Salida Gas Station Shenanigans Recap

My comments to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 during public comment about the Salida Gas Station project. Fortunately, three of the supervisors listened to the residents and voted against the project, albeit for varying reasons. Our own District 3 Supervisor was spot on in his comments (watch the video 4:41 minutes).

"Good evening, I'm presenting a recap of facts you might not have heard -

August 2007 – The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors pulls the Salida Now initiative off of the ballot and passes it by 3 votes thus making it the new Salida Community Plan. One of those votes is cast by Jeff Grover, whose 2^nd cousin owns the land within the map area of the Plan which has brought us here tonight.

July 31, 2012 - At the Hammett Road Interchange meeting held at Salida Library Community Room one of the consultants of the study said, “The
problem is, any significant development around the Hammett Road Interchange causes the Hammett interchange to fail in it's ability to service traffic, so it would need to be improved.”

Sometime between 2013-2017 – Water well #299, (Vizcaya's) is shut down for being over the limit in arsenic.

December 7, 2018 - An email between Stanislaus County Deputy Director,Miguel Galvez, to Stanislaus County Planner, Kristin Doud and copied to Stanislaus County Planning Director, Angela Freitas, Galvez writes: "The Grover family is interested in developing their property by the Hammett Road overcrossing. They would like to develop a service station on the 9.6 ac. parcel (APN 003-014-007), it would be temporary until the property is taken for the development of the new interchange."

May 1, 2019 – Email from Miguel Galvez stating that Baldev Grewal came to the planning counter on April 29, 2019 with a proposal to develop the Grover property and is considering several options: 1. Convenience market with gas station 2. commercial parcel map with speculative highway commercial development on four-five parcels 3. propose a parcel map and develop all the properties in phases, with one property to be developed with a hotel. The email also states that Mr. Grewal wishes to move with the General Plan Amendment ASAP then go for a building permit for the convenience market.

September 11, 2019 – Planning files notice with CEQA, mentions the“drafting error” that was unchallenged when the Initiative was passed and unchallenged in the 12 years since.

November 6, 2019 – The Modesto Bee points out that City of Modesto approved water for the project and nowhere in the documents was it mentioned that there would be a “truck stop” or “travel plaza”.

January 28, 2020 - ”I wouldn't have bought a house there” words spoken by a Stanislaus county employee at Salida MAC when asked if he would want to live near the various developments being planned around Hammett and Pirrone. At least five Vizcaya residents sold their homes before this gas station is built. Some disclosed what was going in to the new owners and some did not.

March 3, 2021 – City of Modesto Associate Engineer sends an email to Miguel Galvez stating that the city has denied water service to Brinca's Lark Landing Project citing insufficient fire flow to serve the property at full build out. They cite the contaminated well serving the Vizcaya neighborhood that was shut down.

March 23, 2021 – The split vote at Salida MAC – a motion is made to vote against the gas station project and the newest MAC member who votes nay on the motion does not disclose that he became employed not even a month prior by the same realty company handling the gas station land. The other person to vote nay on the motion is a Stanislaus County employee and it is brought up at the meeting that the county will receive a 75% discount purchasing land for a new storm drain basin if this project is approved.

May 2021 – Moore Biologics is hired by applicants to do environmental assessment and says there's no evidence of Swainson's Hawk nor burrows for a Burrowing Owl at the site.

Burrow at site

June 5, 2021 – An amateur ornithologist photographed a Swainson's Hawk and a nest within one mile of the site.

July 13, 2021 – I sent the Board of Supervisors a photograph of burrows on the site.

February 15, 2022 – In my comments to the Stanislaus County Planning Commission, I refer to sections of the Salida Community Plan that state it cannot be changed and institutes a Community Facilities District. There may a provision in the plan for piecemeal development but that does not mean the rest of the plan can be cherry-picked. Also want to note that potential natural gas fueling has been added and still no EIR. Planning Commission votes 4-3 to oppose the project. The applicant gets off easy if he only has to pay 7-8 years of Mello Roos taxes.

February 22, 2022 – Salida MAC votes unanimously to oppose the project. After the meeting, the developer says he should just sell the land to Travel America which is a truck stop company bringing us right back to where we began.

