More than 80 Murphys area
residents gathered at the Native Sons Hall Tuesday night to discuss the general
plan update, despite having less than a week's notice that the workshop was
taking place.
"This is a fantastic turnout in spite of our failure to get out notice
ahead of time," said Stephanie Moreno, Community Development Agency
director. "I want to encourage you all to stay a part of this process
relative to the general plan ... We will be having public discussions - a lot
of them - this year, and I'd like you to stay involved."
General plan update workshops are scheduled for June 12 in
Tom Tryon, county
supervisor, was present at the meeting as well, and participated during the
question and answer portion of a general plan presentation by Larry Mintier, of the Sacramento consulting firm Mintier and Associates, to address concerns raised by
members of the audience. He emphasized that Tuesday's meeting was about the
general plan update, not about updating Murphys' community plan.
"I am a very strong advocate of not including community plans in the
general plan process," he said. "The reason is the general plan
update is going to be nightmarish enough as it is, and to include all the
community plans ... it will just get longer and more convoluted and, quite
frankly, the Murphys community plan and the Murphys community will get lost in
the general plan process."
"All a community plan is, really, is a number of paragraphs that end up in
the document that talk about the specific and special things in your community
that you want to be a little bit different in the overall plan," Moreno
added.
At each table in the room
was a map of
Participants were asked to name the top three assets in the Murphys community
and the top three community problems, then to do the same for
Overall, participants said they thought Murphys' assets include its historic
significance, charming ambience,
When it came to problems
needing to be addressed, Murphys traffic problems, lack of adequate parking,
water and sewer infrastructure (some thought it may be inadequate for future
development) and road conditions were named. In the county, affordable housing,
population pressure, jobs, traffic, and public transportation were all
recognized as problems that need to be solved.
"We're going to be taking all this input and using it as the early
outreach foundation for the rest of the general plan update," Mintier said. "So this is a very important meeting in
terms of us getting a sense of what's on people's minds before we get too far
along in this general plan update program."
Several audience members addressed concerns that the public had not been
notified far enough in advance of the meeting, and were hopeful that something
could be done to let residents know sooner when future meetings would take
place. Michal Houston, president of the Murphys
Community Club, said the club would serve to "keep the community informed
in a timely fashion" of any general plan update workshops taking place.
"I think it's a great
turnout," Tryon said. "It's the largest turnout I've ever seen for a
general plan or even a community plan issue ... Hopefully, we'll have a good
process and it won't be so contentious that it gets reduced to lawsuits."
Judy Ospital, who has lived in Murphys for 28 years,
said she went to the workshop "to be here in the beginning" of the
general plan update. She was impressed with the turnout, and credited it to the
unique mix of people living in Murphys, including an active senior citizen
population.
Throughout the meeting, Mintier,
"We will have three
more rounds similar to this," Mintier said.
"As we move through the process you'll have more and more information that
we're preparing to present to you for your reaction."
Contact Krissi Krob at kkrob@calaverasenterprise.com.