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Please include this with the letters.
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To: Honorable Mayor Schaefer, Councilmembers Matthews, Stillman, Atkins-Salazar, and White
Planning Commission Chair Vaissade-Elcock
City Manager Diemer, Community Development Department Director Loya, CDD staff Dart, Freitas
From: Fred Weis
Re: Council meeting with Committee Chairs is on-line
Request for Form-Based Code stud session recording reimbursement
Honorable Mayor et al:
 Audio recordings of the Council meeting with Committee Chairs from last night (Feb 21) are on-line on
Arcata1.com.
They can be seen under “What’s New” or via the newest articles on the Council’s portal page at
arcata1.com/council.
 Councilmember Kimberley White had requested this, as she was unable to attend the meeting
because of illness.
Please forward this information to the Chairs and other participants.
I would like to include photos of the notes that Karen Diemer and Emily Sinkhorn were taking. Please
let me know how I could obtain photos. (Easiest would be for someone to take the photos and send
them to me, or I could stop by and take photos.)
The article on the Coastal Commission approval of the wastewater treatment facilities that Gregory
Daggett had mentioned is there also.
 As a point of curiosity, we can note (without substantial significance, we hope):
The current Arcata City Council is composed entirely of female‐gender‐oriented persons.
Chairs of the nine Committees are entirely male‐gender‐oriented persons.
(The Chair of the Planning Commission is Julie Vaissade‐Elcock.)
 The Planning Commission study session of February 11 is on Arcata1.com also. This was the first inperson meeting with our Form-Based Code consultant, Ben Noble. Because the
Councilmembers were requested to not be present, and for members of the public who were not able
to be there for four hours on a Saturday morning, a couple of members of the community and I hired
the videographer Eric Black to record video of the event, and I recorded audio. The video is a bit crude
(Eric supplied just the raw footage), but very useful. All the slides and course materials from the
workshop are included in the articles.
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 There will be two more Planning Commission 4-hour study sessions with Ben Noble. These meetings
are scheduled for March 18 and April 22.
 The cost of hiring Eric was $175. There was a bit of software required for the video transfer, $19.
Total $194. The two future recordings of the study sessions would have direct costs $175 each. My
time in putting together the material was about ten hours — no direct cost on that, of course.
 We request that a reimbursement for this $194 expense and and allocation of $350 for the
two future study session events. If there are going to be other in-person meetings with Ben Noble,
I’d like to see them recorded also, either by me or by the City.
 I consider the decision to not create even audio recordings of this Planning Commission
study session to be evidence of poor management. Part of the $118,000 that the Council
allocated for Form-Based Code development is intended for public outreach and engagement. The
public workshops and accompanying public surveys have not been adequately promoted. (The e-mail
announcements of the public workshops and the Mad River Union press releases have not
mentioned the surveys. ) I am aware that the Community Development staff is overworked, but
these are decisions, not time-consuming activities.
 I would be glad to discuss what I regard as lack of real community engagement separately. Despite all
the very many meetings and outreach, clearly something is wrong. The outreach has not produced
results — and for simple reasons, I think.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions.
Thank you.
— Fred Weis