Editoral: Enough with the picketing, already

Published: September 29, 2006

 

WHEN WORKERS have a legitimate grievance against their employer, there is nothing wrong with them trying to get the public on their side. Picketing, by attracting the attention of passersby and the media, is a very common way to do this. The goal is to convince the public to take their patronage elsewhere, making it painful for the employer to continue doing whatever his employees don’t like.
 

But just because somebody carries a picket sign doesn’t mean he has a legitimate gripe. And if the picketing goes on too long, it seems more like harassment than negotiating.
 

Such it is with the never-ending picketing of DMC job sites by the Carpenters Union. After more than a year of seeing hired protesters (not union members) in Pacific Grove, Seaside, Carmel and the gates to Pebble Beach, the public has long ago gotten the point. Now, they’re just getting annoyed, which means the union is doing more harm than good to itself. It’s long past time for the pickets to declare victory and go home.

Editorial: What a real city looks like
 

DESPITE WHAT its opponents say, the housing project proposed for Carmel Valley’s September Ranch isn’t “urbanization.” Nor will it turn Carmel Valley — as one letter to the editor in the Herald claimed last week — into the San Fernando Valley.
 

If owner Jim Morgens proposed 1,000 or 5,000 units per acre, he might be guilty of trying to create a new city. But the plan approved by the Monterey County Planning Commission, and which will be considered next week by the board of supervisors, allows him just 95 housing units on 891 acres of land. At the California average of 2.93 people per household, the built-out population density of September Ranch would be just 200 people per square mile
 

Here are some other average housing densities around the United States:
 

New York — 23,700 per square mile
 

San Francisco — 15,500
 

Los Angeles — 7,400
 

San Jose — 4,600
 

Carmel-by-the-Sea — 4,000
 

In fact, among all housing projects proposed in the Monterey Peninsula in the last 20 years, September Ranch has to be one of the most spacious. Only Rancho San Carlos, with fewer than 400 units on 20,000 acres (about 30 people per square mile) has it beat.
 

Supervisors may have legitimate concerns about water and traffic impacts of September Ranch. But one thing they don’t have to worry about is whether it will bear any resemblance to a metropolis.

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