Walmart has applied to convert 14,000 sf and to expand its store by roughly 19,000 sf to provide a 24 hour a day grocery department that will also sell alcoholic beverages until 2 AM each day. I think this is bad for North San José for four reasons: 1) it will hurt our City's ability to attract retailers to North San José pursuant to VNSJ 2030; 2) it will increase traffic congestion in our area; 3) increases in violent crime could affect our neighbors; and 4) Walmart's employment practices are not suitable for our community. I discuss each issue below in more detail.

Anyone who is concerned about Walmart's proposal should write to the Milpitas Planning Commission, c/o Cindy Hom, Assistant Planner, City of Milpitas Department of Planning and Neighborhood Services, 455 E. Calaveras Blvd, Milpitas, CA 95035 (chom2@ci.milpitas.ca.gov). I will provide information about the date of the Planning Commission Meeting when that information becomes available. It would be terrific if we could line up at least four RONA members to speak at the hearing (one per topic relevant to our group).

1. Walmart's proposal will hurt our City's ability to attract retailers to North San José.
   We all want San José eventually to bring in Trader Joe's or some other retailer to North San José so that we won't have to keep driving all over the country to buy our groceries. If Walmart builds a supercenter, it will be years before San José can attract a retailer. Although that is of little concern to Milpitas, the City of Milpitas should consider the following: 1) although the EIR concludes that no businesses in Milpitas will close as a result of the supercenter, it also concludes that there is currently no excess demand for grocery sales in the market area (which extends from Berryessa to northern Sunnyvale to Fremont) and that existing grocery stores in Milpitas will be negatively impacted by the construction of a supercenter; 2) to arrive at the conclusion that no stores will close, the EIR assumes a specific rate of population growth in the market area without considering that some of the projected growth might never happen because so many plans for new homes in North San José have been put on hold pending economic recovery; 3) the EIR also reaches its conclusion about business closures based upon the unsupported assumption that Walmart will not compete with ethnic food stores in the market area; and 4) the EIR assumes that Walmart's expansion will not impact non-food stores, despite the fact that most Milpitas grocery stores serve as anchors for non-food stores in shopping centers there.

    

2. Walmart's proposal will affect traffic flow in our part of the County.
   In the statement of significant unavoidable adverse impacts, the EIR states that: "The proposed project would contribute trips to four roadway segments that would operate at unacceptable levels. Although all four segments would operate at unacceptable levels without the proposed project, the proposed project would increase traffic volumes by more than 1-percent of the roadways' capacity, which is considered a significant impact. Mitigation is proposed that would require the project applicant to provide fees for roadway improvements. However, the proposed improvements may not fully mitigate the impact to a level of less than significant and, therefore, the residual significance is significant and unavoidable. This is also considered a significant cumulative effect." Note that during the Notice of Preparation process, the County specifically requested that Milpitas require Walmart to pay "fair share" impact fees for improvements to Montague Expressway, but this suggested was ignored by the City. Also note that in the application file at the City Hall, there are several letters from both the VTA and CalTrans asking Milpitas to do a traffic study for the 237 and 880, but this has yet been completed. Both agencies reiterated their concerns that such a study should be completed in their written comments on the draft EIR.

    

3. We should be concerned about safety issues raised by the proposal.
   Walmart currently closes at 10 PM each day of the week. Under the proposal, Walmart would remain open 24/7 and would sell alcohol until 2 AM each day of the week. Common sense dictates that this will result in increased crime in the parking lot there. Walmart is notorious for not patrolling its parking lots, and literally thousands of murders, rapes, and robberies occur in Walmart parking lots across the country each year as a result. The store should not remain open after midnight. If the conditional use permit allows the store to remain open all night, then it should include conditions requiring on-site security. In its application, Walmart offered to do the following if required by the City: conduct a crime survey, patrol the parking lot at all hours of the night, install closed circuit cameras in the parking lot, hire a risk control team, maintain a well lighted parking lot, and not allow drinking of alcoholic beverages in the lot. These conditions MUST be written into the permit so that the City can enforce them against the store. We do not want an increase in violent crime so close to our homes.

    

4. We should also be concerned about employment.
   One of Walmart's talking points is that the expansion will create a whopping 75 full and part-time jobs. But even if no existing stores close as a result of the expansion, jobs will nonetheless be lost at area grocery stores because as the EIR acknowledges, area grocery stores will be impacted negatively by the expansion. Thus, 75 jobs should is properly described as 75 NET jobs. Unfortunately, the jobs lost will likely be decent paying jobs with good benefits because most supermarket chains are union shops. Meanwhile, instead of providing benefits to its employees and paying them more than minimum wage, Walmart assists its employees to apply for WIC, Medicare, and food stamps. In fact, according to one Cal-Berkeley study, the State of California spends $86 million per year providing public benefits to Walmart employees, and counties across the State contribute another $25 million to the cause. Nationwide, American taxpayers pay $1.557 BILLION to provide public benefits to Walmart employees. And how will we flip the bill for Walmart's 75 new employees when in addition to adding on 19,000 sf, the store has plans to convert 14,000 sf from general merchandise sales (taxable) to grocery sales (non-taxable)?