Sep
2
LosAlTruth.com on the Majority & the new CVS store
Filed Under 2010 election, C.P.L.A. & L.A.T.A., Planning & Zoning, Traffic, Troy Edgar
(Los Alamitos, 9/2/2010) After that expensive pro-incumbent flyer hit mailboxes last weekend, someone (not me!) decided to get up a website to correct the misrepresentations and half-truths that flyer contained.
I found their reports to be relatively accurate and quite informative.
Since it’s apparently not copyrighted I decided to give our readers a taste of that site by posting one of the six articles currently available at LosAlTruth.com. There was a lot of work by a lot of people that went on over the past three years to bring the CVS to town. This is a story that needed to be told, and LosAlTruth.com tells it well:
(By LosAlTruth.com, used without permission) It certainly is nice that CVS decided to open a large retail location in Los Alamitos, but there is more to the story than meets the eye.
In this case the story is about how it almost didn’t happen. How citizen volunteers put the safety of the community ahead of revenue concerns and worked with a property developer and potential business to come up with a creative way to ensure both the safety of the community and the sales tax revenue for the city.
When CVS came before the Planning Commission with their original plans for the location the Planning Commission noted that CVS wanted a drive through window. While that was not a problem, what was a problem was how they anticipated feeding traffic flow to that window along Katella within a few hundred feet off one of the 10 busiest corners in Orange County.
Members of the Planning Commission, volunteers all, were already well aware of an issue that the Traffic Commission was dealing with along Katella in that area with crossover traffic near the Blockbuster store. In fact, due to the number of accidents that had happened that particular turn area had been closed.
The Planning Commission looked at the CVS plans and the potential for crossover and backed up traffic in that area. The Planning Commission explored the plans and the way that the plans were for the drive up component of CVS had been laid out and determined that the initial design presented increased the risk to travelers in much the same way the now closed turn had when it fed into Blockbuster was a safety concern.
The Planning Commission told CVS that as submitted the drive through would create a potential security hazard and the plans wouldn’t be approved.
But the Planning Commission is not there to say “No” and leave it at that. Understanding the benefits to the City of Los Alamitos from having the business in the community, members of the Planning Commission, working with members of the Traffic Commission suggested options to CVS that would alleviate the security concerns and allow them to have a drive through.
In the midst of the negotiations between the Planning Commission and CVS, City Councilman Troy Edgar met with members of the Planning and Traffic Commissions and attempted to get them to change their stand on the security of the community in order to ensure that the tax generating business would come into the city.
In that meeting the members of the two commissions refused to trade off the safety of the community for the revenue as Mr. Edgar was insisting (in what is undoubtedly an amazing coincidence, Mr Edgar has since that time voted to have both volunteer commission chairmen removed from their positions as chairmen of their respective commissions).
CVS, working with the Planning and Traffic Commission recommendations, and working to alleviate the concerns for safety within the community thought outside the box and implemented suggestions from the city commissions. This changed the drive-through access and allowed them to get approval from the Planning Commission to go ahead with the project in a manner that did not sacrifice the safety of the community.
Dave again.
To check out the other articles on LosAlTruth.com. click here. From there you’ll have a choice of five additional articles:
- “The Los Alamitos Taxpayer’s Association”
- Trash
- Taxes
- Flyer Facts
- Candidate Scorecard
This is a well done site with lots of facts and details. Whomever put it together says they did it out of their own pocket for less than $100, but I’m sure it involved a lot of time. Thank you, whoever you are!
As always, your comments and observations are welcome, regardless of your point of view. However, we do ask that you attempt to be diplomatic and fair, focus on issues, not character assassination, and use family-friendly language appropriate to our nice little town.
Related posts:
- A new sheriff in town?
- Los Al’s bleak future:
- Planning Commission meets Tuesday on housing plan
- Applications for 3 Commissions close Monday, 2/14
Comments
One Response to “LosAlTruth.com on the Majority & the new CVS store”
Leave a Reply
LMAO. I read the warning at the top of the site about the “length” of the articles there and after writing about Troys removal of Art here I couldn’t agree more.
To tell a lie one leaves out details because details create transparency. That may be why the most popular lie is lying by omission.
Once you get the details, what seems simple suddenly becomes much more complex, then more explanation is necessary to clarify any confusion.
Well worth the read.