To sum up the timeline, I oppose this piecemeal-development-truck-stop-or-gas-station-with-two-types-of-fuel-not-at-other-gas-stations-in-the-county-but-could-wipe-Vizcaya-from-the-map-like-in-San-Bruno-or-the-hydrogen-station-explosion-in-Norway-still-with-no-EIR-for-the-threatened-status-species. The county has gone out of it's way to help this project get approved, whether it's ignoring conflicts of MAC members, not requiring an EIR or other requirements of the Salida Community Plan, bypassing Salida MAC before the Planning Commission, and the list goes on. You have heard many reasons tonight to oppose the project but if you need more then County policy 19 and 20, provide you with the means as well as Board of Supervisors policy 10.46.020."

How will the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors vote on piecemeal development in Salida?

On Thursday, February 17, 2022, the Stanislaus County Planning Commission voted 4-2 to deny the proposed Salida gas station project. The primary reason cited was the planning department had bypassed the Salida Municipal Advisory Council (Salida MAC) when the project had changed in several ways. The project went back to Salida MAC and was voted against (5-0) on Tuesday, February 22, 2022. It now proceeds to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 6:30 pm. 

Now that the project title has changed to recognize this would be the first development project of the Salida Community Plan (SCP), I don't think the county realizes how encumbered this project will be by the SCP. The SCP was passed as an initiative; the county does NOT get to cherry-pick what they abide by in it. My comments below to the Planning Commission mention several of these articles in the initiative. 

Good evening Planning Commissioners,

As reflected in the project title change, the county has now acknowledged that this project has become the very first development project under the updated Salida Community Plan, SCP for short. Our community plan was a 2007 initiative that Salida voters were supposed to get to vote on, but it was pulled off the ballot and passed by three county supervisors, including our supervisor at the time, Jeff Grover. If you ask anyone who lived in Salida in 2007 who planned to vote on the initiative, most will express resentment that their vote was taken away from them, including other residents right here in this room.

I was one of them. I barely paid any attention to local politics until Modesto moved to annex Salida in 2012. But I did plan to vote no on the SCP – Salida Now as it was called then, because 2007 was the start of the recession and I had neighbors who couldn't sell their homes so why did we need a development plan that included 5,000 new homes to compete against?

In about 2014, I printed off and read the entire SCP, and I have now come to appreciate certain aspects of it. For instance, page 4 of Exhibit B item E states “Ensuring that the Salida Community Plan Amendment Area is in HARMONY with existing communities.”

I met with Baldev “Paul” Grewal on April 3, 2021 and I gave him a list of 4 things that would help his project: 1. Will the gas station close at night? He asked me if the pumps could stay on and I said he needed to ask the neighborhood. 2. Safety – crime, gas, hydrogen. - Now I don't know why this project was approved when the project next to it was denied based on not having enough water for fire suppression because Vizcaya's well is shut down for being over the limit in arsenic. There's much more about water supply requirements in the SCP ordinance but that's for county counsel and staff to review as reading and adhering to the SCP is way above what they pay you to be here tonight. As for hydrogen, there has not been any communication or community education on the safety of hydrogen fuel. The closest hydrogen station to us is at Harris Ranch so there's nothing in this county to base experience or policy on. And as for crime, the security detail proposed in the project is for the storage units and not for the 24-hour convenience store. Third – a Community Facilities District which the Salida Community Plan states on Article II, Section 2.09 “Funding Districts. Prior to the recordation of any final map, the Applicant filing such map shall petition County to form (or annex into, as applicable) community facilities districts or other such financing districts solely burdening the applicable portion of the Project Site." But I do not see any mention of this CFD in the Planning document that is part of this passed initiative. And lastly, I asked Paul to put it in writing which obviously, none of it is, or it would be in the Conditions for Approval. So I feel this lack of harmony shown towards Vizcaya and the Community of Salida is setting this project up to be another Larsa Hall or Fruit Yard. The County is a complaint driven system after all, and it would be so much easier if the applicant would meet with the community BEFORE one spade of dirt is overturned since they will be suffering the ramifications of this destined to be torn down gas station.

