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20 Plan Land Use Committee. Therefore, we urge you to postpone the LUE public hearing until such time as the complete re-write or update of the LUE, including "revised socio-economic and demographic data and goals, objectives, and policies" are made available— in full —for public review prior to, or coincident with, the publication of the required Legal Advertisement. Sincerely, The Board of Directors of The Village Project, Inc. James Carnahan, Chair of the Board of Directors of The Village Project, read a portion of his letter, which follows: Commissioners: In addition to the procedural reasons Allan Rosen gave for postponing discussion of the Land Use Element, there are substantive reasons to delay your consideration until we have a more comprehensive proposal. While we agree there are benefits to increasing lot size minimums in rural parts of the county, we disagree that there is cause to do this now. At the staff presentations much was made of projections that show that, at current permitted densities, rural Orange County would eventually build out to over 100,000 homes. However, at recent rates of permit issuance this would not happen for about 200 years. Even if the rate doubled, it would take a century to reach a suburban build-out that most of us would like to avoid. The urgency to downzone seems unwarranted in the face of other growth-related issues in the County that are both immediate and disturbing. In March the Economic Development Commission reported a significant drop over the preceding year in sales of homes priced under $160,000, highlighting what we already know to be a serious lack of work force housing in the County. The executive director of the Interfaith Council reported this spring that more than 5,500 Orange County households pay over 50% of monthly earnings for housing. We have been out of compliance with federal air quality regulations for a year. We have known for some time that, daily, 40% of Orange County residents commute out of the County to work while 40% of Orange County jobs are performed by non-residents commuting in. The Commission for the Environment Annual Report indicates that Vehicle Miles Traveled in the County has increased over 50% since 1990. These are a few indicators of patterns of land use that are not sustainable, economically, environmentally, or socially. The citizens who worked for several years on the Shaping Orange County's Future Task Force (SOCF) expressed a vision for a sustainable future for the County, and it has been our understanding that this comprehensive vision was expected to be the basis for the Update of the Land Use Element. The down zoning being proposed, by itself, will not implement this vision, and in the absence of other land-use and transportation strategies it will in fact undermine it, exacerbating both the emissions and affordability problems we are experiencing. In the absence of density transfer