EDITOR,

The citizens of Tracy should have concerns about the changes to the general plan that are being proposed by the city of Tracy. The city should be planned by the city, not by who pays for the planning.

The city has a general plan and never sticks to it, so how can you have a plan when you don’t follow it and keep making changes to it before it’s ever implemented? That is why Tracy is perceived as not knowing what it is doing or not knowing what it wants.

We have all kinds of meetings with the community and spend millions of dollars in reports that are never used. The city just tries to pacify the public with these phony meetings. I would like the city to look into having the general plan voted on by the voters.

In reading the Tracy Press, I see the city of Tracy is looking at helping to get large department stores located in our mall, which I think they should have done already years ago. But that’s not all that is needed to attract business to the mall and the mall area. You need to have the supporting business around the mall and available land so that when companies and stores come looking and want to build in that area, like the Bass Pro Shops in Manteca, that the land is available and ready to be built on. They do not want to have to go through years to get approval to build and get their zoning.

Land should be made available through the general plan now, and not where people have to travel miles across town to the mall with congested streets that can’t be widened. Tracy says that it wants to be green, and if this plan is accepted, we will need a lot more gas stations. If you really are serious about planning Tracy properly and attracting top-notch stores, you better take a look at what you are doing with your general plan right now.

I am told that the state is requiring Tracy to shrink its planning area, so why is new land being added? You can just change what you have to the proper zoning. The proposal you have now will make Tracy a sprawling city, which the state does not want and which is not right if you really have green intentions.

Tracy was once known as Tank Town, and now it has come to be known as Drive Town.