The memo has it, folks: an August 7 letter by SanTana planning manager Karen Haluza to the planning commissioner regarding our July story on taco trucks (and really, our original deconstruction of the Renaissance Specific Plan that seeks to further de-wabify the city's downtown) and the fact that its provisions called for the elimination of taco trucks. It wasn't all pleasantries: Besides referring to yours truly as a “blogger” and not having any gratitude toward my kindness, Haluza goes on to insist that the Renaissance Plan never made such a claim.
“The draft Renaissance Specific Plan is silent on the issue of vending trucks,” Haluza wrote, and it also says nothing on gentrification yet the issue screams from the pages of the dormant proposal. She claims the provisions I cited actually only pertain to private property, a load of crap as big as the Democratic Party of Orange County standing by SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido all these years, but whatever–Haluza says it's silent, and it's now part of the public record. Better not go back now, Karen!
But Haluza isn't out of the gourmand woods yet. “These provisions of the draft plan focus on maintaining business activities within buildings in order to avoid such things as outdoor storage or blocking public sidewalks,” she continued. And who might do such things? Sidewalk food vendors like mango ladies, ice-cream carts, and all the other portable feed stations that make authentic urban living wonderful (see: midtown Manhattan) and that chump towns try to ban all the time (read: SanTana). Care to revise or clarify that idiotic proposal, Karen? We're waiting…
