Over the past few weeks, I've received a couple emails and a couple actual
snail mailings from El Rancho San Benito, asking me to fill out a survey.
Each time, I've looked at the survey and have been unable to fill it out,
because of problems with the questions. I'll take a few minutes now to
publicly respond to the survey, along with some commentary on why the 
questions are bad.

The original letters are printed very nicely (they obviously have an immense 
marketing budget). In my read-and-response below, all text in italics
is as written on the DMB survey. Everything else is my response.


El Rancho San Benito Community Outline
Please review the following community elements and check "support" or "oppose"
for each one. Please provide use with any additional comments you may have at 
the bottom of this form, or give us a call us at (831) 635-5910. You may also
take this survey online at www.elranchosanbenito.com/survey.
	
AFFORDABLE AND MARKET RATE HOMES
The El Rancho San Benito outline includes 6,800 homes to be built over an 
approximately ten year period – including 1,360 homes at below-market rate 
for qualifying incomes.
How can I check "support" or "oppose" on this? I support below-market rate
homes in general, but I oppose El Rancho San Benito from the get-go for reasons
not asked about. How does this number of below-market rate homes make ERSB 
special - isn't it mandated that a certain percentage of new development be 
below-market?

The outline includes long-term funding to aid other housing needs of 
the county including the Emmaus House for battered women and their 
children, the homeless, farm worker housing and Habitat for Humanity. 
Again, who would oppose supporting battered women, children, farm workers,
and low-income earners? This is a non-question.

TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS

All streets within the El Rancho San Benito community will be built and 
maintained by the community. 

hmm... the people living in the community will put on the gloves and pave
the roads? Just what does "community" mean, when the streets will most
certainly be built and maintained by workers that wouldn't be able to 
afford to live there, even if they happened to qualify for the below-market
rate homes?

El Rancho San Benito will also include a new, project-financed, 
four-lane divided parkway through the site – providing a new connection 
between Highway 25 and Highway 101 at Betabel. 

This parkway will be useless to Hollister and most of San Benito County, 
since the Parkway runs SouthWest and not NorthWest. There will be no reason 
to take it to go North on 101, because 25 offers a more direct route. There 
will be no reason to take it to go South on 101, because that is what we use 
156 through San Juan Bautista for. Great that El Rancho San Benito will have
a huge highway running through it, further dividing the ecology and 
creating runoff, but please don't believe it will benefit the county as
a whole!

The project will also provide $170 million for additional highway 
improvements in the county. Such improvements can include the widening 
of Highway 25.

Well, we do need the money, but why do people think we need to widen
25? It seems to be running fast enough and safe enough since the dividers
were put in... and most of that $170 million comes from county assessments
that we would receive from any development.

PUBLIC FACILITIES
El Rancho San Benito will donate land and money to provide for all of 
the community's public facilities - including sheriff, fire, schools 
and parks - to ensure the community is self–supporting.

Interesting twist of the word "donate", when these facilities will
directly benefit the residents of El Rancho San Benito and not the county
as a whole. But yes, a self-supporting development would seem to be one
of the minimum requirements.

ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION
El Rancho San Benito will create an estimated 1,800 construction related 
jobs and approximately 8,000 long-term jobs. 

Wow! 8,000 long term jobs! Let's see, at 6,800 houses, that is more
than one new job per house. How does that figure? Are the people living 
there going to work there? Doing what? Who will pay them?

Approximately $3 billion in local economic activity will be generated 
during the approximately ten year build–out period.

"Local" meaning San Benito County? Or, "local" meaning Gilroy's big-
box stores? Specifically, how will $3 billion make it into our local 
economy?

SAN BENITO GATEWAY IMPROVEMENTS
El Rancho San Benito will fund improvements near Highway 25 - including 
trails, greenbelts and historical exhibits that celebrate the county's 
agricultural heritage - to help make this area a welcoming gateway into 
San Benito County.

Eagle Ridge promised public access to their undeveloped property,
too. But once they had their houses and golf courses built, they no 
longer had any incentive to follow through with campaign promises. Why
should we believe DMB will do any different?

LONG-TERM LEGACY FUND
The El Rancho San Benito outline includes the creation of a long-term 
"Legacy Fund" that will raise approximately $80 million over its first 
twenty-five years. One-half of the Legacy Fund will be used to provide 
financial assistance to county residents in need of affordable housing. 
The other half will be used to purchase and preserve important agricultural 
lands in San Benito County. 

This is just one of those things that we'll have to see to believe. I'm 
thinking most of that will go to administration of the fund, fighting 
whatever lawsuits, paying taxes, and what-not.

Okay, basically, I simply cannot respond to this survey the way it is 
written because of a few things: One, it provides for very black and white
responses to questions that demand thoughtful, considered, and non-
absolute responses. The questions assume a premise that this-or-that is
true. This is a problem with surveys in general.

Two, this really isn't a community outreach as it is marketed to be, because
while everyone gets to see the survey questions, only DMB gets to see the 
responses.

Three, if you oppose any of the issues as written, you come off as a heel. 
Of course I support giving money to people that need it! Of course I support
safer highways and more jobs! 

I have to conclude that the purpose of this survey really isn't to find out
how the community feels, but to subtly tell the community how it should feel,
to get us in step with DMB and El Rancho San Benito, so that when it comes 
time to vote, our supervisors will feel apprehensive about voting 'no', 
voting against all the goodies dangling almost within arm's reach, voting
against "community", whatever the definition of that word happens to be at
the time.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link