Poll: Should the City Council Rescind Its Approval of the Blair Park EIR?

The Piedmont City Council seems poised to rescind its approval of the controversial Blair Park sports field plan at its May 7 meeting. (If you were away for the weekend and missed the announcement, see these articles: "City Likely to Reject Blair Park Soccer Field" (April 27) and "Dropping the Blair Park Sports Field Project: Official Responses" (April 28).

Absent from the announcement that City Administrator Geoffrey Grote and representatives of the Piedmont Recreational Facilities Organization (PRFO), the financial backers of the plan, had jointly agreed to terminate the project: any mention of the project's environmental impact report (EIR).

The city's official notice of a public hearing on the matter at the May 7 meeting also lacks any mention of the EIR.

It's the EIR, rather than the sports field plan itself, that is the subject of a lawsuit against the City of Piedmont filed by the Friends of Moraga Canyon (FOMC), a nonprofit group opposing the project. That suit is currently on hold through May 7; FOMC representatives say that PRFO requested the delay.

The Oakland City Council has also approved a lawsuit against the City of Piedmont, although filing has been delayed through an agreement between the two cities that runs through May 18. That suit would also focus on the project's EIR.

The Piedmont City Council approved both the project and the EIR in a seven-hour meeting Dec. 5-6. Opponents say the city should have required a supplemental EIR before voting on the project, because of major changes in the plan (including the addition of a traffic roundabout on Moraga Avenue) since the EIR was first prepared.

Some opponents of the project feel the city council should also rescind the EIR, so that it will not be in place should the project resurface in a different form in the future.

What do you think?