Dear Hunt­ing­ton Beach City Council,

RE: Gen­er­al Plan Update

 

Dear sirs,

It has recent­ly come to our atten­tion that the Gen­er­al Plan update process cur­rent­ly under­way may be severe­ly compromised.

In March a num­ber of us attend­ed the “Visioning”meeting at the main library and were sur­prised to see atten­dees open­ly argu­ing with any­one who dis­agreed with their views, attempt­ing to sti­fle debate.

At the GP update meet­ing on June 4th the con­sul­tant lead­ing the meet­ing was Tam­my Seale, it was revealed the next day that she is the Glob­al Warm­ing spe­cial­ist for the con­sul­tant firm PMC and that HB has paid them near­ly $2 mil­lion dol­lars to per­form our gen­er­al plan. The day after this infor­ma­tion was made pub­lic Ms. Seale delet­ed her social media stream and PMC has cleansed its web­site of per­ti­nent employ­ee and update data.

PMC is a spe­cial­ist in imple­ment­ing “Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment” plans or CAPs (Cli­mate Action Plans). Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment is cen­tered on the failed the­o­ry of glob­al warm­ing and advances the belief that humans must cease dri­ving cars, move out of the sub­urbs into high-den­si­ty hous­ing and con­sume less “resources”. Since the plan­et has not warmed one degree for 18 years we think any plans that include glob­al warm­ing, cli­mate change or any oth­er envi­ron­men­tal­ist fan­ta­sy do the pub­lic an action­able disservice.

The HB Plan­ning Depart­ment has been asked in pub­lic mul­ti­ple times :

To define “Sus­tain­able Development”
Why HB has 14 ele­ments in our Gen­er­al Plan, a dou­bling of the CA min­i­mum man­dat­ed 7.
For all data regard­ing the 600 Gen­er­al Plan sur­vey respon­dents to ver­i­fy their verac­i­ty and origin.
What penal­ties, if any, that HB will incur if we do not fol­low the State’s and the County’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment plans to the letter.

The Plan­ning Dept. has thus far refused to answer to these ques­tions. If they can­not define Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment why are they active­ly imple­ment­ing it in Hunt­ing­ton Beach? We for­mal­ly request and expect these answers in one week from the date of this letter.

At the Sep­tem­ber 2nd Coun­cil study ses­sion we urge the HB City Coun­cil to press the Plan­ning Dept. on these ques­tions, demand answers and imme­di­ate­ly make them public.

In our research we have found that HB’s GP update process is dove­tail­ing per­fect­ly with oth­er cities that are attempt­ing to imple­ment Cli­mate Action Plans (CAPs) under the guise of a gen­er­al plan update, these plans have the fol­low­ing particulars:

A Gen­er­al Plan process that claims to ask for pub­lic input but in real­i­ty man­u­fac­tures false con­sen­sus behind closed doors.
A well-paid con­sul­tant that is focused on glob­al warming.
A process that is active­ly hid­den from the pub­lic. (Lit­tle or no pub­lic notice for meet­ings, no video­tap­ing of meet­ings for the public)
A bias towards high-den­si­ty devel­op­ment, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, incen­tiviz­ing cit­i­zens to give up their cars, bik­ing and walk­ing streets (Com­plete Streets), con­ser­va­tion and Glob­al Warm­ing aware­ness and remediation.
A City that works in col­lu­sion with local, unelect­ed bureau­cra­cies like SCAG, CARB and OCCOG to inte­grate their rules that no HB cit­i­zen has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to review or vote on.

As a result we request the City of HB do the fol­low­ing immediately:

Halt the Gen­er­al Plan process.
Fire PMC.
Have tele­vised meet­ings w/citizen groups and the Plan­ning Dept. to revamp the GP process and grow pub­lic aware­ness with the goal of find­ing the real cit­i­zen con­sen­sus regard­ing the next 25 year plan.

We look for­ward to the forth­com­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion and changes to the very impor­tant Gen­er­al Plan update.

Yours tru­ly,

Michael Hoskin­son

HB Against High Density

[email protected]

714–812-2266

 

PS Polling on the local forums (all HB res­i­dents) is run­ning around 75–4 against high-density.

 

CC: OC Reg­is­ter, HB Inde­pen­dent, OC Week­ly, Voice of OC, Chris Ept­ing, Hunt­ing­ton Beach Com­mu­ni­ty Forum, Take Back HB Forum.