Lots of talk, no decision at PUC/Angwin meeting

By DAVID RYAN
Napa Valley Register

It was wall to wall — to wall to wall — people at a Wednesday meeting of the Napa County Planning Commission, where the subject was the future of Angwin and the response was a packed chambers and three overflow rooms sardined with concerned residents.

Chambers were so filled the planning commission voted to continue the public hearing to Sept. 5 at a place and time yet to be finalized.

The formal subject Wednesday was the zoning issue surrounding the so-called Angwin urban bubble — basically a shield against a Measure J vote for proposed development within it — but formality was overstepped at many points because residents chagrined by a proposed 380-dwelling development plan by Pacific Union College often did not distinguish between PUC’s wish to leave the bubble as is and what they saw as an open door to development.

So much so that an exasperated planning commission chairman Jim King interrupted several speakers to keep them on the subject at hand and not the development plan.

“I want a jar on that table that everyone has to put in $10 every time they say plan,” he said at one point.

The group Save Rural Angwin wants to pop the Angwin bubble and re-zone the area as mix of institutional, agricultural, commercial and residential uses that would limit college expansion to about 190 affordable homes.

Allen Spence, spokesman for the group, said the proposal would allow the college to expand Angwin by 22 percent over the existing 874 homes.

PUC wants the bubble left as is so it can maintain its private property rights.

“Taking land out of the urban bubble will deal a serious blow to PUC,” said college president Dick Osborn, adding PUC would have to choose houses or grapes. “If you remove PUC land from the urban bubble than its only value will be as vineyard land.”

The Seventh-Day Adventist institution has done so in the past, to what Osborn said was damaging effects in the frown-on-alcohol Adventist community.

“We’ve sold our land for vineyards before and let me tell you it did tear our community apart,” he said.

Osborn’s statement was definitely in the minority Wednesday as most speakers came out against the plan. However, many supporters spread out through the rooms did not take to the podium to speak.

Terrance Ford was in the majority at the podium.

“I support bursting the bubble so the community as a whole can decide what their community should be,” he said.

Pat Griffith was another, focusing on the traffic and water impacts that potential development might bring to Howell Mountain Road.

“We’ve just had our 15th wreck near our driveway,” he said. “... We have a neighbor whose well has gone dry and we are now sharing our water with them.”

Olaf Beckmann brought a homemade DVD of trucks rumbling through Deer Park.

“It never stops, there’s never a peak,” he said, narrating the short movie. “The road was never designed for this and now there’s talk of seven to nine years of construction.”

Longtime Angwin resident Virgil Morris was another supporter of the Save Rural Angwin proposal.

“I chose the community for the peace and quiet that exists,” he said. “... The bubble is an arbitrary circle drawn around this community.”

PUC representatives spent time trying to deconstruct that widespread notion.

Napa attorney and former Napa City Council member Kevin Block showed minutes from a 1974 planning meeting where Angwin and American Canyon were both labeled as urban areas on purpose.

He also tried — in vain — to steer the debate about the bubble away from the specter of PUC’s development proposal.

“It’s inappropriate to pass judgment on the project through the general plan,” he said.

But many people who didn’t outright say “development” seemed to stray perilously close, including Julie Lee, who spoke on behalf of herself, but works in public relations for PUC.

She criticized the mostly gray-haired opponents to the urban bubble and PUC’s development proposal for wanting to shut the door on the younger generation who want to raise children in Angwin.

“For me the urban bubble represents a vision of a future, a future to which I can belong,” she said.

Some other supporters were unabashed about the relationship between the Angwin urban bubble staying the way it is and PUC’s proposed development.

“This general plan should not be manipulated to torpedo what could be a very good project,” Manny Scrofani said. “They are asking to leave the bubble the way it is so they can finance PUC. Changing the bubble won’t help, it’ll just bury another (educational) institution.”

Napa Valley Register Copyright © 2009