Estimated reading for the full article:  12-15 minutes. Can be faster if you want.
The misrepresentations in the circulation video is one topic, and how this is a Brown Act violation can be read separately.

For more on Brown Act violations in Arcata, see The Brown Act – Selected Articles.

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Introduction

On August 22, 2023, the City Council announced their decision on the K and L Streets “couplet” concept of the Gateway Area Plan. The Planning Commission had come out in favor of it, and Arcata’s Transportation Safety Committee, for over a year and a half, had been strongly opposed to it. (For more on the K-L Street couplet, see here.) The Council’s clear direction was: No new road in the L Street corridor; improve safety on K Street; remove the notion of the K-L Street couplet; and plan on and create a full-width Linear Park in the L Street corridor, with woonerfs as required.

Two weeks prior to the Council – Commission joint study session where this decision took place, Community Development Director David Loya came out with a video that, in theory, was made to educate and clarify the K-L Street couplet situation and explain why the K-L Street couplet was selected over other alternatives. (That 28-1/2 minute video and a full transcription can be viewed and read here.)

Unfortunately for the City Council and for the people of the Arcata, David Loya’s video was incomplete, misleading in large ways, and biased. Fortunately for the people of Arcata, the three members of the City Council who are able to vote on Gateway matters came to a clear decision, despite this video.

It is against the law for Arcata’s Community Development Director to present one-sided or biased information to the City Council and to the people. California’s long-established Brown Act anti-secrecy law dates from 1953 — 70 years ago. The Brown Act was designed to provide an open exchange of information in our government activities. 

This video situation was not an isolated incident, but rather an on-going pattern of the Community Development Director’s behavior. This article describes what happened and why this video is a violation of California law, the Brown Act.

Contents  Use your browser’s back arrow to return to these contents

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. The August 11, 2023 Loya circulation video:  Background
4. David Loya had already misrepresented this K-L Street couplet situation
5. What is David Loya thinking when he omits meaningful information?
6. Why the Loya “Circulation” video violates the Brown Act
7. Correspondence between Chris Richards and David Loya on this matter

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Background

Readers of Arcata1.com may have noted that the frequency of articles about Brown Act violations have decreased in recent months. This is not because of any decrease in actual Brown Act violations here in the City of Arcata. Rather it’s because my focus has been more on getting the best improvements we possibly can from the poorly-contrived, poorly-written, and inadequate-to-our-needs Gateway Area Plan, Gateway Code (form-based code), and General Plan. The Planning Commission has been discussing, modifying, and adding to these three documents over the past 21 months, and still have not addressed the heart of the issue: How do we create housing in Arcata that regular working people can afford to rent and buy.

The specific portion of California’s Brown Act “open meeting” law that is violated most frequently by City of Arcata staff is this one. It is in the very first paragraph of the Brown Act, starting with the third sentence:

The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

Any time there is a staff report from Arcata’s Community Development Director, David Loya, that tells part of the story and omits other areas of information — material that would be needed to make an informed decision — then that counts as a violation of the Brown Act. When David Loya decides “what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know,” then that’s a straight-forward violation. That is exactly what the Brown Act was created to prevent.

I lost count of how many Brown Act violations have been committed during the Gateway plan process. Some are subtle or open to interpretation while others are clear-cut. My estimate is 30-50 specific violations. California does have a method for reporting violations, but it’s also easy enough for the City to deny that they occurred. Unless someone is willing to sue the City of Arcata for this nonsense, my feeling is that nothing will change. 
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The August 11, 2023 Loya circulation video

The first Gateway-oriented City Council – Planning Commission joint study session took place on September 26, 2023. It had been announced that the K-L Streets couplet situation would be discussed at this meeting. The City’s Transportation Safety Committee had made numerous strong recommendations against a K-L Streets couplet, and the Planning Commission had registered its recommendation in favor of it. For more on the K-L Street couplet versus the L Street Corridor Linear Park, see any of the articles here on Arcata1.com. 

At that meeting, the City Council came out with a strong recommendation to drop the K-L Street couplet concept, concentrate on a new plan for K Street improvements, and promote a full-width Linear Park in the L Street corridor, with no through street and with woonerfs for within-the-block vehicle needs.

Essentially, the purpose of the August 11 video was made moot by this Council decision. The video presents why L Street would be the superior location for a couplet tied in with K Street. The Council announced that there would be no couplet for K Street.

Prior to and in anticipation of this joint study session, David Loya created the oddly titled 28-1/2 minute video “Gateway Area Plan Proposed Circulation Network Changes and Evaluated Alternatives.” This video and a complete written transcription can be viewed and read here on Arcata1.com.

The Transportation Safety Committee had requested, starting as early as January 2022, a compilation of alternatives to the initially proposed Gateway Plan traffic and circulation plan. The Committee and the public reiterated this request on multiple occasions over the following year. These alternative plans were collectively referred to as “Plan B.” 

Some — but not all — alternatives were disclosed in the August 11, 2023 video put out by the Community Development Director. And so the “Plan B” did emerge, 17 months later.

