Caltrans Delays Gualala Town Hall Amid Concern Over Who’ll Know About It
The twisty road to redesigning Gualala’s Main Street just took another unexpected turn.
Caltrans said it would send postcards announcing a virtual Town Hall to everyone on The Sea Ranch, but to only a minority of the Gualalans who live, work, and drive on the highway every day. Other South Coast residents would also be left off the list.
Caltrans and the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG), which manages the business end, said notifications would go to renters, lot owners, full-time residents, or weekenders connected to each of the 2,288 parcels on The Sea Ranch because they rely on services in Gualala. Only a few hundred people live full-time on the 16-square-mile Sonoma County development.
By comparison, only those Gualalans within a mile of the project would get postcards. That would exclude hundreds of residents living on the ridge along Old Stage Rd.
The Gualala Town Plan—a part of the Mendocino County planning code comparable in tone and scope to The Sea Ranch’s famously restrictive CCRs—set specific requirements for the roadway 18 years ago. The core requirements have remained sacrosanct through two decades of hearings: an environmentally friendly three-lane design with sidewalks, landscaping, separated bike paths.
At the last Caltrans Town Hall in October, however, attendees ignored the Town Plan and voted for a 64-foot-wide highway that added two lanes of parking but eliminated landscaping. Critics warned it would transform downtown Gualala into a “San Jose strip mall.”
That experience underscores the importance of the instant poll planned for the upcoming Town Hall. With the click of a mouse, attendees could nudge the long-awaited project back into compliance with the county code or potentially trigger years of legal wrangling, debate, and delay.
Caltrans admitted last month it can’t build the four-lane highway without concrete retaining walls up to 5-feet-high. Even the project managers felt that was “too urban” for rural Gualala. So Caltrans Project Manager Frank Demling asked for more input and quickly got plenty:
• Prominent environmentalists, an HOA president, business leaders, cyclists, seniors, Sea Ranchers, South Coast residents, visitors, and others urged Caltrans to return to a greener three-lane design;
• More than 430 people signed a petition (Change.org/SaveGualala) asking the agency to follow the environmentally friendly three-lane concept in the Gualala Town Plan;
• The Gualala Municipal Advisory Council (GMAC) also recommended returning to the Town Plan’s three-lane concept while guaranteeing highway parking for the Surf Market for a fixed term while an off-highway parking lot is completed.
Who Lives in Gualala?
Gualala serves as the regional commerce hub for customers from Annapolis to Manchester, so project managers believe Sea Ranchers should get personalized invitations. However, the exclusion of most Gualalans, Anchor Bay, Point Arena and Manchester raised many questions from Gualala Community Advisory Council (GMAC) Chair Robert Juengling and myself during a 75-minute Zoom call with Demling and MCOG Executive Director Nephele Barrett.
Barrett explained “Sea Ranch is different because it’s all residential.” However, Sea Ranch has restaurants, a lodge, realtors, therapists, a large hardware/nursery store, professional services, fire stations, storage units, administrative offices, an airport, and three recreation centers. There’s also a popular bakery/market and gas station just to the south.
While neighboring Mendocino County towns may have small markets, restaurants, or stores, hundreds of their residents drive through downtown Gualala daily to work, do major shopping, worship, attend club meetings, dine at the Community Center, see doctors, visit friends, fix their autos, and much more. Juengling and I suggested sending postcards from Manchester to Annapolis to include their views, but Barrett said “that doesn’t make sense.”
“Just because those people don’t get a postcard doesn’t mean they wouldn’t know about it,” she said, suggesting they might read legal notices in newspapers, hear something on the radio or by word of mouth. On another question, Barrett said “vacant land owners should have an equal level of participation” in the online survey, although Demling suggested there could be some sort of “weighting” mechanism between different levels of stakeholders.
Neither seemed fully prepared to cross the digital divide. “We’re just scratching our heads trying to figure out the best way of doing this,” Demling said, adding offline residents could request information from Caltrans, receive it by mail, then mail in their preferences—a three-step process that, of course, would work only if they heard about the meeting in the first place.
‘Significant Concerns’
A day after the call, Juengling and I drafted a detailed five-page letter to Demling to outline “significant new concerns” that “most of our town’s residents and thousands of other Mendocino County residents will be at a distinct disadvantage.” We cc’ed Barrett and other public officials connected to the project. It’s also posted at GualalaMAC.org under the “Meeting Agendas” tab.
“We believe the design must give the highest priority to those permanent residents who rely on the highway every day to get to work, take their kids to school, run down to the Post Office, operate consumer-facing businesses, or shop in Gualala,” we wrote.
The letter outlines six major concerns: the exclusion of most Gualalans from the postcard list; the definition of Gualala’s extended community to include Sea Ranch but exclude all other neighboring communities; an over-reliance on local media to draw people to an important public meeting; the potential to manipulate the outcome through a private mass marketing campaign; the undefined design choices to be offered to attendees; and the convoluted process for those without digital access.
A week after receiving our letter, Demling said the Town Hall has been pushed back to Oct. 28, adding “we have not made a decision on the ‘defined area’ to send out postcards.”
Tom Murphy is Vice Chair of the Gualala Municipal Advisory Committee. He chairs GMAC’s Committee on Housing & Economic Development and sits with Juengling on GMAC’s Streetscape Committee. He lives in downtown Gualala. He can be reached at GMAC95445@gmail.com.