This plan should have gone back to Salida MAC after planning dept changed the title because these and other questions as pertains to the plan should be addressed ahead of time. The two previous MAC members who had conflicts – one a real estate agent that works for the company representing the land, and the other who works for the county which stands to benefit from a 200% discount on a drainage basin, should have conflicted themselves out. The county employee has since resigned from MAC and two seats were filled in January. If it had gone back to MAC now, then a legitimate vote could have been taken and not this nonsense of split votes by conflicted members. One of you even cited that the MAC vote weighs heavily on their decision about the project, so I hope you will take these biased machinations into consideration because the request was denied that the project be taken back to the MAC BEFORE the planning commission meeting. It is now slated to go to MAC next week, so any vote they make will not be heard tonight by you. What should have happened is it went to the MAC next week, then went to Planning Commission's March 3^rd meeting. Because when it comes down to it, who stands to gain the most from this project besides the landowners? The county does. The county gets their discount basin and the county gets the tax revenue from the development. And the county has scheduled the votes in their favor for you to not to consider an un-conflicted MAC vote.

The SCP has a provision for the Board of Supervisors to consider a range of land uses intended to allow flexibility, but that loophole does NOT preclude the applicants from the SCP fee in Exhibit A page 10 section 21.66.110 nor the aforementioned CFD. In fact, Exhibit B item 17A states “adopting this Ordinance without alteration.” and just below that in Section B item 1. “This initiative will protect the quality of life of the County's citizens by Discouraging sprawl by locating a mix of land uses adjacent to existing communities.” And in Exhibit B, section D “Approval of this initiative does not constitute a part of, or encourage, piecemeal conversion of a larger agricultural area to non-agricultural uses.” Simply put, I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of residents of the Vizcaya neighborhood. Would you want a gas station less than 500 feet from your un-gated neighborhood? Would you want flammable materials less than 500 ft from your house when water suppression could be an issue because your well is shut down? I was reminded of this again when American Recycling burned this week and they had water suppression issues. How does anything about this gas station improve the quality of life and harmony of the community?

Why build a gas station just to tear it down? Part 2

Stanislaus County Public Works presented a proposal at the Tuesday, October 26, 2021 Salida Municipal Advisory Council (Salida MAC) for Stanislaus County to purchase 2.2 acres of land for $100K from Grover Family Trust. The reason given for purchasing the land by the county employee is it will be, "...maintained by public works as a storm drain basin but it's not going to be allowed to have something built upon it so that it would ultimately have to be torn down at the taxpayers' cost."

Wait. WHAT?!? You mean like the gas station, storage units and other development planned for the parcels adjacent to Pirrone Court also owned by Grover Family Trust and would be torn down when the Hammett Road overpass is improved?

At the September 2021 Salida MAC meeting, Stanislaus County Planning Department gave an update that the gas station project is on hold while the developer looks for land to mitigate for the threatened status species, Swainson's Hawk, which is currently foraging on the land.

Um....Hello Stanislaus County - how about doing the same for the gas station parcel and leaving it as forage for the hawk for THE VERY SAME FREAKING REASON CITED FOR BUYING THOSE OTHER TWO PARCELS?!?

Updated Nov 2, 2021: The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of the aforementioned 2.2 acres at their Tuesday, November 2, 2021 meeting. 

READ: Why build a gas station just to tear it down? Part 1

Why build a gas station just to tear it down? Part 1

A Public Records Act Request has revealed the shocking information that Stanislaus County planners and leaders know the proposed gas station and storage (PLN2019-0079) to be built next to the Vizcaya neighborhood would be torn down to make way for the expansion of the Hammett Road interchange. In this email exchange dated December 7, 2018 between former Stanislaus County Deputy Director, Miguel Galvez, to Stanislaus County Planner, Kristin Doud and copied to Stanislaus County Planning Director, Angela Freitas, Galvez writes, 

"The Grover family is interested in developing their property by the Hammett Road overcrossing. They would like to develop a service station on the 9.6 ac. parcel (APN 003-014-007), it would be temporary until the property is taken for the development of the new interchange."

NOT ONCE has this information that the development will be demolished for the new interchange been shared at ANY of the county meetings held about the gas station project in Salida! WHY would Stanislaus County proceed with a project that not only would have a gas station, but a mini-storage, and other restaurants when all of it will be torn down for a freeway interchange? Would the business owners and corporations know in advance that their business investments on this land could be short-lived? At the Hammett Road Interchange meeting held at Salida Library Community Room on July 31, 2012, one of the hired consultants of the study said at 7:16 in the recorded meeting, 

"The problem is, any development, any significant development around the Hammett Road Interchange causes the Hammett interchange to fail in it's ability to service traffic, so it would need to be improved. The plan that we have done in here tonight, is the least impact way of making a long term interchange improvement to accommodate any development that occurs at the interchange."

