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Tracy Taxpayers Pay for Sandhu Brothers' Site Plan and Environmental Studies
On Tuesday night, the City Council agreed with Vargas that taxpayers should subsidize the Sandhu Brothers' site plan study and environmental impact report (EIR) as part of Vargas' Downtown Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Specific Plan. The Sandhu Brothers are wealthy well-connected landowners who own a huge chunk of property within the Downtown TOD. The TOD Specific Plan hands them a blueprint to build small low-cost medium and high density residential in the downtown area. The normal line of business is for developers to pay for the reports and studies prepared by the City. However, in Tracy, if you are Veronica Vargas’ friend, then she figures out a way to have the taxpayers subside your business expenses. Here are the maps Sandhu has shown City officials:
The above map shows the entire Downtown TOD Preliminary Planning Concept that DeNovo has just been given a $500,000 contract to study. You’ll note the “Mike Sandhu Development Areas” are designated as Medium Density and High Density Residential. Below narrows in on what the Sandhu’s envision with the approval of the Specific Plan.
You’ll notice four villages with a lot of residential and a little commercial right in the downtown area. The bottom line is more houses, no new jobs and more traffic.
What about Measure Y? Or Measure M? Or, what about Measure A?
Great questions. The majority of the city council, led by Councilman Arriola and Councilwoman Vargas, decided that while the majority of residents voted to NOT circumvent Measure A, it is still important to continue to study ALL options related to the envisioned TOD area designed before Measure Y. In a future article we will expose Arriola’s reason why the will of the People as expressed in the election didn’t matter. In short, they don’t care what a majority of voters said, only Councilwoman Davis stood up for the taxpayers and voters! (More on this issue to come…)