patterns is
the best antidote to the traffic and transportation problems we
now experience in our local communities.
Attached
is a copy of the “Transportation and Transit” Chapter
of the LandWatch guidebook, “Land Use and the General Plan.”
A complete version of this guidebook may be purchased from LandWatch
for $10, and is available free on the LandWatch website (www.landwatch.org).
As
you will see, LandWatch urges city and county governments to incorporate
something very much like the proposed “Community Development
Principles” into their General Plans, so that all new developments
are required to use “Best Transportation Practices” as
a condition of permit approval.
We
believe that TAMC could strengthen the action proposed in Agenda
Item #10 by going beyond a mere recommendation, and by requiring
all local governments in Monterey County to incorporate TAMC’s
“Community Development Principles” in their General Plans,
explicitly making the incorporation of these principles into local
General Plans a condition for any transportation funding coming
through TAMC. We urge you to consider this approach. If TAMC directs
funding only to those local agencies that effectively implement
its “Community Development Principles,” by incorporating
these principles into their local General Plans, TAMC will go a
long way towards actually changing our future land use development
patterns.
Thank
you for taking this suggestion into consideration, as TAMC considers
this matter on February 25, 2004.
Very
truly yours,
Gary
A. Patton, Executive Director
LandWatch Monterey County
posted
02.21.04
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