At the April 9, 2024, Arcata Fire District's Board of Directors meeting, the Board discussed and approved a letter to be sent to the Arcata Mayor and Arcata City Council. That letter is re-printed here ----This letter formalizes and re-states what the AFD has been telling the City Council over these past two years. At the current time, the AFD cannot ensure the safety of people living in a building that is over 40 feet tall, which would be a three-story building.
At the City Council meeting on April 17th, Dr. Judith Mayer will be honored with a Certificate of Appreciation for her seventeen years of service on Arcata's Planning Commission. Members of the public are invited to attend and show our own respect for Dr. Mayer, for all the many ways that she has consciously added to our community. ----------------
The City Council meeting starts at 6:00 p.m., and the awarding of the Certificate of Appreciation is the first item on the agenda that the Council will enact. Don't be late!
A public hearing on a formal recommendation of the General Plan and the Gateway Area Plan will take place Tuesday, May 14, 2024. You are encouraged to attend and to send your comments and concerns to both the City of Arcata and to Arcata1.com.
The annual City Council goal-setting study session took place on April 2, 2024. This meeting was not televised, available on-line, or video-recorded. There is a rough audio recording, available on Arcata’s website’s meeting calendar page and available here.
Here is a video of the presentation from FM3 Research of the question on having a sales-tax increase measure on the November 2024 ballot. Also includes two non-tax-related questions on 7-story building height and street parking.
Cal Poly Humboldt could be contributing a substantial amount to Arcata's costs for police, emergency services, infrastructure, and maintenance. Court cases have ruled that a local university should pay for their share of the costs resulting from university-oriented population.
Did UC Berkeley bring in more students than they'd promised? How much should the University contribute to infrastructure costs? And -- is any of this applicable to Cal Poly Humboldt and Arcata ?
According the procedures of the draft Gateway Code, a four-story hotel project with 85 rooms could be approved by a single person -- the Zoning Administrator. As such, the project would never be seen by the Planning Commission. A hotel of this size could, by code, have a parking lot with 3/4 acre of asphalt.
I propose: that the criteria be much lower for Planning Commission review. Such as: PC review required for anything over 4,000 sq.ft. building area. Or: PC review required for everything (except for the simplest of projects, to be defined). How would this work? The Julian Berg Valley East project took 31 minutes to be approved. If a project is well-designed and adheres to the Form-Based Code, then approval by the Planning Commission would be smooth sailing.
The Great Redwood Trail is a planned 307-mile long trail system that starts in Blue Lake and runs though Humboldt, Trinity, Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin, and San Francisco counties -- all the way to San Francisco. One hundred miles of the trail is in Humboldt County, and about 11 miles of the trail in the southwest corner of Trinity County. You can view the draft Master Plan for the Great Redwood Trail draft master plan here.
Survey results for the potential sales-tax increase November 2024 ballot measure. Also: How did questions about street parking, parking lots, and 7-story Building Height get onto a survey about potential tax measures? Why does the survey conclude that Street Parking is "low priority" when 85% of the respondents say it is important?
Under the affordable housing provisions of the Gateway Area Plan, buildings over 14 units are required to have 14% or 16% of the apartments be affordable. But the rent amounts that are proposed wind up being higher than what renters are paying now. How can this be considered as affordable?
In what proved to be a record-setting session, at last week's Planning Commission meeting an amazing 1,825 apartment units were approved in a bit under 45 minutes. The master plan is based on seven identical 7-story barrel-shaped apartment buildings, plus an ark-shaped hotel that serves as the anchor for the project, so to speak. The 300 cubit-long ark hotel (510 feet, in contemporary terms) includes 425 guest rooms,
With an outpouring of jubilation and champagne, the City Council approved and adopted the Gateway Area Plan just prior to 10:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 2024. In a never-before-seen scene set at City Hall, reminiscent of an Arcata version of the warm-hearted ending of the film "It's a Wonderful Life," the entire town rallied behind the promise (or premise) of affordable housing for working people.
Cal Poly Humboldt announced last week that they had bought the Humboldt Crabs baseball team. Rumors for the rationale of the purchase run rampant. Discussion changed after a leaked memo gave clues about the fate of the Crabs.
"I couldn't care less about the Crabs," this high-level university official was reputed to have written. "It's only a bargaining chip in our negotiations with the City of Arcata about us buying the ballpark."
I propose: that the criteria be much lower for Planning Commission review. Such as: PC review required for anything over 4,000 sq.ft. building area. Or: PC review required for everything (except for the simplest of projects, to be defined). How would this work? The Julian Berg Valley East project took 31 minutes to be approved. If a project is well-designed and adheres to the Form-Based Code, then approval by the Planning Commission would be smooth sailing.
