Note: What is shown below is a copy of the original letter.
To the Commissioners and Councilmembers:
I am asked at times why I object so strongly to many of the actions of our Community Development Director. There is a very simple answer.
He wastes our time.
He wastes the Council’s time. He wastes the Commissioners’ time. And he has wasted the precious time of the people of Arcata. I don’t mean me. I mean the people who are waiting for some feasible, realistic results to come out of this Gateway Plan.
The Gateway Plan is still a long way away from being adopted — and whether or not it will provide an actual pathway toward the creation of housing remains to be seen.
One of the precepts of the Plan is that developers would have a streamlined, assured approval process — in exchange for providing some community benefits. State laws give developers pretty much of a streamlined approval process anyway, completely outside of what the Gateway plan provides. And as the Planning Commission has seen, a well-designed project will sail through Arcata’s approval process. Approval of the Will Adams / Julian Berg “Valley East Lofts” took a total of 31 minutes — including staff report, public comment, and the Commissioners’ questions and discussions.
Will developers select the complex route of the community benefits program? Or will they select a non-streamlined process — that gets their project approved almost just as quickly? We are expected to believe that the larger developers are willing to give up 17% of their land as “privately owned publicly-accessible open space” to be in alignment with the Gateway Plan. I don’t think they will.
There have been so many convolutions and twists and turns in this Gateway process. I have said and I’ll say it again: The Community Development Director is good at a great many things. But managing a large project like these proceedings is something that he is not good at.
It is my belief that had this Gateway Plan process been done in a straightforward fashion, we’d be done or near done by now.
I’m not referring to these Brown Act violations. I’m referring to:
- The numerous updates on when-we’re-expected-to-be-done schedules. 13 months, 18 months, 24 months, 28 months — and I expect more new schedules ahead.
- The proposal that the Gateway Plan and the General Plan could be completed and adopted before us even seeing the Form-Based Code — Commissioners, do you remember that wasted two hours?
- The flow-chart of how the Council could receive the Gateway documents, review them, accept public comment, and pass it in just one or two Council sessions. One or two City Council meetings? Ludicrous.
- The promotion that the Commission could review the entire Form-Based Code in two sessions. Ridiculous.
- The Director told the consultant to “tap the brakes” on the development of the Form-Based Code, and set us back a year — and told us that it was not clear whether we wanted a Form-Based Code here in Arcata. There was never an inkling or hint of anything to the contrary of us wanting a Form-Based Code. That was an excuse that the Director fabricated.
- There has been no substantial use of the 3D modeling, even though that is crucial to the Commission’s, the Council’s, and the public’s understanding of the look and feel of these changes to the Form-Based Code.
- How the experts (including financial and building-cost experts) that the Commission asked for a year ago were just ignored until it all went away. The Director simply removed that column titled “Expert” from the spreadsheet, and then called it “Final” — even though the Planning Commissioners were not done with it.
- The amount of time that the Director speaks at the Planning Commission meetings. Typically over 30%; often 45%. Don’t you think it’s an odd form of management for someone who is purporting to be organizing input from other people to himself talk for 45% of the meeting? I find that very odd.
And there’s more. Some — certainly not all — examples:
- Do you remember when we had to have all this done by the end of December, 2022, because of grant deadlines, and how much time we spent talking about that, and what we’d have to get done to see this finished by December 2022?
- Do the longer-term Planning Commissioners remember how many times the Director was asked for a sample of the Form-Based Code — until finally he told us that it had not yet even been started? And then said that he had already told us this. The Commissioners and especially the Chair were all asking and expecting to see a sample of the Form-Based Code at any time soon. Why did the Director not let them know months earlier that they wouldn’t be seeing it?
- Will the items in the back-burnered “Bike Rack” ever come up to be discussed?
- The points assigned by the Director — not by the Commissioners — to the Community Benefits program: For building owner-occupied housing, only 2 to 4 points. How can only 2 or 4 points possibly translate to “the current plan supports home ownership” as the Director has written? A developer can get 2 or 4 points for supplying wi-fi, or building with wood, or making student rental housing — or, for that matter, designating more units as “moderate income” 120% income above-market price housing.
- Would the citizens who came to the Planning Commission meetings to comment on ag land rezoning and other proposed zoning changes ever have been listened to — if it were not for the insistence of one Planning Commissioner? (And that process led to yet another Brown Act violation, unfortunately.)
- And when will our Local Coastal Plan document be completed? (The current Coastal Plan was initially prepared in 1979 and was updated several times, most recently in 1989. The current draft was started in November 2021, and March 2022 was the last update of this draft.) This is required to be in place before this Gateway Plan goes out for Coastal Commission approval.
There has been little substantial input on Home Ownership and workforce affordability. The 2-1/2 pages that the Director wrote for the Planning Commission May 23, 2023, packet has yet to be discussed. And what the Director wrote is largely nonsense and gobbledygook. You can read it and try to make sense of what he wrote here on Arcata1.com
“First, as the unit count in the area increases to meet the housing needs of the rental sector, new units with comparable rents to bedrooms in single-family homes that are older will attract the current market sector renting single-family homes. The single-family housing stock currently in the student housing market will become less attractive as an investment asset, and those homes will open to the for-sale market.”
The Director has stated “The Gateway Area Plan may realistically result in an additional 500 new residential units (and less than 1,000 new Arcata residents) over the next 20 years.” In other words, we are going through all this work for 500 units of housing? For an estimated population increase of 8,500. Is there no overview as to the inadequacy of this plan? Who here reading this does not think that 500 units over 20 years will just get swallowed up in an instant. We need to do better.
What is particularly upsetting is that with just a bit different effort on the part of the Community Development Director, there would be no Brown Act violations, the public would be involved, and the citizens of Arcata would not feel so disenfranchised. And there’d be many citizens contributing to the real issues at hand.
It’s going to be up to the newly-engaged non-recused three City Council members to rescue the Gateway Plan, with clear thinking, horse-before-the cart orientation, and attention to the overall goals. We’re trying to create housing here — housing that people can afford to rent and can have the opportunity to buy. The concentrated efforts of you three Councilmembers, plus a renewed and directed effort on the part of the Planning Commissioners. To get away from the rush-rush orientation of the past four months, and tackle the important issues head-on.
My other main issue with how our Community Development Director has been running this show has to do with the extent to which he presents misleading and false information to the City Council, to the Planning Commission, and to the public. For anyone who wants to ask, I can give example after example. Dozens or hundreds of examples. I can let much of that pass if we can get a good plan out of this Gateway plan process.
To repeat: If this process had been done in a straightforward fashion, we’d be done by now, or very close to it.
And that is my primary issue with our Community Development Director. From my viewpoint, he doesn’t know what he is doing in managing a project of this scope and size. As a result, the Director has wasted our time and continues to waste our time.
Thank you.
— Fred Weis
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