Jane Woodward – June 27, 2023 – Comments for the June 13 & June 27 Planning Commission meeting. Two letters, put into one file, and duplicated.

Did not appear as a Public Comment letter until June 28 — one month (for the June 27 letter) or six weeks (for the June 13 letter) later.

Note:  What is shown below is a copy of the original letter, made for this website.  It is included here only so that the contents of the original letter can be searchable.  (The PDF received from the City is in the form of an image, and so is not a searchable document.)

What is below is not the letter sent by the letter-writer. It may contain typographical errors and other departures from the original.  The PDF displayed above is accurate.  The text below is not accurate.  It is printed here for indexing purposes, so that each word can be indexed and included in the search.

June 27 2023 PUBLIC COMMENT TO PLANNING COMMISSION
This packet exceeds 600 pages, an enormous slog for you and the public. On the other hand, it includes almost all
possible items you might address and we don’t have to search for them elsewhere, which I appreciate. In
response, however, I think it would be useful for the Commission to try to carve out in advance what you actually
think you’ll be able to tackle in this particular session, so we the public know what to emphasize in our comments
and which chunks to try to review in-depth.
I’ve attached my comments from the last Commission meeting below, since they remain to be addressed. In
addition, the following:
1) I read a recommendation in the packet that the Barrel District be broken into two sections: the portion in
the Coastal Zone and the northern/non-Coastal zone portion. A similar recommendation was made
months ago regarding the Gateway Hub, or basically anything south of 8th Street. Please consider these
suggestions, as they would help address sea level rise and Coastal Zone issues.
2) Staff appears to believe that the issue of L Street as a one-way street has been voted on as a final
vote. That was not my impression, and given the public response, I would appreciate if you would revisit it
and hear directly from the Transportation Safety Committee. You clearly agreed upon the need to work
on traffic calming on K Street right away. Is that work being planned?
3) We need to have more discussion of the scope of the projects allocated to the Zoning Administrator vs. the
Planning Commission, to allow for public input to the extent feasible. All proposed projects should be
required to be published in the local media so the public is on notice and sent to the public via the City’s
listserve of citizens wanting to be kept informed.
4) We need to have more discussion of the economic viability and wisdom of building up to 7 story buildings
in an area that is subject to sea level rise within 20 to 80 years, and what kind of construction we should be
recommending due to sea level rise and geological/earthquake issues. We should not be building in areas
from which we know we’ll need to retreat.
5) Staff has never agreed to conduct a survey of Arcata residents to determine their interest in having highrise buildings, and patently ignored the results of the January 2022 town hall where approximately 200
attendees overwhelmingly were against buildings over 4 stories. One has to conclude staff doesn’t want to
know the answer because it would not “comport” with the draft Gateway plan.
Thank you for your attention.
Jane Woodward, Arcata resident
2
June 13 2023 PUBLIC COMMENT TO PLANNING COMMISSION
In reading the extensive packet for this meeting, I have several questions:
1) How do you plan to proceed in discussing/approving the Form Based Code (FBC)? Are you going to go
through it section by section, or topic by topic? How can the public comment in 3 minutes at the beginning
on such a wide array of provisions? If the FBC were addressed doing a regular meeting, we could
comment on it separately.
2) I continue to be concerned that you aren’t taking the recommendations of the Transportation Safety
Committee and the opinion of the public into account regarding the L/K Street Couplet. Are you going to
do so, and if so, when? Are you willing to reconsider your initial vote in light of widely expressed public
concerns?
3) I appreciate Staff’s attachment of the “Bike Rack” issues and Attachment E, non-comporting items
presented as “Other Considerations.” The considerations do not include addressing the impact of sea level
rise or other constraints imposed by proposing high density building in the Coastal Zone. Is that ever
going to be discussed, if so when, and where does it come in your schedule and agenda?
4) I think you are not taking the need for parking seriously enough. There are not even any diagrams
showing parking locations associated with buildings presented in the code. And if you have buildings that
are going to be in coastal zone, perhaps you should consider requiring underground parking, which would
also serve as a buffer if sea level/groundwater upwelling does begin to affect the areas of concern (most
specifically, the barrel district).
Thank you for all your work. I hope you allow sufficient time for thorough consideration of the issues of public
concern, and adequately address the recommendations of Judith Mayer.
Thank you for your attention,
Jane Woodward, Arcata resident