And here is what the CA version of "Granite State Future" is bringing to the Bay Area; we aren't tin foil hatters after all - Granite Grok

And here is what the CA version of “Granite State Future” is bringing to the Bay Area; we aren’t tin foil hatters after all

Stack em and Pack emWe’ve written a lot on the efforts of the nine NH Regional Planning Commissions’ efforts to begin the process regionalization here in NH, using Fed dollars from DOT, EPA, and HUD to rewrite and “Federalize” our local zoning codes.  We are certainly against this as this is nothing but top-down centralized planning where “Professional Planners” have the hubris in that they know how we should be geographically limited, housing limited, transportation limited, water limited, energy limited, property rights limited…

…and be taxed more for their happiness and our misery.  Well, this movement by our tin-pot ruler wannabees (“hey, it’s only for your own and our Collective good – stop your *itching!”) has been going on for a while in other places in the country.  Like in California, for instance.  My co-worker just sold her nice house and moved because Regional Planners (peace be upon them as they practice their environmental religion in “saving the planet” and totalitarian leanings) “captured” her town and several others in setting their idea of “Planning Utopia”.  RightInSanFrancisco has the story from the San Fran Bay area; some excerpts (reformatting, emphasis mine):

– The nine counties of the Bay Area (which include San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and about 100 smaller municipalities) have two primary regional planning agencies with professional bureaucracies and Boards of Directors comprised primarily of locally elected officials.

– The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) which serves as the primary conduit for federal and state housing money.  The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which collects the tolls from seven bridges and recently purchased a $180 million office building in San Francisco, also serves as the primary conduit for federal and state transportation money.

Heh, this last one, sound familiar?  All that money OUTSIDE of the oversight of elected officials (CA or NH)?

– Senate Bill 375 in 2008 mandated integrated planning for land use, housing, transportation, and “social equity” in 18 state regions to implement AB32. Regional planning moved from a peripheral role to center stage with enforcement leverage.

Right – bureaucracies just about all but on their own – no debate about taxes, fees and no oversight using the traditional debate by elected officials.  If it is anything like NH, am betting that the CA elected officials (who tend to lean for the fad of Sustainable Communities Initiative anyways) will go along with “the Professionals”).  Look at the following and tell me – how will this be any different than last century’s Centralized Planning that happened in the infamous Five Year Plans?  Just as then, One Party will be calling the shots as to, like I said above, where one will live, how one will live, where one will work, how one will travel:

– The ABAG/MTC plan, Plan Bay Area, which has been under development for the past two years envisions a population increase by 2020 from the current 7 million residents to some 9 million by 2040; no development outside of current “habitation zones” (currently about 5 % of the land area); and Preferred Development Areas (PDAs) where the predominant development would take place.

The guiding vision of the plan is “stack and pack” apartment development with a density of 25 to 50 units per acre along an expanded rail structure with relocation of some 35% of the residents currently living in the PDAs. Virtually no money will be spent on highway construction and there will be virtually no construction of single family homes. In the interest of social justice, many smaller communities will be required to accept similar developments.

Underlying assumptions include the premise that people will want to live in dense, heavily urbanized settings, the recent downward trend in use of mass transit will be reversed, and people will not commute from counties adjacent to the Bay Area in order to live in single family homes in more traditional suburban settings. There is no recognition that federal automobile mileage and emission standards mandate virtual achievement of the greenhouse gas standards required by AB32 without any social engineering.

It IS what we have been talking about for the last few months – these folks believe that humans are the problem and that GAIA (the earth) has to be protected from us.  Look at that first one; all we hear from these Harridans is that we have to “stop the sprawl stop the sprawl!”.  Um, if humans are only using 5%, ask yourself – do they really want to use even 1%?  If they had their way, would we be living in

You know, the kind that have already proven to be “human level” disasters as “project” after “project” (aka, “public housing” – the kind that Professional Planners who said, when they were built, they’d solve all of our housing problems.

So ask yourself – and we should expect any better THIS TIME?  Look around, fellow New Hampshirites – we don’t have to wait for the “fruits and nuts” movement from CA to float eastward – the Feds have given it a First Class ticket from DC with a cornucopia of grants to go with it – just ask the Nashua Regional Planning Commission.  Do YOU want to be urbanized?  Do you want to be told “your home is now outside the Habitation Zone – move or REALLY pay up”?  Like your own space with no one stomping on your ceiling, rock band on your right, family “time” at 105 db to your left, and the folks below you playing darts on their ceiling (your floor).

One big happy neighborhood!

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