Concord in the dumps over RVs, homeless, and new garbage plan
April 17, 2008
A petition is being circulated around the coffee shops of Concord asking people to “Just Say No” to a proposal from the Council’s ad hoc committee on RV parking, to allow the Joads and other existing RV owners to “grandfather” their right to park their RVs on neighborhood streets. If you want to buy a new RV you’ll need to park it on your property behind a fence high enough so the Clampetts can’t see it. It’s not clear whether the grandfather bailout follows the owner or the current RV. But as one petition circulator moaned… “Come on, the city doesn’t have the manpower to keep track of all that.”
Besides, with the housing mortgage crisis predicted to creep into 2009, many Concordians may need those RVs rotting away in front of their neighbors’ lawn to migrate to the next hillbilly town with rocking chair and Granny tied down on top.
Speaking of the homeless, the Vineyard Church located in downtown Concord on Grant across the street from Todos Santos Plaza is rumored to be looking into feeding the homeless out of its downtown location once Loaves and Fishes closes its doors on May 26. I can see well-behaved denizens of Baldwin Park lined up along the sidewalk with kit, dogs(!), tents, tweaked-out-attitude and stolen shopping carts across the street during Farmers’ Market and Music in the Park. For everything else there’s MasterCard.
The Jones Ranch shopping center project in North Concord off Hwy 4 is back. But the real story is that the Winton-Jones family sadly but wisely may just sell the land to Lowe’s and let them go through the gauntlet of Concord City Planning, new EIRs, and Council’s hedging including Helen Allen’s color scheme suggestions. Besides, everyone knows it would have been a done deal with Council last year if Winton-Jones had only used the correct law firm to represent the project to Council. That’ll learn ‘em.
Finally, Concordians better start seriously thinking about which size garbage totes they will need in the new Expanded Garbage Collection Service to be offered by Concord Disposal. Now there’ll be three totes(!) you’ll have to squeeze past that broken down RV in your driveway to get your garbage to the curb every week.
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God Bless Vineyard Church and the “good” they want to do, but feeding the homeless at Todos Santos Plaza would be an unmitigated disaster.
Maybe the Vineyard, some other churches, and the City could partner with BART to provide lunches to the needy in the fallow field along the BART tracks well past the skate park. Or some other isolated area still within walking distance.
Church folk feed hungry people in Concord and Pittsburg all the time out of the back of a minivan or pickup without fancy facilities. It is what it is, a free lunch…why make it more than that?
Besides, unlike the kids in the skate park, at least the homeless have the sense to wear helmuts.