The city has released the responses to comments for the Draft EIR and the Economic Study for the Johnson Drive EDZ/Costco project in advance of the City Council/Planning Commission Workshop on April 12th. The link to the workshop notice is here: http://admin.cityofpleasantonca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=27509 The link to the The link to the EIR and Economic Study is here: http://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/gov/hottopics/johnson_drive_economic_development_zone_(edz).asp It is critically important that we have a large turn-out of residents and businesses at this workshop to express our views on the project to the Council and Commission. The city is steaming full speed ahead with this project regardless of our objections thus far. Are we going to let them do this, or are we going let them know loud and clear that the majority of people in town are opposed to it? Please come to the meeting and let the Council know you don’t want this project to destroy our quality of life and our small-town atmosphere. Exhort your friends and neighbors to do as well! ALSO - You may have heard that a voter initiative has been started by a group of concerned citizens that would prevent a big-box store (retail use over 50,000 square feet) from being constructed on this site. I am very supportive of this initiative and will be helping to gather signatures to qualify it for the November ballot. We need many volunteers to gather signatures and we will be starting March 29th, and will have 44 days to collect roughly 4,500 signatures from registered Pleasanton voters. Initiatives and referendums are not our first choice, but when a Council Council has a track record of ignoring the public, direct democracy is sometimes necessary. Please let us know if you can help us with this effort, even if it’s for a short period of time. Sometimes it takes this kind of commitment to protect our rights – and this is one of those times! For more information about the initiative please go to this website. You can also sign up to volunteer on the website. http://nocostcohere.com/2016/03/10/planned-growth-initiative-on-johnson-drive-introduced/