Empty Promises – a 13 Year General Plan Process

CAP Outreach Coordinator Megan Fiske authored this letter right before fire season began early with the Campo Seco fire

As published in the West Point News May 2021

Dear Editor,

Calaveras County spent 13 years updating its General Plan. The update was supposed to take just two years. Not surprisingly, the tortured and wearisome result is mostly empty promises. The Calaveras County General Plan adopted by the Board of Supervisors in November 2019 is hardly a plan at all.

A county’s General Plan is intended to help communities be prepared for wildfires; ensure we have adequate evacuation routes and enough firefighters; make sure new subdivisions will have water, sewer and adequate emergency services; improve emergency response times; and more. A General Plan should serve the citizens by sustaining our environment, both natural and built. 

A plan that addresses the aforementioned issues promptly and thoroughly should be obvious, don’t you think? Unfortunately, for years county officials actively ignored requests from the public to adequately address these issues and ultimately adopted a General Plan that defers their resolution indefinitely. After adopting the new General Plan, the County did invest in an app that allows residents to download an evacuation route on their smartphone. Do we really need directions to drive away from our homes? What we really need is roads that have been identified as essential for evacuation IN ADVANCE OF THE FIRE.  Roads that are maintained as evacuation routes so they are actually safe ways out during a fire. We need roads built with sufficient capacity to handle the evacuation.  Roads with surfaces that have been properly maintained.  Roadsides that have been cleared of overhanging trees and brush, so that when the fire hits the routes out are not gridlocked, chuckhole ridden, blazing tunnels of death.

Even after witnessing the devastation of the Butte fire, the County still won’t prioritize creating safe and sufficient evacuation routes or funding more firefighters or improving emergency response times.  What kind of plan says “we’ll deal with it later” to over 120 critical issues? 

When it comes to something like evacuation routes, which could mean life or death, we deserve more than a plan to make a plan. Not only does the general plan fail to confront and resolve these issues, it does not even make a commitment as to when it will.  It could be tomorrow or twenty years from now. 

There are unique challenges and unique rewards to living in Calaveras County. We deserve a plan that protects us, our families, and our ways of life. We deserve a plan that says something of substance, a plan that does more than kick the can of worms down the road.

Megan Fiske, Outreach Coordinator

Community Action Project/Calaveras Planning Coalition

P.O. Box 935, San Andreas, CA 95249