Special OSAB Meeting Called for Thursday

The Open Space Advisory Board has called a special meeting for tomorrow, Thursday March 15th, at 2:00 p.m. with one key item on the agenda: a reconsideration of the Northwest Master Plan. The special meeting has been called so that OSAB can have the opportunity of being on record for recommending a more conservation/natural open space friendly scenario to City Council rather than having their previous decision assumed by Council members as their final recommendation. That decision was based on a draft and not the more detailed presentation given to the PSB.

Why reconsideration? It was best said by a citizen at the special PSB meeting last week: “Why did OSAB choose a plan that develops more open space!?” Here’s what happened.  Not long after the NW Master Plan and Scenic Transmountain Corridor design charrettes in January by Dover Kohl, OSAB jumped the gun and endorsed the draft proposal of a scenario that developed land south and north of Transmountain! This was a draft proposal without all of the facts and not a more complete report from Dover Kohl.  OSAB did place some caveats on that recommendation: the arroyos had to be preserved, there could be no large parks in any development, animal corridors had to be built, no major roads (e.g., Paseo del Norte) through the arroyos – there had to be bridges and no box culverts. PSB selected the only scenario that the top brass of EPWU (Ed Archuleta and his lieutenants) let them see: Scenario #1 which has development north and south of Transmountain. The PSB also said "no" to all of the OSAB caveats and Mr. Archuleta made it clear that arroyos would have to be hybridized and concreted. 


Although 3 scenarios are shown in the presentation (embedded below), some EPWU representatives said that they only saw #1. However, these same people were present and saw Dover Kohl's Work In Progress presentation in January. All scenarios were given at that time. Why then did the top brass of the EPWU choose not to reveal this information to members of the PSB?

There were 3 scenarios presented by Dover Kohl in their latest NW Master Plan document. However, they have stated that, in fact, no-build is an option - scenario 4 if you will. Here is the presentation that Dover Kohl gave to the PSB on March 5 which is more detailed than the draft that is currently available at Plan El Paso:

PSB 3-6-12 in Progress


Particularly look at the scenarios on pages 24 and 25. It will be these scenarios along with the option for no-build that OSAB will look at tomorrow. Note the number of protected acres versus developed acres in each case.