A 4-minute segment of the video of the April 23, 2024, Planning Commission meeting — a monologue from Arcata’s Community Development Director, David Loya.

At the April 23, 2024, Planning Commission meeting, at about 6:45 PM, Arcata’s Community Development Director David Loya attempted to explain why the proposed L Street corridor linear park was not in the Gateway Code.

“We’re implementing the direction that we received in September,” he said. That is, he believed the City Council had said “No” to having the linear park in the Gateway Area Code — or so it seemed.

I regard this four minutes as a string of falsehoods, one after another. The video is below, followed by an annotated transcript. There is commentary in the transcript of some of the falsehoods… not all of them.

By the next morning, things had changed

David Loya said, “I understand why it could have been confusing.”

The Council’s direction was not confusing to anyone but him.

Around 10 a.m. the next morning, Director Loya presented a very different outlook. In an e-mail to me he wrote “I believe Mayor Matthews is going to recommend adding the linear park/woonerf designation to the plan.” 

And here Director Loya is misspeaking yet again. The Mayor was not “going to recommend adding the linear park” as he put  it. The Mayor had already recommended adding the linear park/woonerf designation to the Gateway Area Plan — eight months earlier.

The City Council requested the L Street corridor full-width linear park. For eight months, Arcata’s Community Development Director did nothing. David Loya said, “I understand why it could have been confusing.”
The Council’s direction was not confusing to anyone but him.

We aren’t going to know what happened between 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday night, April 23rd, and 10 a.m. the next morning. And it doesn’t really matter.

From correspondence with David Loya after the April 23rd Planning Commission meeting, it seems that he still is attempting to get away with a half-baked attempt at trying to fool the City Council that he’s done what is necessary, to create a linear park and woonerf.

A well-planned woonerf and linear park will be a jewel for Arcata. For more on the minimum planning needed for a wonderful creation for the Gateway world, see A successful woonerf and linear park in the L Street corridor needs Gateway Code policies.

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The Video

4-1/2 minutes.
To read the transcription while listening to the video, simply start the video and then scroll down to read along. 

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The transcription

There may be minor errors in this transcription. If you see any, please contact me so that they can be edited. Thanks.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:15:02
I have questions, just kind of a general question of staff. And this arises from some of the public comment about a reference, specific reference to the L Street linear park in the Code. It doesn’t seem to be there. And what staff’s view on that is.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:15:29
Yeah, so the L Street corridor was taken up by the City Council at a joint study session of Planning Commission / City Council in September of last year.
[Note: Actually, the date was August 22, 2023. Getting the date wrong is not a big deal — we can call that an honest mistake.]

And the City Council made an action that had three components. The first was to remove the couplet — the K and L Street couplet — from the Plan [The Gateway Area Plan].

So that was a pretty explicit direction to do that. The second was to evaluate safety improvements, on K and 11th Streets in particular. Recall that the rationale for the K and L Street couplet was to improve bike and pedestrian safety for that couplet of area, and retaining all of the traffic on K Street two-ways just could not accomplish the same level of safety improvements. And so that was the rationale. What Council said was, since we’re removing K and L Street [couplet], we want you to figure out what you can do on K Street to make it safer. And 11th Street, where we also have some problem spots.

And then the third thing that they asked was for the City to start the process of evaluating a woonerf – “woonerf” was the term of the night – and put a full-width linear park on L Street.

Essentially what has happened over the past two years is we’ve gone through a very in-depth planning process to develop a plan for K and L Street, and how to retain the trail on L Street with that public process, very involved public process.
[Note: This was in the two years previous to the August 2023 meeting – not since then.]

What the public said through that process was we don’t like that idea. We’d like to see all of the traffic on K Street. And, further, we’d like to see L Street developed as a linear park.

We have not gone through the public process that’s necessary to establish what the L Street will look like. And we haven’t gone through even what the improvements on K and 11th [Streets] are going to look like.

[Note: These are immaterial, superfluous statements. It is not required to know what the L Street corridor linear park will look like. Nor is it necessary to have “gone through” what improvements to K and 11th Streets will look like. This is a typical David Loya “Gish Gallop“-type interjection. The two statements are true, but are immaterial to the subject being discussed.

It is only necessary now to include it in the Gateway Area Plan and to make those changes to the Gateway Code to protect this park (and other parks) from the shadow effects of tall buildings adjacent to the parks, and to provide for (more than “encourage”) the inclusion of smaller ground-floor commercial spaces alongside the Woonerf sections of the linear park. And that has not been done, nor has any discussion or attempt at this been done.]

We’re starting that process right now. In fact, we’re getting on top of that, and there are funds that are budgeted into this upcoming fiscal year to do more work on that.
[Note: On the K Street safety improvements. Not on the linear park.]  

But we’ve already got a contract that we’re going through to do some preliminary public engagement on what those safety improvements will look like.

And so we’re implementing the direction that we received in September.

[Note: In August. Staff is implementing PARTS of the direction from the Council. The part of Council’s direction that Commissioner Yodowitz asked about is NOT being implemented.]

And I understand, you know, I went back and listened to the tape from September, I understand why it could have been confusing, and why the public would have understood the Council’s action to be: ‘Change the document so that it shows L Street as a linear park.’

We haven’t gone through that planning process yet. And so the Code does allow — the changes that we did make — do allow for additional woonerfs and, and full-width linear parks to be added in the future. There’s a specific Code section that encourages that where it’s, you know, where it’s desired, desirable.

[Note:  False statements – lots of them.

• • There is no mention of the word “Woonerf” in the Code.
  • There is no provision for a woonerf, or an access road within a greenway or linear park.
  • There is no “specific Code section that encourages that where it’s desirable.”
  • I don’t see any “changes that we did make” after August 22, 2023, that have anything to do with a creation of an L Street linear park. There is nothing on this. There are no changes on this, as he directly said.

Putting this bluntly:  What David Loya has said here is a series of falsehoods.]

And so I guess my response to why the L Street linear park is not added into the Gateway Code, currently in the draft that we’re looking at today, is because I don’t believe we received direction to do so by the Council. And I have confirmed this with Council members and City Manager. So this is not just my interpretation.

And I do think that we will be looking forward to going through that process in the future.