Chabot Gun Club (CGC) appreciates the California Rifle and Pistol Association's clear and concise recap of the East Bay Regional Park District's rejection of Chabot Gun Club along with the thousands upon thousands of Bay Area shooters and their families that (CGC) directly or indirectly represents. Please read the CRPA's alert below, and then consider letting your elected officials on the EBRPD Board how you feel about it. Then, join the CRPA and the NRA if you are not already a member and send them an extra donation if you are.

Thanks,

John M. Maunder

Senior Rangemaster

Chabot Gun Club, Inc.

keeptherangeopen@chabotgunclub.com

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CRPA ALERT

Park District Directors Vote to Close Down 60-Year-Old Chabot Shooting Range

 

At its March 1, 2016 meeting, the East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD) Board of Directors voted to not renew Chabot Gun Club’s (CGC) lease. The action spells the end for a shooting range that has been a beloved destination for hundreds of thousands of gun owners throughout the Bay Area for the past 60 years.

 

It is estimated that nearly 1,000 people showed up to the Board of Directors meeting–the largest turnout the Board has ever seen. Over 90% of those in attendance supported keeping the range open, many wearing blue (CGC’s color) and carrying signs to show their support.

The Board ignored their pleas, and also ignored the pleas of the thousands of range supporters who sent letters and emails to the Board over the past two years. The Board also ignored letters from the NRA and CRPA which offered funds to help solve CGC’s environmental issues, a letter of support from Alameda County District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley, letters submitted by non-profit organizations like the Pink Pistols, and letters of support from surrounding shooting ranges, including Baypoint Rod & Gun Club and Richmond Rod & Gun Club. Those nearby ranges pointed out that they cannot accommodate all the shooters that are going to be displaced from CGC.

 

The Board didn’t care. Despite more than five hours and over 200 people making comments in favor of keeping the range open, the Board unanimously voted to deny renewal of CGC’s lease. Now CGC must shut down within a year.               

 

The Board’s vote was based almost entirely on a recommendation and biased evaluation presented to the Board in one-sided reports prepared by EBRPD staffers, who have wanted to shut down the range for years. For the past two years CGC has battled EBRPD staff, who were determined all along to close the range. EBRPD staff has repeatedly exaggerated the problems associated with managing lead at the range. EBRPD staff released a “Draft Informational Report” that drastically misrepresented the extent of the environmental issues at the range, and grossly inflated the costs of managing stormwater run-off.

 

At the EBRPD Staff’s request, CGC developed a comprehensive environmental management plan and sent multiple impact mitigation proposals for EBRPD staff approval. And when the EBRPD staff arbitrarily raised the environmental standards they wanted to impose to be more stringent than state laws requires, CGC still came up with a way to meet these unnecessarily higher standards. Then the EBRPD staff pulled something akin to a bait and switch, and gave CGC only 60 days to prepare a comprehensive business-plan type proposal, which not only had to address environmental mitigation measures, but also had to show an ability to pay for unnecessary and exorbitant environmental management fees. 

 

CGC rose to that challenge too, but EBRPD staff provided the Board with grossly inflated estimates of what it supposedly would cost to run the range so that the Board would be forced to vote to shut the range without even giving it a chance. EBRPD staff claimed that it would cost $200,000 a year to contain filter stormwater runoff, and $2-$20 million in long-term cleanup costs. These grossly exaggerated cleanup costs were used as the pretext to get rid of the range. Even though CGC did everything to address EBRPD Staff’s concerns, from proposing to raise shooting fees by $6 per user to pay for cleanup costs, to offering to pay for all cleanup costs, to making improvements to the stormwater runoff system so that it complied with state standards, but the EBRPD staff refused to acknowledge the merit of any of it.

           

We will keep you informed of updates as the range winds down its operations. This is a great loss for shooting sports participants and for those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms.

End of CRPA alert.

A further note from CGC

EBRPD board members are NOT CGC board members! They are EBRPD Special District board members elected by and responsible to the public. To read about them, their service and time in office, please go to http://www.ebparks.org/about/board 

You might want to contact the EBRPD board members directly:

Whitney Dotson, Ward 1, Director

E-mail: wdotson@ebparks.org 

John Sutter, Ward 2, Director

E-mail: jsutter@ebparks.org

Dennis Waespi, Ward 3 (CGC's Ward), Treasurer

E-mail: dwaespi@ebparks.org

Doug Siden, Ward 4, President

E-mail: dsiden@ebparks.org

Ayn Wieskamp, Ward 5, Director

E-mail: awieskamp@ebparks.org

Beverly Lane, Ward 6, Vice President

E-mail: blane@ebparks.org

Diane Burgis, Ward 7, Secretary

E-mail: dburgis@ebparks.org

East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD)

P.O Box 5381

2950 Peralta Oaks Court

Oakland, CA 94605-0381

Chabot Gun Club is located at 9999 Redwood Road, Castro Valley, CA 94546.  

p.s. Don’t forget to sign up for updates at keeptherangeopen@chabotgunclub.com