Please note that all City Council Meetings are filmed and made part of the Public Record. The entire Council meeting can be found here: http://www.ci.pleasant-hill.ca.us/1132/Meeting-Videos. Below are short clips of the Public Hearing.
Members of the Pleasant Hill City Council that were present:
- Michael Harris, Mayor
- Tim Flaherty, Vice Mayor
- Sue Noack, Council Member
- Ken Carlson, Council Member
- Matt Rinn, Council Member
1. After initial Public Comments were made regarding the lack of transparency regarding publishing the date and time of the proposed CarMax Public Hearing, Michael Harris, Pleasant Hill City Mayor, responds to the audience.
2. After the standard Pleasant Hill Staff Presentations to the City Council, CarMax representatives were allowed to do a presentation. Here, they describe the philantropic arm of CarMax called "CarMax Foundation". Although the Foundation has contributed approximately $5 million per year for a total of about $30 million in total grant funding since the inception of the charitable organization, per the Foundation's own website at foundation.carmax.com, the last big donation was in approximately 2015, with most of the total funds going to national organizations and to the community surrounding the CarMax headquarters in Virginia. Although much appreciated, donations to local communities surrounding CarMax dealerships cap out at $1000 with matching funds of $10 per hour. The CarMax team goes on to describe how wonderful the City of Pleasant Hill is.
3. A Pleasant Hill Resident who has 30 years in the automobile and car sales industry warns the Pleasant Hill City Council about putting a CarMax in a Residential Community.
4. The proposed Pleasant Hill CarMax will be placed amongst student housing, low income housing and disabled housing. Here, a mother of a Pleasant Hill Resident who resides at a facility for the Mobility Impaired and Disabled testifies on behalf of her son, who is nonverbal. The facility for the Disabled is located across from the proposed Pleasant Hill CarMax. Given the proximity, she pleads with the City Council to consider alternative ideas.
5. Another Pleasant Hill Resident of the facility for the Mobility Impaired and Disabled located across the proposed CarMax also requests that the Pleasant Hill City Council consider their needs and to evaluate alternatives to the proposed Pleasant Hill CarMax.
6. Pleasant Hill City Mayor, Michael Harris, poses a question of how a CarMax can be justified so close to student, low-income and disabled housing.
7. Pleasant Hill City Mayor, Michael Harris, poses a similar question of how a CarMax can preserve the character of the neighborhood.
8. Despite the Mayor's questions and The Pleasant Hill City Council questions to the CarMax team, including their lawyer, on basic operations and basic statistics on traffic and volume of business to gauge the impact on the surrounding neighborhood, the CarMax team refuses to answer these simple questions.
9. After all of the testimony was complete and after CarMax threatened to not come to Pleasant Hill if the project was not approved in its entirety with minimal conditions, Council Member Sue Noack responds by accepting the entire proposal and starting to suggest simpler conditions of approval.
10. Prior to the vote, Vice Mayor Tim Flaherty addresses the audience, the majority of which opposed the approval of the CarMax project, noting that this was the first time such a strong showing came to a Council meeting, and then calling the audience's actions and right to protest, "juvenile".
11. Despite hours of testimony and the overwhelming opposition to the proposed CarMax project, the Pleasant Hill City Council then unanimously voted for the proposed Pleasant Hill CarMax, in which they:
- ADOPTED the resolution of findings and CERTIFIED the EIR,
- ADOPTED the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program,
- APPROVED the PUD Rezoning and PUD Concept Plan Amendment, and
- APPROVED the Development Plan Permit, Conditional Use Permit, Architectural Review Permit, and Sign Permit
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