If Amador County is one big, dysfunctional family, Pine Grove would be the neglected middle child.
At least, that's the perception of many of its residents, more than 65 of whom crammed into the board of supervisors chambers last week to request greater representation and oppose a potential highway widening project that could literally pave over chunks of a close-knit town. Officials with the Amador County Transportation Commission seemed responsive to the latter issue, saying they had no desire to widen Highway 88 against the community's wishes. But what that support really means suggests Pine Grove residents may not be entirely paranoid when they claim a disparity in political representation.
Several residents I spoke to say they want a bypass similar to the Highway 49 one that relieved commuter traffic through Amador City and Sutter Creek (some say at a detriment to local tourism). There's a long, knotty, "Rashomon"-like history to Pine Grove's bypass talks, which originated 20 years ago and include conflicting accounts of how events unfolded. Some say the community couldn't come to an agreement on a project for that area, while others say consensus was never actively sought.
Whatever the truth, Pine Grove is now stuck with a limited set of options. A bypass of any kind is projected to be too expensive, so upcoming community workshops will focus on either the worrisome widening project or a hybrid proposal that could include fewer additional lanes and gentler traffic calming measures. And if the community can't decide or rejects that limited menu of options, Amador can take approximately $40 million in state funds to some of its more agreeable children. Which is where that earlier responsiveness smells like a crafty ploy to seem the doting parent while giving away your child's birthday present.
That may be a grand oversimplification. In my experience, no one's ever the milky white innocent, but the transportation commission's own numbers are revealing. In an eye-opening staff report, it's explained that the upcountry area, which contains an estimated 36.7 percent of the county's population, will benefit from only 24.8 percent of planned transportation projects. Since 1990, the area has gotten 38 percent of major highway improvement projects, though some residents have disputed those numbers, saying Alpine County has been the actual beneficiary.
Which brings me to the representation issue. With an estimated 12,800 residents residing upcountry - more than all five incorporated cities combined - requesting an ACTC or Amador Regional Transit System appointee to be chosen from the upper tail of the county doesn't seem unreasonable, especially at the suggested expense of one of two supervisor slots.
The request could easily be taken up by the board of supervisors, but the two supervisors appointed to these transportation-oriented bodies quickly shot down that idea last week. Instead, they argued, the time to consider such a proposal would be in the fall, when the transportation commission considers forming a joint powers authority with a greater land use planning role. At that time, the JPA could write its own by-laws, rather than adhering to the state's. But all the state says is that members must be made up equally of city appointees and board of supervisors appointees. There's nothing currently preventing supervisors from selecting representatives from a specific geographic region. Plus, ARTS already is a JPA and that hasn't led to an upcountry appointee.
So why the reluctance?
Though upcountry resident Debbie Dunn emphasized the request wasn't a reflection of past decisions, I'm not sure that message got through. Louis Boitano, in particular, seemed a bit ruffled. Boitano, the ARTS and ACTC chair and the District 4 supervisor, stressed last week that he's a champion of the entire county, not just his constituents. Not to resurrect dead horses, but Boitano must not remember attributing his votes on the Buena Vista casino issue to the desire of his constituents.
To be fair, Boitano was listed as one of the supervisors Pine Grove residents felt was responsive to their carved-up, three-district community when I did a story on that last year. And Richard Forster, another ACTC/ARTS member and the District 2 supervisor, may have been onto something when he cited the Amador County Recreation Agency as a JPA whose funds traveled mostly upcountry.
Still, a growing perception that Martell is the coddled problem child and Pine Grove the dutiful but ignored scion should convince elected officials to at least examine the way local commissions are made up. Forster himself is on dozens of these boards. What would be so wrong with a little more family time, for him and Pine Grove?
| Raheem Hosseini |