Jackson does need help, but not Jackson Hills

It looks like Jackson's City Council will complete the approval of the Jackson Hills project on Monday night, September 10. Some locals think the city council members have been "bought off" by the developers.

I don't. I think it's more likely that the council members feel like they have to do something to address the challenges facing Jackson today: a distressed downtown, the loss of sales tax-generating businesses to the county, and the need to develop wastewater disposal alternatives.

The council is approving Jackson Hills because it's been sold to them as the solution to these problems. And they've bought the package, despite the many questions that surround it.

It's an easy fix, right? Approve one subdivision and all of Jackson's problems will go away. Problem is, closer scrutiny shows that Jackson Hills is not the solution, and before long, the city will have the same problems it had before, compounded by the problems that come with Jackson Hills, including gridlock in the south part of town.

There are other options.

Let's take downtown first. Years ago, when the county government was based in Jackson, county workers went downtown to shop at lunch and after work (I worked briefly in the courthouse, so saw and did this myself). When the government center moved out to Argonaut Heights, the downtown merchants lost that business. Now that the county workers are back on Court Street, has anyone tried to lure them back downtown?

Let's see -- why would county workers -- or Sutter Amador Hospital employees -- shop in Jackson? Maybe if there were free shuttles at lunch time. Maybe if it were easy to grab a loaner bike at the workplace and pedal into town for a sandwich without risking your life in the process. Maybe if there were actually something to buy. Remember, Jackson used to have many businesses that catered primarily to local residents and people working nearby.

Perhaps local business owners need to look at the local market again. The city could help by funding some market research and making it available for free to local businesses, working with the two big employers in town, and going back to some of the good plans developed for downtown in the past that are now gathering dust on someone's shelf. A little economic gardening could go a long way.

Also, I've always thought that any big shopping center with a shady parking lot could do a lot more business in summer than those with acres upon acres of unshaded asphalt. Given the choice of shopping at a store with cool parking or one without, I know which one I'd pick on a hot summer day. Urban forest grants could green up Jackson's shopping center lots for those who aren't going to go downtown and make them more competitive with the businesses in Mart-hell.

The sales tax loss is a hard problem to solve. Jackson always had unusually high sales tax revenue, thanks to its car dealerships. One could see how big a problem that loss was going to be years ago when the county decided to create the Mario Biagi Sales Tax Sacrifice Zone in Martell.

Home Depot is trying to sell itself as the solution to this problem, while proposing to build in the historic viewshed below the Kennedy Mine. Surely there are other ways to help Jackson renew its business base.

Wastewater disposal is the third big challenge. Spraying treated wastewater on local ranch lands is one good solution. And unlike a golf course, irrigated cattle pastures don't come with 580 houses and nearly 6,000 car trips a day.

As Jackson works on long-term wastewater solutions, the city could immediately reduce its wastewater volume by conducting water audits for every household to identify water-wasting practices. It could also subsidize the purchase of low-flush toilets and modern, water-saving clothes washers.

A new washing machine of the right type uses only 35%-50% as much water as older models -- that's water going into the wastewater system today. Everyone wins -- the homeowner spends less on water and power and the city has less wastewater to treat. The city would save money, too. Muncipal wastewater treatment requires a great deal of electricity.

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no simple solution for Jackson's problems. But there are alternatives to a big, environmentally destructive, dumb-growth subdivision that threatens the operation of local ranches. I've name just a few here. I'm sure others could be developed with some concerted effort and creativity.

Real leadership for Jackson means moving ahead with that effort. And it means standing up and taking on these challenges with a view to long-term consequences, not opting for the easy short-term fix -- especially one as suspect as Jackson Hills.

Beware the Big Lie

In the 20th Century, propagandists perfected the practice of the "Big Lie" -- saying something outrageous and repeating it over and over again until people came to believe it.

21st Century Amador County developers have embraced this propaganda technique to push their projects on us.

"Our project is good for YourTown."

"Our project is the solution to YourProblems."

"Our project is smart growth."

The current noteworthy example is Jackson Hills. I've never seen a project get this far along with so many harmful environmental impacts and so many questions remaining about its details. And a couple of smart growth-resembling details do not a smart-growth project make.

But the developers and their minions are simply repeating their big lie mantras: "Jackson needs Jackson Hills. Jackson Hills will solve Jackson's wastewater problems. Jackson Hills is smart growth."

Because Jackson does have some real problems, mostly caused by poor development decisions made in the past and difficult infrastructure challenges, these messages are appealing.

But as I've said before, Jackson Hills is a bad project in the wrong place at the wrong time. The golf course can't dispose of wastewater in winter. There's no place for regular working Jacksonians to live. It would create gridlock in South Jackson. It would obliterate oak woodland and threaten the operation of local ranches. And there are just too many unanswered questions.

Jackson's Planning Commission saw through the Big Lie and recommended rejection of the project. So did the Amador County Transportation Commission.

They relied on fact, not faith, in making their decisions. Faith is a good thing, but putting faith in developers is a very risky business.

Let's hope the city mothers and fathers are also smart enough to see through the manipulation, look hard at the facts (and the missing facts), and do the right thing for their town and our county.

Be sure to attend the public hearing on Monday evening, August 13 if you'd like to weigh in.

