15 November 2012
Letter to the Editor, Copper Gazette
The lack of progress being made to develop a Copperopolis Community Plan by the
Copperopolis Community Plan Advisory Committee (CCPAC) and the Calaveras County
Planning Department is deplorable. The committee has held eight meetings and are no
farther along than the first. They have yet to agree on a vision statement (a direction to
which the community wants to go), or the boundary lines of the subject area.
While I have not attended all the meetings, I have been to a majority. And I believe
there are two reasons no progress has been made: 1) the Planning Department is
running the meetings and preventing the advisory committee from doing any advising,
and 2) there’s no strong leader on the committee to take charge and direct action. Last
month I wrote a letter to the Director of the Planning Department expressing my
dissatisfaction with the lack of progress and made a few suggestions on what I thought
should be done to get this project on track---it would appear these fell on deaf ears.
This group seems to have no direction or roadmap, if you will. They seem to be simply
thrashing around and rehashing the same topics over and over again without ever
reaching a conclusion. At the forefront of this problem is the lack of an agreed-upon
vision statement. Without this, the direction the community should be heading cannot
be determined, and a roadmap cannot be established. I believe the vision statement is
the cornerstone of the Community Plan. It’s the one thing to which everything else in
the Plan must map; and it, therefore, needs to be the first thing agreed upon. After eight
meetings, where is it?
Curiously, following the last meeting, a request was made for community input for the
goals of the community. Why now? Where was this request 8 months ago? Are these
to be used to develop a vision statement? One would think so; and that community
goals would be the starting point for the creation of a vision statement. Even more
curious is why the suggested goals are to be sent to Planning Department instead of the
Committee. This just reinforces my first reason why no progress is being made.
In an attempt to be proactive, I submitted a goal that would require that no development
or construction could begin until the infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, power, etc.) was
in place to support the project. Will this make the cut? Only time will tell.
If you are concerned about what happens to our community and the direction it’s
heading, I urge you to attend the monthly CCPAC meetings and let the committee and/
or Planning Department know your recommended goals for the community.
Jack Forkner