At 5:44 in the recording after a discussion on whether the land could be developed or not, a man says, "The land should be acquired at fair market value." In the December 7, 2018 Galvez-Doud email, they discuss the zoning. A-2 is the zoning code for General Agriculture.

A second development project debuted in early 2020 known as "Lark Landing PLN2019-0131" which includes another gas station, car wash, convenience market, offices, fast food and TWO hotels on the land in front (west) of the Vizcaya neighborhood. This project is currently on hold, but again, if you look at the layout of the Hammett Road interchange, this land would also be taken for that along with the new Pirrone Rd. alignment. 

The only reason I can think of as to WHY Stanislaus County would follow through with these doomed projects is to insure the landowners receive a higher "fair market value" for their land by the state. A General Plan rezone is part of these development applications and built-out commercial land would cost the state more than if it were undeveloped or remained agriculture. 

Summary of the Vizcaya posts

 I didn't realize just how many times I've addressed the issue of development around Vizcaya until I looked back at past posts. Vizcaya residents especially need to read these posts so they know the history and issues involving the land around their neighborhood.

GROVER FAMILY - Our former Stanislaus County District 3 Supervisor, Jeff Grover, was one of the three votes which passed the Salida Community Plan in 2007. JEFF GROVER WOULD HAVE BEEN CONFLICTED FROM VOTING ON THE PLAN IF HIS COUSIN, MARK GROVER (owner of Grover Landscaping) HAD SIGNED A DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT. It's NOT a "drafting error" that they just suddenly noticed after 14 years when Mark Grover wants to sell his land for development. The land has NOT SOLD yet as you can see by this out-of-boundary water service agreement that Mark and Lorraine Grover have requested on the Modesto City Council agenda for TODAY, Tuesday, April 13, 2021.

Read:

When the past comes back to haunt you

STANISLAUS COUNTY - A Stanislaus County employee even truthfully stated at a past meeting when asked, that he "Wouldn't have bought a house there" meaning in Vizcaya and knowing what development would be put in by the homes. The county machine is churning like a steamroller towards Vizcaya. A county employee on the Salida Municipal Advisory Council voted in favor of the project despite three meetings where Salida residents were unanimously opposed. Why does the county want this project so much? Besides being a large tax

Current Vizcaya drainage basin in 2021

generator, the county will get a new drainage basin for Vizcaya at "75% off" the land price. The highly questionable and extreme lengths the county seems to be going to in order to push this project through include allowing the votes of a county employee and a new MAC member who became a real estate agent on March 1, 2021 FOR THE VERY SAME COMPANY HANDLING THE SALE OF THE LAND and he DID NOT DISCLOSE THIS NEW JOB publicly at the MAC meeting nor conflict himself out of voting.  The county machine is also doing a very poor job of notifying Vizcaya residents of what is transpiring including planning to adopt a Negative CEQA document on the project when it was only announced at the March 2021 Salida MAC meeting that hydrogen fueling tanks have been added to the project. There is no mention of the hydrogen tanks in the Salida Gas Station Project.

Read:

"I wouldn't have bought a house there" in Salida's Vizcaya neighborhood

A Conflicted MAC

The due diligence of transparency, taxes, and development

Salida residents, and especially those in Vizcaya, need to SPEAK UP! You need to write to planning@stancounty.com and contact all five county supervisors. You need to attend meetings when you can, even if it's virtual on Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Call them on the mat for these things. 

Sign the petition to support Vizcaya and share the link. Time is running out.

They Know Not What They Do

NOTE: Due to the COVID-19 virus, the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors has offered public comment on agenda items to be submitted via email before 5 pm on Monday and the comments will be distributed to the board. This was emailed to the Clerk of the Board at 1:20 pm on Monday, March 16, 2020

Public Comment Agenda Item.6.B.11 - Valley Home MAC

Supervisors,

I read through the agenda item for changing the Valley Home MAC from elected to appointed, and while I understand and sympathize with some of the points you make and the issues surrounding this, I do not agree with the change. As I have shared with you previously, the MACs in Alameda County are all-appointed and the supervisor will only appoint people to the MAC who follow his views. My nickname for the Castro Valley MAC is "The Stepford Wives MAC". And as I said at your January 2019 workshop during public comment, not being able to choose who represents you is about as un-American as you can get.

