Your quick guide to the General Plan

The General Plan of 20fucking forever has been in the news a lot lately. A lot of legal wrangling and posturing has gone on during the past 685 years they've been trying to hammer this thing out and it can get fairly confusing pretty easily. (We're still not sure what Morada's beef is if they've already agreed to not go east of 99.) We thought it would be nice to try and put all the info on it in an easy to navigate place for people who search the intertubes for more info on it (since recordnet.com is decidedly not easy to navigate.). Plus we've added all the bias not included in the Record since we're not a respectable news organization like them and can do stuff like that.

After God knows how long, the City Council approved the General Plan of 2035 near the end of last year. It was a fairly shitty plan that presumably gave Alex Spanos' wallet a boner (Yes, his wallet has a penis. It's a Greek thing.) and pushed Stockton's boundries even further outward, therefore stretching Stockton's public services even thinner. But hey, the City Council agreed on something, party time.

Then the hippies decided it wasn't good enough. They (somewhat rightfully) claimed that Stockton's plan was too ambitious and the construction of all that housing would be too harmful to the environment. Not to mention it possibly would have pushed Stockton's boundries so far north that they might have run out of farmland to pave over. The city tried to promise it'd think about the environment. Nobody bought it (because let's face it, it was said by a city official.) so State Attorney General Jerry Brown got involved. The city then hemmed and hawed for a little bit, presumably to gage what their chances of winning the lawsuit were. Then finally relented and amended the plan.

But wait! There's more!

Where's my pudding?

Everybody's favorite old, crusty Greek guy took some time from dealing with getting royally fucked on Sunday to say there was a royal fucking going on in Stockton! Who's getting fucked? US!? Oh shit! But I'm Joe Taxpayer, I demand more jobs and I want them now! Give them to me Mayor Chavez!

In actuality A.G. Spanos Cos is just pissed they/we were left out of the discussion about the settlement. (Even though they were the first to ask about the settlement at a meeting a couple of week ago.) Plus if Stockton decides to impose the green standards they're required to consider under the new plan, it would cost them a shitload more cash. So what do you do when someone tells you "No" for a fairly decent reason? File another lawsuit of course.

It also helps to take a full page out in the paper (because god forbid that ad space be filled with actual news). Plus, it helps to give yourself a buzzword-filled name like Alliance for Responsible Planning to show you really care about us. Then make wild claims like the new hippy-friendly plan means less jobs for Stockton, even though nobody really knows exactly how many jobs will result from the General Plan.

We could go on. Jesus Tapdancing Christ we could go on. But you should be up to speed on what's going on. The Recordnet blogs also have really stepped up to the plate in General Plan coverage. David Siders (who was the writer for like every story we just linked to) has some interesting shit about the plan in his blog if you're not too overloaded on political posturing. Fitzy's also been on top of things as of late (and by "as of late" we mean he started yesterday. But we suspect that's more a result of his practice of writing follow up blogs about columns he just fucking wrote), including a post about a chat he had with ex-Mayor Podesto (who we hear knows a thing or two about referendums).