When the past comes back to haunt you

According to Lowell H. Beachler's book, "Wood Colony District", the first Grovers to settle in Wood Colony were Ira and Maggie Grover, who moved to the area in 1918. They bought a farm on Shoemake and are buried in the Wood Colony Cemetery. Several Grover families descended from Ira and Maggie's four children still live in Wood Colony today. 

One of their descendants, Jeff Grover, served on the very first Salida Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) board when it was formed in 1984. He was then elected to represent our community on the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. In 2007, Jeff Grover pulled the Salida Now initiative off the ballot and was one of three "yes" votes needed to pass it into the new Salida Community Plan. 

The Grovers in Salida and Wood Colony are related. Jeff's cousin owns a landscaping business with locations in Salida and Modesto. And the Grover family owns a large tract of property off of Pirrone near Hammett.

And this is where the past has come to haunt us in the present and future.

I honestly believe that Jeff Grover tried to improve Salida by replacing the old Salida Community Plan (SCP) with the Salida Now initiative because it expanded Salida's boundaries and called for more beneficial aspects for the community like a recreational riverfront parkway along the Stanislaus River. He didn't know the economic recession was coming that caused the developer to pull out of the project and would result in Salida being frozen in time (2007) ever since.

But here's the rub: Jeff Grover would have been conflicted out of voting on the Salida Community Plan if his family was named anywhere in the SCP document - if they derived benefit - if they signed a Developer Agreement (DA). Oh, they most certainly would benefit if the SCP were activated - they own land in both areas of Salida - by Hammett and the landscaping business on Ladd and Stoddard. So now this is why the Stanislaus County Planning Department is saying it was "draftman's error" that the Grover Family Properties land was included in the SCP map. It's no accident it's there, it's a matter of convenience to now remove it because the Grover family wishes to develop it. It's a free country, so a landowner can sell their land at any time. But the benefit is derived when they can sell their land for commercial land prices, as it's now zoned in the SCP rather than selling for agricultural land prices.

And what they plan to sell their land for will create the tenth level of Hades for Salida. The truck stop/travel plaza they propose to put there will be a magnet for crime and

Grover Family Properties land with Vizcaya neighborhood
in background. Salida, California - November 2019

vagrancy that Salida does not have the law enforcement coverage to handle. In neighboring Ripon, the police told a Salida resident that 84% of their crime calls result from the truck stops located at Jack Tone Road. 

Even worse than the horrendous criminal impact upon Salida is the fact that the truck stop/travel plaza will be located just feet from the Vizcaya residential neighborhood. There is NO BUFFER that could be installed to protect this neighborhood from the 24-hour onslaught of light pollution, noise pollution and air pollution, let alone the criminal element just beyond a cinder block wall with no gate to the neighborhood. 

Additionally, the water well in Vizcaya was shut down several years ago due to being over the allowed level of arsenic contaminates. The way the well system was explained to me is the water for Vizcaya will be drawn from the next closest well. The only time it brings in surface water from the City of Modesto system is when there is high usage (like during the summer months). A truck stop is generally a high water user so will draw more from the system to the business in addition to creating the possibility of contaminating the water for the Vizcaya neighborhood. I say this because it is already happening at the truck stop in Ripon. 

Which brings up another glaring point on why allowing this project would be the epitome of bad planning: NOWHERE DO YOU FIND TRUCK STOPS BUILT NEXT TO NEIGHBORHOODS!  Just look at existing truck stops: Ripon, Madera, everywhere between here and Montana (as a Salida resident pointed out from a recent road trip), municipalities DO NOT build truck stops by neighborhoods for all the aforementioned reasons given. They know to provide the natural buffer of distance to protect the residents from the various pollutants and the criminal elements. 

Our community needs to continue to oppose this planned atrocity. Sign the petition, write letters in opposition and send to the Stanislaus County Planning Department.

Grover Family, I implore you - don't do this to Salida. Don't do this to your longtime neighbors. Develop your land for something quiet that will buffer the Vizcaya neighborhood just like all the other businesses currently on Pirrone.