Over the prior week, Save Lafayette volunteers have been at numerous events throughout the community. The message we heard was very clear. Lafayette was not laid out to accommodate the level of growth it has experienced in recent years. The schools, intersections and shopping areas have not absorbed the growth and a lot of urban concerns are overtaking the quality of life in Lafayette.

The Homes at Deer Hill project was established by a process out of the view Lafayette’s citizenry and has been pressed forward despite their concerns. The intersection at Deer Hill Road and Pleasant Hill Road is among one of the busiest ones in Lafayette, the commute and Acalanes High School ingress/egress period traffic congestion severely impacts all of the families with students at Acalanes and all of the neighborhoods of North/East Lafayette. Springhill School is turning away new enrollees because it is full. The Lafayette BART parking lot is full by 7:40am most mornings; the site is not a distance most people will walk to BART, so those residents would be driving. Lafayette citizens have affirmed that The Homes at Deer Hill project will worsen the traffic, school, parking and other concerns that the recent growth has brought to Lafayette.

Save Lafayette’s petition signature effort will bring the resolution that the City Council adopted to a referendum. The effort has terrific momentum driven by they concerns previously enumerated. However, the community of Lafayette voters must come out in force to sign the petitions; the time to be heard is now. Over the coming week, we have numerous events scheduled for the citizens of Lafayette to be heard. We hope you’ll join us!

This past weekend, Save Lafayette hosted a booth at the Lafayette Art and Wine Festival that provided the citizens of Lafayette an opportunity to engage with us and express their dissatisfaction with the urbanization drive that has come from outside the community.  The overwhelming sentiment was that the overcrowded schools, the congested shopping areas and intersections and the drastic reduction in the semi-rural character of the city which Lafayette has experienced recently runs against what folks love about living here.  Save Lafayette is focused on slowing down the growth in general and specifically in troublesome locations such as at the proposed site of the Homes at Deer Hill.  From the feedback we heard at the Lafayette Art and Wine Festival, it’s clear that much of Lafayette shares these concerns.

The Homes at Deer Hill project is a combination of homes and sports complex that has far too many negative impacts upon the surrounding community and City as a whole.  These negative impacts need to be adequately mitigated and corrected by the City, not ignored by citing other so-called benefits.  These negative impacts include but are not limited to severe traffic congestion, destruction of the hillsides, harmful air quality on residents and the violation of the City’s General Plan and Hillside Ordinance.

At numerous City meetings over the past six months, residents have continually offered constructive and well-reasoned solutions and alternatives to many of these negative impacts, but have been ignored by City government at every step of the way. When government fails to protect its citizens, then those citizens must act to protect their community.  Save Lafayette is doing so by the only means left available to us, namely corrective action.

1. provide the community with an opportunity to form their own conclusions by giving them the chance to vote on this huge project and sports complex
2. challenge by legal means the adequacy of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report in order to properly mitigate the negative impacts
3. challenge the biased and one-sided process

The City has not listened to the vast majority of the public and those most impacted.

The process by which the Homes at Deer Hill proposal was established was fundamentally flawed. Under the duress of questionable threats, the city staff agreed to a project substantially larger than the LR-5 zoning that the City Council originally voted to adopt for the property.  Save Lafayette seeks to correct that.

Lafayette has experienced rapid growth in recent years, by a factor of six over historical rates. The infrastructure, services and schools are already straining to absorb that growth. It’s time for Lafayette’s future to account for more of the wishes of its citizens. The developers and housing advocates from elsewhere in the state have had their say, it’s time for Lafayette’s citizens to have theirs. We have scheduled signature gathering events in the morning on Wednesday, September 23 during the morning commute hours (various times between 7am and 9am):

• Stanley Blvd. & Camino Diablo Blvd.
• Springhill School
• Pleasant Hill Road at the Briones Trail parking lot

For future events, please check http://savelafayette.org/events/ for updates

Save Lafayette’s goal is to give the community a voice in the process and to achieve a better use of the site consistent with the City’s General Plan, Hillside Ordinance and community identity.  We want better solutions to the traffic congestion, less hillside grading and destruction, safer air quality solutions, better full-size playing fields for more sports across age groups and easier walkway alternatives.  We want to do things right for the Lafayette community. We Love Lafayette.