General Plan Blues
Copyright © 2000 by Dave Badtke
On my way to bed the other night, trying to decide which book to read next, I was torn between Lawrence Durrell’s "Alexandria Quartet", a four-volume novel sequence in 872 pages, printed in itty-bitty type, of soaring prose and palpable imagery that I hadn’t read since the ‘60s, and the "Benicia General Plan", an impressively published and big – very, very big – codification of the 15 to 20-year hopes and dreams of our community in 212 pages, 9 appendices, numerous tables and maps, including hidden treasure in the form of a huge Land Use Diagram tucked in the back flap, and 93 goals supported by even more programs and policies.
Unable to decide between the two, I read the beginning of each.
Durrell: "The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes …."
General Plan: "Benicia has a long history of big ideas. Originally the city was to be a major port; then it was the state capital; later it was a transportation hub."
Sorry to say, I retired to my bedroom with Durrell tucked under my arm, and therein lies my conundrum: I know I should be reading the General Plan – More! I should be studying it and committing the racier parts to memory – because I know it will have a major impact on my life whereas Durrell’s language will only make me swoon, but how to get started?
If Ed Swenson, a personal friend and member of the General Plan Oversight Committee, hadn’t loaned me his copy, I wouldn’t feel quite so guilty. I’m sure I would have been able to stall a few months before buying my own copy for $35 from the Planning Department, downstairs in City Hall, 250 East L. And certainly I would have found it difficult to sit for long hours in our beautiful library reading through the massive tome, currently available only for reference, on a hard, straight-back chair trying to keep my head from nodding, nodding off gently to the ideas in Goal 4.23: Reduce or eliminate the effects of excessive noise; or Goal 2.29: Provide for churches to locate where conflicts with adjacent land uses will be minimized.
Whoa! But what’s this? How does this goal square with Mayor Messina’s vision along Lake Herman Road of golf courses and churches and parks?
Oh my!
And then there were Kitty Griffin’s comments in the Herald last Tuesday, January 4, in which she reminded us of Goal 2.2: Maintain lands near Lake Herman and north of Lake Herman Road in permanent agriculture/open space.
To say the least, I’m confused.
Is Mayor Messina attempting to override the General Plan, as James O. Milburn suggested in his January 6 letter to the Solano Times, or is the Mayor’s statement simply the exuberant enthusiasm of a newly elected representative eager to get to work for a better Benicia?
Oh. That raises an interesting point.
Does a better Benicia mean a Benicia that adheres, chapter and verse, to the Plan? What if we, or the Mayor and Council, want to change the Plan? After all, if you’re in the habit of driving back and forth along Lake Herman Road, you may get tired of not seeing anything but all that open space. A golf course, some houses, maybe even a restaurant or two for when you get hungry after golfing or church services would break up the monotony of all that open space.
Of course, on page 10, the Plan addresses change: "State law permits up to four general plan amendments per mandatory element per year …." But what if one of the proposed changes so modifies the open space north of Lake Herman Road that it really isn’t open space anymore? Does that count as one change or more?
Though scary, at least there’s a five-step process that the city must follow to amend the Plan. Too bad one of the steps isn’t a vote by Benicians on the amendment.
But as I told you in the beginning, I really haven’t spent much time on the Plan, and may have it all wrong, because I keep drifting back to Durrell: "All this I have come to regard as a sort of overture to that first real meeting face to face, when such understanding as we had enjoyed until then … disintegrated into something which was not …."
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com