Letter: Agencies steamrolling over Meyers

To the community,

We have two important items to share:

Despite our community’s concerns over public process, the agencies proceeded to hold a meeting [May14] with the Meyers Community Advisory Council (MCAC) without inviting the public.

In this meeting, it was stated that contrary to what our community has been told, we cannot truly limit new development maximums in our Meyers Plan because TRPA will not allow it.

We believe more public meetings – with proper notice and advertisement – are needed to address other plan issues. Also, we feel the agencies should follow through on their promises that we can truly decide our community’s own future.

(That’s the short version. For more details see below).

Otherwise, we were told the updated draft Area Plan will be released to the public next week to follow environmental review requirements. Also, we want to thank the California South Shore Chamber of Commerce for working hard to help our community and business owners. We also encourage other community members who agree to contact the agencies, Supervisor [Norma] Santiago, the newspapers, etc., and ask for a better, open public process for Meyers.

More details:

With less than a day’s notice, we learned of an MCAC meeting being held by TRPA and El Dorado County to discuss the updated Meyers Area Plan draft. Although apparently not open to the public, a handful of community members were able to attend and allowed to raise concerns and questions. (Note: the full MCAC was not in attendance).

As has been our concern all along, we pressed for more public engagement, more open, public meetings, and the chance for the full community to better understand, and work through, the remaining unresolved issues in the Meyers Plan – before it’s pushed forward to the legal/environmental processes (the farther along it gets, the more difficult it becomes to change it).

Most of you may recall Supervisor Santiago and others telling us that we get to decide our own plan. However – we learned [Wednesday] that this is not quite correct.

Although the Meyers Area Plan can include limits on larger future developments (such as commercial floor area, new hotel rooms called Tourist Accommodation Units [TAUs], etc.) in order to support small businesses, TRPA staff told us the Meyers community cannot include language in our Area Plan to truly limit new developments in Meyers because it is TRPA’s “Regional strategy” to allow the transfers and conversions of development (which allow new commercial, tourist, and other development in Meyers beyond the Area Plan’s stated caps).

Unfortunately, there are several regulations in TRPA’s Regional Plan that support the larger, corporate-type developments that it appears most of Meyers does not want, but that will affect us even though not mentioned in the Meyers Area Plan. We believe that the agencies should follow through on their promise and let the Meyers Community decide what type of new businesses and what kind of community we want for our future.

Sincerely,

Meyers residents and business owners