The Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Fulton Mall deconstruction project was put out near Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow is the deadline to submit your written comments.
The report can be found on this page:
Comments
should be submitted to Elliott Balch, Downtown Revitalization Mgr, 2600
Fresno St., 2nd Floor, Fresno, CA 93721 , 621-8366.
They can be sent
by email to elliott.balch@fresno.gov
Here’s some tips on how to submit good commentary:
– Be specific
– Separate your concerns into different paragraphs (don’t mix)
– Simply list items of concern, no need to go into background prose, although if you are an expert in a certain field, use that as a way to back up your points
– That being said, you do NOT need to be an expert in any field, but try to provide as much concrete evidence as possible
The meat of your comment should be around the following:
- If a potential significant impact has not been adequately identified
- if no mitigation has been proposed for a potentially significant impact
- if the mitigation proposed doesn’t appear to be sufficient or appropriate
- point out errors
And finally, do use your real name and address.
Other items of note:
This separate review has a February deadline
http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist6/media/hpsr_fulton_mall/docs/fulton_mall_ea_section4f_evaluation.pdf
Why even bother? they want to use this as its peoples opinions count to make change. No, its already been determined the streets will come to the fulton mall, its political business as usual with a worthless mayor and stooges gathering around to make the big bucks off of this project .Public opinion when comes to down town is muted and its going through the motions by then saying, well you had a chance to speak didn't you ? It's a joke and its on us !
Not entirely. They're still required to respond to the points. If they don't do so in a proper way (ie, brushing off concerns), the entire process can be taken to court.
Court = delays
Delays = fed funding pulled
No fed funding, no project.
The EIR indicates the entire process needs to be wrapped up by next month, so that the council can approve it, and it can go to bid, to meet the deadline.
Even a small delay can kill this, as their timeline is very tight.
Also, Fresno has a conservative council right now. So say you want to stop this without a lawsuit: taking valid points that were not properly addressed to the council may cause a vote to shift, which itself kills the project. Half the council is firmly in the "don't spend money on anything, ESPECIALLY downtown" tea-party esque mindset meaning it might be easy to get them to not back spending money on destroying the mall.