Response

For immediate use

Re: Port of Oakland indication they are not interested in Crows Landing intermodal terminal.

Since June WS-PACE.org has been evaluating the PCCP West Park LLC Kamilos proposal for the Stanislaus county owned Crows Landing air facility and the more we checked, the less it made sense, especially an inland port 25 miles south of the nearest rail intersection near Tracy. Gerry Kamilos has also made many conflicting and changing claims for the proposal.  To top that, many county businessmen keep telling us the project doesn’t seem to make economic sense.  Therefore we are not surprised at the Port of Oakland stand, except to wonder why it took so long for the truth to come out?  Weren’t the facts there all along?

It's embarrassing that our county government has put this much time, this much effort, and the public's money into a proposed project that did not have its prime player nailed down. It's the next thing to scandalous not to pick up the phone and discuss the issue with Port of Oakland as well as railroad officials before granting West Park LLC and exclusive contract to negotiate a plan for the 1,526 acre Crows Landing air field property.

Mr. Kamilos' proposed project has so many 'ifs' and unanswered questions that many West Side residents have a growing skepticism. In addition, there's been a growing list of negative impacts on our side of the county, from major train and truck transportation to the projected 37,000 workers traveling to and from to the Crows Landing facility daily. No one in county government has given us any assurance that these problems would be mitigated.

Nobody in county government asked the West Side if we wanted to become a second Port of Oakland. They ignored their own Request For Proposal and their advisory committee.  Now it's apparent they also didn't ask the Port of Oakland either.

We will remain on guard against the three supervisors unacceptable decisions in an effort to destroy the West Side way of life.  Let’s see if they do the right thing now or will they still be guided by donations and politics?

WS-PACE won’t relax as long as the Board of Supervisors still has an exclusive negotiation contract with Kamilos.  In fact we would request that they cancel the contract since it never met the RFP and now doesn't appear to have a key element of the proposal on which the contract was agreed to.

Ron Swift, president WS-PACE.org

Claude Delphia, vice president WS-PACE.org

209-892-5037