Save Rural Angwin continues to discredit itself with empty arguments and circular reasoning. A recent letter from Allen Spence rehashes the same “sky is falling” rhetoric we have seen before (“Eco-village still too big, hard to swallow,” Dec. 2).

1. People who dismiss community transit as an unnecessary alternative to auto-centricity, as Mr. Spence does, exist in a 20th-century fantasy world where greenhouse gases and climate change won’t apply to Napa.

The reality is that PUC’s eco-village provides a wonderful 18,000-square foot organic grocery (similar to a small Whole Foods or a Sunshine Market) such that residents on the hill will not need to ride a bus or drive when they go shopping!

The transit component will become important to hundreds of students, faculty, administrators and Angwin residents that do care about reducing greenhouse gases for trips to visit friends, see a movie, have dinner, get to places of employment (PUC students work in many Upvalley restaurants) and even connections to the airport and the Vine system.

The new homeowners and the college itself will have covenants on property guaranteeing transit service funding, whether used or not.

That is undoubtedly a more reliable source of transit funding than we’ve seen coming out of Sacramento recently. Rural is the misnomer here. Counting PUC, there are more than 5,000 people in and around Angwin that could benefit us all by reducing their carbon footprints through reliable, efficient, affordable and safe transit.

2. Safe streets and reasonable speeds (called traffic calming) seems to be another concept that escapes Mr. Spence. It has been proven in other communities that drivers wanting to speed to their destinations (usually because their commutes to work are so lengthy) seek alternate routes that do not slow them down to safer speeds. The flow of traffic through Angwin is not heavy by any measure, but it is definitely unsafe for kids trying to walk or bike next to Howell Mountain Road. Mr. Spence should know that main streets throughout America never allow traffic to pass through at high speeds as they currently do in Angwin. That is why there is no “Main Street” in Angwin today.

3. Since the prospect of a small 105-unit retirement center is “appealing,” where is the logic in assuming that it would fail?

Does Mr. Spence get to go through life with guarantees that everything will work as he wishes? Perhaps he also thinks our economy is working just fine, as he also wants to believe that PUC’s meager endowment is just fine.

The reality is that a retirement center could greatly benefit St. Helena Hospital as well as many existing Angwin residents who would like to retire and live in this community. Lots of retirement centers succeed, Mr. Spence, but we wouldn’t have any if we didn’t try.

4. Finally, perhaps the worst falsehood promoted in Mr. Spence’s letter is the assertion that no affordable housing would be made available to PUC. Shame on you, Mr. Spence. Read the proposal. The eco-village has always committed a minimum of 15 percent of its housing (now 42 units out of 275 total) to low, very low, and moderate-income households (the very definition of filling a need for PUC faculty and staff housing).

The eco-village’s Local Preference Housing Program also offers additional units that could assist buyers with reduced operating costs, thus making them more available to hospital employees who currently commute long distances to work.

When open-minded citizens learn the facts about this most sustainable community being proposed by PUC, they grow tired of the rhetoric.

(Philpott, Waters and Lopez live in Angwin.)