TAMC Development Standards Should Be "Required"

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