READ THIS LETTER ! Arcata resident Andrea Tuttle Ph.D. environmental planning, former Director Calif Dept. Forestry (CDF), past Calif Coastal Commission & North Coast Water Quality Control Board, principal consultant State Senate.
The City wants to destroy a quiet strolling pathway so that car and truck traffic will be split between L Street and K Street. Meanwhile, cities all over the world are attempting to get rid of car traffic in favor of walkable public spaces. A "Plan B" has been promised since January, 2022. An inadequate discussion of alternatives finally emerged in August 2023, over a year and a half later.
The following is a letter sent by Fred Weis to the City Councilmembers. According to the Planning Commission's absurdly accelerated schedule, they are expected to deliver recommendations of a draft of the Form-Based Code, a draft of the Gateway Plan, and a draft of the General Plan following their meeting on July 11th. It is expected that these drafts will be rough and incomplete. With all the work that the Planning Commission has to do, you'd think they'd be working overtime, right? Nope. Their meetings have been shorter than ever.
Susan Ornelas served on Arcata's City Council for eleven consecutive years, from 2008 through March, 2020. She was Mayor of Arcata in 2011 and 2017. Among Susan's concerns for the future of Arcata's citizens is the difficulty for younger people to buy a home. "We know when people own a home in a town, they are more likely to volunteer for City boards, school boards, PTAs, as sports coaches for their kids, etc. Home ownership helps to create the kind of town we all want to live in!"
Includes letters not published in the City of Arcata City Council or Planning Commission packets, and not published on the City's website. From the most recent to the oldest. Summaries of each letter are being added. Please return to this page for updates.
"The Planning Commission gave up on what could have been a win, win, win, project. The people of Arcata, specifically residents of apartments, rely on our elected and appointed officials to speak and look out for us." "In a win, win, win, scenario, the City has more and better quality housing, not because of luxury fixtures but because of exacting oversight that necessitated humane housing. This is where people's lives happen."
The Westwood Garden Apartments project was approved by the Planning Commission on October 27, 2022. False and misleading information contained in the Staff Report apparently influenced the Commissioners in their decision. Ten days later, a group of citizens -- residents of the current apartment buildings on the site -- appealed this to the City Council. This letter presents the nature of that false information, and requests the City Council to waive the $1,867 that the residents collected for the Appeal Fee.
EXCELLENT - A MUST READ LETTER --
"I am an Arcata resident and business license holder, and served on the Energy Task Force that preceded the permanent Energy Committee. The controversy over recusal at last night's meeting perfectly illustrates the kinds of trust issues the Plan now has. An advisory committee could make it clear to the community that key decisions are not being made behind closed doors by people with vested interests, and could turn skeptics into enthusiastic participants. Without such a committee, it's hard to see how the Plan could be anything but divisive."
It seems that the public is not receiving the information that is our right to receive, under the law. Why the public is not receiving this information is anyone's guess. And why a citizen feels the need to read the opening lines of the Brown Act Law indicates that much is wrong.
Is this really the Community Engagement Report? The one we've been waiting FIVE -- no make it SIX -- months for? It's supposed to be a summary of what Arcatans want. Oh well. There's no Summary, no compilation of what people have said. Do we want 8-Story apartment buildings in the Gateway area? It still might be a while before we find out -- from official sources -- what the community wants.
Unless, that is, we already know.
The letters to the Planning Commissioners are supposed to be in the PC agenda packets, so that the public can read them too. Unfortunately in Arcata, that hasn't always happened. Our city promises that this will get better, and that letters won't be lost. Can we believe them ?
How is it that McKinleyville has all of the info for their Town Center plan in one location? And in Arcata, the same info is scattered all over the place -- or is in obscure locations that so buried that it might as well not exist. Read more here.
The Open House for the Draft Gateway Area Plan was January 21 & 22 -- FOUR MONTHS ago. Here are the results from hundreds of comments and feedback from Arcata's citizens.
The Community Development Staff packet for the April 12, 2022 Planning Commission meeting had correspondence received by the City about the Gateway plan. Some letters were over 4 months old, not previously available to the public or the Commission.
READ THIS LETTER ! Arcata resident Andrea Tuttle Ph.D. environmental planning, former Director Calif Dept. Forestry (CDF), past Calif Coastal Commission & North Coast Water Quality Control Board, principal consultant State Senate.
Steve Salzman, former partner of Greenway Partners and co-founder of PlanIt Green, wrote this letter to the City Council Members and Planning Commission Members, submitted to the PC for the April 12, 2022 meeting.