PUC scales back plan, but foes remain
Illustration of proposed Angwin eco-village. Submitted photo |
Buy photos
Angwin school slices 200 homes from ‘eco-village’ proposal
By DAVID RYAN
Register Staff Writer
Pacific Union College officials announced Tuesday they reduced their planned development in Angwin by 200 homes, but opponents said Wednesday they will not give up their fight against the proposal until the college trims another 200 homes on top of that.
PUC originally unveiled plans for a 591-home “eco-village,” including a new park in town and new community-serving stores. The proposal is driven by the college’s effort to increase its endowment fund and pay for operating expenses, financial needs that college officials say have become increasingly serious.
Many of the cuts in the college’s development plans come from eliminating the proposed “farm neighborhood,” where 145 homes were to be built along a stretch of open land parallel to the Angwin airport.
The college also reduced proposed affordable housing, from 35 percent of the total housing of the previous plan to 15 percent of the current plan. About 20 percent of the housing in the current plan would be “workforce” housing, more expensive than affordable housing but less costly than market rate homes.
In a statement Wednesday, Allen Spence, spokesman for the opposition group Save Rural Angwin, said unless the college brings its proposal down to 191 units, his group will remain actively opposed.
College officials said compromising to that level would defeat the purpose of the development.
“Building 191 affordable housing units would be an expense to the college that would generate no income whatsoever to fund PUC’s endowment,” said Peter Bartelme, consultant to PUC. “Affordable housing is an important part of the eco-village, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody needs to pay for it.”
PUC President Richard Osborn told a crowd of more than 200 people at a community meeting Tuesday night that officials made changes to their plan “not because there has been opposition to it, but because some of the objections made sense to us.”
In recent months the town had split between vocal opponents and more quiet supporters, while Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon announced the original plan was too big for her to support.
In a statement issued by PUC officials, Thomas Mostert Jr., chairman of the Pacific Union College board of trustees, said the college was “listening to the community and sharing information about the eco-village freely.”
Tuesday night was the first time the college held an open mic forum, allowing the public to ask questions of PUC officials and criticize the plan. But it also allowed PUC officials to respond to pointed attacks.
Angwin resident John Tully told the audience PUC’s plan was just the beginning of a land grab, and the college — a Seventh-day Adventist institution — should try its hand at Napa Valley agriculture if it wanted to make money to survive.
“They will play Angwin like an ATM machine, selling pieces of land,” he said to applause.
Spence mocked the “eco-village” moniker, saying the college’s plans to build solar panels on roofs and use recycled wastewater will not make up — environmentally — for the damage done by commuters forced to drive from Angwin to other cities to earn enough money to pay for their homes.
“This development is very environmentally unsound,” he said.
One man told the audience recent tax returns made available to the public showed PUC made millions in profits some years, and has averaged more than $1 million in profit for the past eight years.
John Collins, PUC vice president of finance, countered that money shown as profit on the tax returns was not as it seemed.
“The college cannot use permanently restricted or temporarily restricted money for operations,” he said.
Supporters also made their way to the microphone Tuesday night.
Matthew Reeves, a junior at PUC, said his teachers have talked of leaving because of financial problems.
“I think we need to agree that there’s problems in the community and this (development) will fix that,” he said.
PUC employee Pam Saddler said the college’s financial problems are real and the development needs to go forward for the institution to survive.
“I have every confidence that PUC is taking (steps) to ensure its future,” she said.
The crowd applauded for both supporters and detractors of the plan. Kevin Block, a PUC consultant and former Napa City Councilman, remarked on the civility of the debate.
“I think we all agree that it’s OK to disagree,” he said.
PUC will hold another open mic community meeting April 24, when officials pledge to reveal what they learned from Tuesday’s meeting.
The goal of the story comments section at NapaValleyRegister.com is to have an open, thought-provoking, civil community forum for all issues.
What gets your comment posted?
• Staying on topic
• Keeping your comment to 300 words or less
• Avoiding name-calling
• Addressing your comments to the message rather than the messenger
What gets your comment deleted?
• Personal attacks
• Derogatory remarks
• Name-calling of any sort
• Going off-topic
• Hate speech
• Racially-insensitive comments
• Implying guilt of a subject in a crime story before there is a court verdict
• Posting e-mail addresses
• Posting comments of a commercial nature
• POSTING WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
• Linking multiple comments together with "to be continued..." to get around the 300 word limit.
The fine print
- Comments are either approved or denied. We do not edit comments.
- You are welcome to modify and resubmit a denied comment.
- Comments may take several hours to be posted.
- Comments posted are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of NapaValleyRegister.com, its employees or its parent company.
- Do you have information on a story? Please go to our
virtual newsroom to send us a news tip.
- If you feel a posted comment has violated our guidelines, please contact
online@napanews.com or add a comment indicating you have an issue and our moderators will review the comment in question.