I also find it ironic and rather contradictory that Supervisor Olsen said at this same January 2019 meeting that she didn't "understand why the people of (another board) couldn't choose who represents them." I agree with her - the board she was referring to should be chosen by election of the people! And the same goes for Valley Home MAC!  (Also, I DO remember the name of the board she mentioned; just choosing not to throw her under a bus by saying it in public comment.)

I know you are dealing with apathy of getting people to serve - but their time is a valuable commodity. Please consider coming into the 21st century and offering a stipend to serve on MAC boards. The Stanislaus County Planning Commission has a small stipend but it's enough that you never once hear a planning commissioner say, "I'm just a volunteer" as MAC members are. Salida Sanitary District also offers a small stipend and they never lack for board members. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Katherine Borges

Salida

The due diligence of transparency, taxes, and development

My Public Comment to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 9 am:

"Good morning, just to quickly address the email request I sent you to cease the practice of private meetings with MAC members: while it may be in compliance to the Brown Act, there's no way for the public to independently gauge the County's due diligence if there's no record via public attendance or minutes to record what transpired. I wrote to all of you because I don't know if this is something new or something that you all do, but I only know it because Salida MAC members have told me and my supervisor mentioned it at the last MAC meeting. The solution should not be that the supervisor stops mentioning it because that makes it all the less transparent; it just would be better to cease the practice and shine the light of transparency on all governmental meetings.

I do think, with much thanks going to Salida MAC, that the County HAS been (with the exception of the closed door meetings) demonstrating appropriate due diligence in regards to the proposed CSA10 tax increase meetings. My honest opinion is that $33 a year is not a big deal, but I am against the tax in principle. The principle being that it seems the County's first solution for any shortfall is to raise taxes on the constituency as opposed to finding another solution. I do know that the County did look at sub-contracting the landscaping work out and that prevailing wage killed that option. However, I don't think the County has exhausted all other options like applying for grants to xeriscape around the developments or reapportioning our property taxes to include more for park maintenance. 

And I take exception to County employees referring to those, like myself, who do not live in CSA 10 tax homes as “freeloaders”. Just because the County decided to raid CSA10 for my neighborhood's storm drain maintenance at some point between 2013 and now, does not turn my neighborhood into “freeloaders”. One of the biggest reasons I chose my house

Some CSA10 Parks & Streetscape budget for 2012-2013

is because it DID'NT have Mello Roos or CSA taxes on it. My realtor didn't say, “Well be prepared because in 27 years, the County is going to put a tax on you that you didn't sign up for, unlike the people in Mello Roos homes. In 2013, I asked Matt Machado what covered my storm drain maintenance and he replied, “the gas tax”. So yes, $33 isn't a big deal right now, but it all adds up in the long run. I think that if anyone deserves a tax increase in Salida, it's our fire department and the County should exhaust every available option including grants before proceeding with this CSA10 increase.

Now onto the topic of Vizcaya: it's appalling to expect the working people of Salida to plan to attend a neighborhood meeting with only 6-8 days notice which is what you are doing to them since you just announced the date yesterday. Why can't you give them two weeks notice at least? What's the rush? The short notice ensures a low attendance and that is poor due diligence for a county which is “striving to be the best in America”. Give them a second meeting at least for the people who cannot make the first one. And perhaps on a Saturday. 

I was reading the Salida Community Plan (SCP) over the weekend and it struck me what a strange limbo Salida is in with it. It says that “...one of the primary purposes of the Amendment Area is to provide for a mix of land uses that can facilitate the Salida Community's financial and fiscal self-sufficiency” but if you allow these two gas stations and other businesses the loophole of a “drafting error” to not be included in the SCP then that hurts the existing community. I believe that Jeff Grover had good intentions for us with the SCP but I one hundred percent disagree that a man who is a building contractor would have allowed a "drafting error" to proceed for 13 years, especially when it affects his cousins' land. Put yourself in the shoes of the people who live in Vizcaya, which also does include County employees: would YOU choose to buy a home by two gas stations and two hotels? What will that do to their homes' resale value? 

I can tell you how the potential of a 4-story hotel impacted MY neighborhood: when a home went up for sale across the street, two buyers backed out just from word that a hotel would be built on the lot behind us and this home didn't even border it! No one wants to walk out of their house and see hotels, or live with the noise, air, and light pollution of gas stations.

I also ask that when Planning does the environmental studies, to do them by a place with at least two gas stations to measure the pollutants that will be influencing the air quality around the homes. Thank you for your consideration."

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.