For the versions that are current as of May 26, 2024, see: General Plan, Gateway Area Plan, Gateway Code: Latest versions
Keeping track of the latest General Plan, Gateway Area Plan, Gateway Zoning Code is not a simple matter.
- Too many versions
The Community Development Director has been putting out new documents even if there are just a few changes. During the week of the May 14, 2024, Planning Commission vote for recommending the General Plan and Gateway Code to the City Council, there were three different General Plan documents before us — in just one week. For the December 12, 2023, version, there were three documents released over a five day period. - Some documents are “tracked changes” — meaning that they show most (but not all) of the changes since a prior document. Some are “clean” and without the tracked changes notes.
The tracked changes document do not show all the tracked changes — just the changes from the last time the document came out (in theory). Or sometimes more than one prior version is compared. What’s more, not all of the changes made to the document are actually marked as tracked changes. That’s right: Policies, typographical errors, words, diagrams — even major policies — are changed without any indication that there was a change.
- The Community Development Director uses filenames, document titles, and actual PDF document dates that are inconsistent with the date on the cover. For example, the current (as of May 26, 2024) Gateway Area Plan document shows:
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- Cover date: May 29, 2024
- Document title date: Gateway.2024.05.14
- Filename: 25_Gateway20240529
- PDF file last date: 5/16/24, 11:18:33 AM
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- The Community Development Director uses filenames that don’t have meaning. That is, the filenames may mean something to him, but mean nothing to us. For the December 12, 2023, edition of the General Plan, there were three versions. They all have 295 pages.
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- “General Plan 2045_2023-12-12_web_1.pdf” — 12/22/23, 2:06:14 PM
- “Gen Plan 2045_2023.12.12web_1.pdf” — PDF date 12/22/23, 2:06:14 PM
- “Gen Plan 2045_2023.12.12web_2.pdf” — PDF date 12/27/23, 4:10:51 PM
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- What are the differences between these close-dated documents? Who knows. There is no written record of what is changed. A person could go through the document on a page-by-page basis to find out… or the Community Development Director could have done what is standard throughout the world and provided a written record of the changes.
What follows is from a letter sent to the City Council on May 20, 2024.
A solution that would help
- The standard procedure is to have the person who is making changes to a document / information to also notate that change on a separate list — independent of the document. This list will have every change that is made, no matter how small (i.e. including typographical errors). This list is kept in consecutive date order.
- This is absolutely standard for architects, engineers, planners, scientists, publishers, software programmers, etc etc.
In the “real” world, a person who refused to abide by this would be fired — on the first day. - It should not be necessary for a reader — Councilmember, Commissioner, public — to scroll through these documents to look for what was changed. Further, if something is marked as changed, we don’t know if it is a recent change or an older change. To this point there have been changes that are not shown as track-changes. That makes the full document suspect. A list of all changes is mandatory to keep things straight.
- A defined color-code needs to be determined and used. At this point, I have seen changes to the documents in red, blue, purple, and green. Back when the Commission was doing its “Framework” discussions, there were other colors too (some of them causing the words to become unreadable). When the Committees were providing input, there was a color-coding arrangement for that. But all that is over. An explanation of what the colors mean now is needed.
- The information on this Change List would include at a minimum:
- Name of the person making the change. Date that the change is noted.
- Date that the change is incorporated into the document.
- Short description or summary.
- The document name, version (plus, in our cases, the last PDF date).
- The chapter, page number and PDF page number.
- Staff recommendation.
- The body and the date the decision was made. (Ex: CC 5/15/2024)
- The decision straw vote, if applicable.
- Council discussion and decision.
- Notes, if applicable.
- Important: If a change was discussed and not made, a summation of the reasoning behind not making the change.
“Tracked Change” documents by themselves are inadequate
I suggest that the “May 14 – Approved” General Plan be the starting point. That is what the Planning Commission recommended for review by the Council. All changes from that point need to be on the Change List.
In addition, changes that were included in the “May 14 – Approved” version may need to be substantiated. This information would go on a separate Change List. The Director may be asked to determine the date of the decision. It is my belief that there are many changes that were not discussed by the Planning Commission, and which they may have no idea that they are in the document they approved.
The day following the Council’s May 15, 2024, meeting the Director provided a new version of the General Plan. This one has “as amended by City Council May 15, 2024” on the cover. There were three versions of the General Plan presented in three days. This is ridiculous and must stop. There should not be a new version each time several items are altered.