The Gateway Area Plan first was made available in December, 2021. Among what was proposed was the creation of a “couplet” arrangement with K Street and a newly-built L Street. Much like how G Street and H Street are in downtown Arcata, with G Street handling northbound vehicular traffic and H Street handling the southbound traffic, so would K Street be reworked as a one-way street for traffic headed north, and a newly-built L Street holding traffic headed south. The major difference between the two couplets is that G and H are two-lane one-way streets, while K and L would be set up as one-lane one-way streets.

On G and H Streets, throughout the day there are delivery vehicles of every size, all the way up to semi-trucks, that stop and block a lane of traffic while they off-load to the local businesses. They can do that because with two traffic lanes, cars can drive around the stopped trucks. Were this to occur on the proposed one-lane designs for K and L Streets, traffic would be backed up until the delivery vehicle moved on. 

The Transportation Safety Committee discussed at the K-L Streets couplet situation and other circulation aspects of the Gateway Area Plan for the first time at their January 18, 2022, just six weeks after the plan had been released. If you are interested, the audio recording and written transcription of their discussion is available here on Arcata1.com.

Part of what the Transportation Safety Committee requested, way back then in January 2022, was for the Community Development Director and the City’s traffic consultants on the Gateway Plan to offer some alternatives to using a new street in the  L Street Corridor to handle the southbound traffic — a “Plan B.” To select an alternative, there would have to be a variety of proposals of course — Plans C, D, E, F, etc. One alternative would be to reconfigure K Street so that by itself it could have the necessary bike pathways, sidewalks, and car lanes.

Community Development Director David Loya and City consultant Todd Tregenza both acknowledged the need for one or more alternative plans. At the time, “Plan B” was spoken about in the present tense, as though an alternative plan existed. The TSC requested to see the Plan B numerous times through the first six months of 2022, and then apparently gave up.

The City’s consultant Todd Tregenza a gave a 14-minute presentation about the K-L Streets couplet at the City Council – Planning Commission joint study session on August 23, 2022, a year ago. The audio, presentation slides, and transcription are at The L Street – K Street Couplet: An engineer’s view. That presentation  contains what I regard as a skewed view of the K-L Street situation. It contains many misrepresentations, and, in my opinion, actual falsehoods. He talks about the benefits of an L Street / K Street couplet, and does not talk about the detriments. Nor does he talk about the benefits of any alternative to this couplet — such as having an L Street linear park, or redesigning K Street with left-turn lanes. No alternatives are presented at all. 

By all appearances, the City Council seemed very much swayed by Todd Tregenza’s presentation. Even though the Transportation Safety Committee had already clearly determined their recommendation against the K-L Street Couplet, the Council asked that they revisit that recommendation. The Committee did discuss it again, and at their September 20, 2022 meeting, they once again completely confirmed their voice against the K-L Street Couplet. Video and written transcription of this are here.

As a consultant, GHD and Todd Tregenza are not bound by the Brown Act. He can say whatever he wants. Unlike a City official, he can mislead, present his opinions as though they were facts, and offer a partial or one-sided views. Community Development Director David Loya, on the other hand, must by law abide by the provisions of the Brown Act.
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David Loya had already misrepresented this K-L Street couplet situation

Typically in how things are done in Arcata, recommendations made by a Committee are shunted through the Community Development Director through his communications to the Planning Commission.

Because of serious foul-ups and misrepresentations occurring in the first half of 2023, both the Chair of the Transportation Safety Committee, Dave Ryan, and the most senior member of the Planning Commission, Judith Mayer, made the request that communication and recommendations from the Transportation Safety Committee (TSC) not go through David Loya, and instead the TSC Chair should communicate directly with the Planning Commission. For full details on this, see the letter written to the Planning Commission and City Council on June 12, 2023, here. From David Loya’s report to the Planning Commission about the TSC recommendations, David Loya presented them as:

• Stated: “Most TSC policy recommendations released May 30, 2023, are similar to the PC recommendations” — when 5 out 44 recommendations were similar to the Planning Commission recommendations, and other 39 TSC policy recommendations were unique.
• Referred to the TSC’s stance on the K-L Street couplet as “the recommendation for the K/L street couplet” — emphasis added. Their recommendation was against the K-L Street couplet.
• Made the unilateral decision to “incorporate the adopted changes, with the exception of the recommendation for the K/L street couplet….” into the updated draft of the General Plan. Why was their recommendation specifically excluded?

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What is David Loya thinking when he omits meaningful information?

It is difficult to say what really drives David Loya. I recognize that this is conjecture, but, after viewing his methodologies over this past year and a half, he seems to be guided by two strong motives. One may be summarized by the old adage:  “The ends justify the means.” In other words, if a goal is valid and good, then any method of getting to that goal is acceptable.

