2006-06-02 TMochida - Laserfiche WebLink

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FUKE:No. At this point in time, no. Thank you very much. ALAMEDA:Fellow Commissioners, what’s your pleasure? We could have a little more discussion if you’d like. WATANABE:May I make a suggestion? ALAMEDA:Sure, Commissioner Watanabe. WATANABE:I obviously wasn’t at the last meeting when the vote was taken. And in light of all of the discussion over affordable housing, I was wondering if my Fellow Commissioners who voted against this would share their reasoning behind it. It seems like it’s an opportunity to actually provide affordable housing. I’m not sure that affordable housing can be developed in this economic environment in the same single family type of dwelling that we, you know, pretty much have become accustomed to. Cause let’s face it, the land cost has gone up, construction cost has gone up. We can talk about affordable housing; but unless we look into multi-unit housing I don’t know that it will ever be affordable. So are we saying we want affordable housing but only if it’s single family dwelling with 15,000 square feet; and it’s impossible to attain? I’m not trying to be critical of how they voted the last time. I’m just wondering if they would share their reasoning. ALAMEDA:Sure. Let’s be brief. Let’s share a little bit and kind of bring Commissioner Watanabe up to speed on perhaps why Fellow Commissioners who voted against, maybe why that affordable housing perspective wasn’t the overall perspective in your vote. Who would like to share? Commissioner Iwashita? IWASHITA:Thank you. My concern and I believe the shared concern of the others that voted in favor of a non-favorable recommendation was primarily based on, if you look at the record from the last meeting, you know, the Houselots community almost unanimously testified against the project, mainly for infrastructure concerns and current problems that exists that essentially this project alone cannot address, you know, in terms of the flooding and so forth that occurs now and that this project can only do certain things that front this property and it’s not going to be able to mitigate the larger problems that we were presented the last time. So that I think was the main concern that was addressed by the votes for an unfavorable recommendation. And the record that we saw, and it’s part of the record here, includes all of those pictures by Mr. Nekoba that showed different levels of flooding and so forth that, I guess, existed essentially at the time because that was during the raining time that we were having and not this sunny clear weather now that we’re having. So that was primarily the, I think, the basis of an unfavorable recommendation. And I do, you know, we all want to promote affordable housing, I think; but in this particular case because of those circumstances, that’s why the unfavorable recommendation was voted on. ALAMEDA:Thank you, Commissioner Iwashita. Commissioner Galdones. GALDONES:Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would pretty much act on the same thing that Commissioner Iwashita had said. But on the other hand, also, I would like commend the applicants, Mr. Mochida and Mr. Aburamen, to try to promote affordable housing, provide 8EXHIBIT B