ACTC gets it at last

We all know there is a connection between growth and traffic, at least in a county like this where everyone must drive for nearly everything.

Years ago, that connection seemed to be lost on the Amador County Transportation Commission. But now ACTC is emerging as a strong force for better planning in the county.

On Wednesday, the ACTC board voted to recommend to the Jackson City Council that it deny the Jackson Hills golf course subdivision project because of traffic concerns.

The next night, ACTC planner Sean Rabe gave a presentation to the Amador County General Plan Advisory Committee on traffic and land use.

"Traffic is a symptom," Rabe said. "Land use is the cause."

No joke. If we continue to develop in ways that require people to use their cars to get everywhere -- and everyone else to use their cars to get to them -- we will have gridlock at most major county intersections. There is simply not enough money and not enough buildable terrain to build our way out of this with bigger roads or new routes.

It's way past time to manage traffic on the demand side of the equation by paying more attention to where, how, when, and how fast we grow. ACTC deserves our thanks for stepping up on this critical local issue.

For more, read Editor Raheem Hosseini's editorial on the ACTC decision.

Gridlock doesn't care about class

There's an advertisement lurking as an op-ed in Friday's Amador Ledger Dispatch. A local person employed by New Faze Development to promote its environmentally destructive Jackson Hills subdivision argues for the project because it's "classy."

And she says that if Jackson Hills isn't built, some other development -- something far worse, in her opinion -- could be built on the site.

That's interesting logic: If the city doesn't approve this bad project, a worse one might come along? Wow.

Of course, the land could also stay a cattle pasture. Maybe even an irrigated one.

One of the biggest problems with Jackson Hills is that it will create gridlock in south Jackson (the word traffic doesn't appear in the "advertorial"). I don't know about you, but the last time I was stuck in traffic, it really made no difference to me whether the cars were shiny, late-model Beemers or beat-up older cars and trucks. And if ambulances can't get through a traffic jam on their way to the Sutter Amador ER, is that OK provided the cars in the way are nice and expensive?

Gridlock is an equal-opportunity impact that pays no attention to so-called class.

Who says traffic will be a problem? None other than Charles Field, Executive Director of the Amador County Transportation Commission, the county's resident traffic experts. As reported earlier this week in the Ledger article about Monday's council meeting, "Field repeated concerns that if Jackson Hills is built as planned, serious traffic congestion may aggravate already overburdened streets and roads."

The New Faze author also argues that Jackson Hills will "pay millions in developer fees that will benefit Jackson, Amador County, the school district and the Amador Water Agency."

What she fails to note is that under state law, developer fees can only cover the cost of a development's impacts on local government. They don't "benefit" government or taxpayers, they just cover the cost of providing capital improvements to the project. And often they don't even do that. Impact fees definitely don't cover school construction costs.

In closing, the author calls Jackson Hills "innovative." If Jackson Hills is innovative, I'm a right-wing Republican. Jackson Hills is a formulaic, suburban golf-course subdivision designed to attract affluent people in a certain demographic who are fleeing urban areas with equity from their homes for the comfort of gates and golf.

The odds of it becoming the social, economic and fiscal salvation of Jackson are slim to none.

Shame on the Ledger for allowing a developer to run an ad like this for free.

Sitting at home is not a good option

For years, some of us tried to explain what is patently obvious in Amador County now: left to its own devices, growth can destroy the things we love most about this special place.

Without good planning, we said, our home county could turn into all of those places we point to for their terrible traffic, bad air quality, ugly strip development, and land-consuming rural sprawl -- places where scenic vistas, working ranches, farms, and historic sites are written about in past tense.

We were often written off as alarmist socialist tree-huggers.

But with the "anywhere USA," traffic-jamming, suck-the sales-tax-from-the-cities commercial development of Martell and same-old, same-old sprawling, water-wasting golf course subdivisions proposed around our historic towns, most people "get it" now. As a result, more people than ever are getting involved in local planning issues and promoting smart growth.

At the same time, a certain amount of fatalism remains. Some believe that nothing can be done. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you think nothing can be done and don't act, guess what? The powers of growth and development will prevail, just as they have in all of those other places where money talks and people are "too busy" to get involved.

But if we join together and claim this county as our own -- not the province of developers -- we can shape its future. Right now, residents of Jackson who want to avoid sprawl and would like to see ranching continue around the town would do well to contact their city council members about the Jackson Hills golf course subdivision and show up when the council discusses the proposal on Monday, July 9.

Jackson Hills is the wrong project, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. The EIR details more significant environmental impacts than any project I've ever seen proposed in Amador.

Jackson Hills will threaten the operation of the Plasse and Busi ranches, destroy oak woodlands, waste an incredible amount of water, and create gridlock in south Jackson. It will provide homes for affluent equity-amenity refugees, not people who live and work in Jackson.

The Jackson Planning Commission did the right thing when it voted against Jackson Hills.

Those who will profit from this development -- realtors, business owners, golfers, builders -- have joined together to support it. They are letting Jackson officials know what they think.

Those of us who will suffer, not profit from the project need to do the same. If you care about Jackson, traffic, ranching, oaks, smart use of water, and housing working people can afford, be sure to let Jackson officials know.

It's your town and your county. So take it back -- before we lose it for good.