David Loya might consider a goal to be valid or good. But it is not — by law —  permissible for Mr. Loya to include or exclude information, as based on what he wants the public to see or not see. His job is to transmit the information in full. It is the job of the Planning Commission, the City Council, and the people of Arcata to determine what is good or not good for the people. That is the essence of that portion of the Brown Act:  “The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”

The second apparent motivation that’s been observed in the actions of David Loya seems to be his need to be “right.” When he has promoted a position on something, he tends to dig in and maintain his position — no matter what it takes, even if that means misrepresentations and falsehoods. He often claims to be open to the opinions of others, just presenting information as a conduit, but time and again he presents only what he wants to see as an outcome and both hears what he wants to hear and declares as fact what he’d like to be true. I like to think the best of people, and I tend to not regard this as malicious behavior on his part. I regard it as subconscious. And I could be wrong on that — it could well be deliberate and calculated. It certainly is a way of getting things done and getting his way, and to the extent that it works for him he will continue it. This is my opinion. For more on this, see Four Decision-Making Styles: Analytical, Directive, Conceptual, and Behavioral here on Arcata1.com — reading time is about 5 minutes. In that letter to the City Council I wrote:

The Community Development Director’s decision-making style

While not specified in the letter, it is clear that Community Development Director David Loya’s decision-making style tends to be on the Directive corner of the matrix. Here are some descriptions, in the wording from this matrix: 

• • • Driven by results
    • Relies primarily on rules and processes
    • Aggressive nature
    • Typically reacts quickly and doesn’t like to dwell on decisions
    • Informs people once a decision is made
      [Even if it wasn’t his decision to make]

He is more task-oriented, more technical. And, from this matrix, it could be said that his motivation is a desire to be right, and a desire to get results.

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Why the Loya “Circulation” video violates the Brown Act

The Brown Act requires our public officials to tell the whole story. Not part of the story; rather: the whole story. They are required to include all the facts, and not just that portion of the facts that they want to be brought to the open.

In this video there are mischaracterizations, misstatements, and downright falsehoods. The full 28-1/2 minute video and a written transcription of the entire video can be viewed and read at David Loya video: Gateway Area Plan Mobility, Trails, and Couplets — and L Street.

Among what is wrong in this video is:

1. It presents alternatives to having a K-L Street couplet, including having a couplet using M, N, Q, and J Streets. What is conspicuously absent is any discussion of the “no couplet” alternative — that is, keeping the traffic currently on K Street as remaining on K Street, and concentrating on improving K Street. A “no action” option is always a required option in planning strategies. But it is not present here.
2. It speaks to the discussion and recommendation of the Planning Commission on the couplet, but makes no mention of  the recommendations of Arcata’s Transportation Safety Committee on the couplet. The TSC’s recommendation is to remove the couplet from consideration, entirely.
3. It presents the alternatives to the couplet and states explicitly that those alternative routes were vetted by the Planning Commission. In fact, this video is the first time these alternative routes have been made available to the public, the Transportation Safety Committee, or the Planning Commission. In the video, it’s stated “The Planning Commission reviewed these alternatives” when the did not. There was no discussion and no vetting by the Planning Commission. Why this video maintains that vetting did take place is a mystery.
4. For each of the alternate options, on the screen image there is an inset box that lists the drawbacks of that alternative. For example, on the “M Street Southbound” alternative there is “Coastal wetlands, Planned Open Space, Considerable private easements needed, significant impact to development on a few parcels.”

   On the image for the L Street alternative, there is no inset box with these details. And in the discussion on the video, there is no mention of any noted drawbacks of putting a new through road on L Street.

   And yet, in fact, a new road on L Street would have much the same drawbacks and complications as shown on other alternative routes:  Coastal wetlands, Planned Open Space, Considerable private easements needed, Significant impact to development on a few parcels.

   The City of Arcata does not have the legal right to build a new street in the L Street Corridor. They do not own the property where a new road would be built, and do not have the legal easement to build this road. This fact has been referred to and acknowledged by the City, but it is “conveniently” ignored and not at all mentioned in this video. The City is missing legal easements for some alternatives, and that fact was indeed brought up in the video. But that lack of the legal right to build a new road in the L Street Corridor is absent in this video. The alternatives get “minus points” for not having legal easements. In this video, falsely, the L Street alternative does not show these minus points.

We are in a situation here where we can not rely on our public officials to tells the whole story. 

We cannot trust our public officials to present an unbiased view of the facts and the reality. Needed information is missing, while information that is presented is misleading or inaccurate — or simply false.

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Letter and correspondence from Chris Richards to David Loya

Take from August 31, 2023. The full letter and correspondence is below. Chris Richards wrote to David Loya and there was then a reply from David Loya. Chris Richards wrote back, and pointed out that Mr. Loya’s reply “is lacking on many of the important points I stated and I would hope you will address these as well.”

In other words, David Loya did not respond the large and important points that were in the original correspondence.

This has been my experience in correspondence with David Loya as well. I may have written to him with several points I am making, or several requests. He responds to one, and ignores the others. When I write back with a second request for information on those neglected points, he does not reply.

Here’s an extract of the response letter from Chris Richards. Highlighting added. The full correspondence is below.

Also your response claims the alternative plans included in your video presentation were vetted in a Community Forum by the Planning Commission. Please point me to the meeting, video, time that his vetting occurred. I have not been able to find it nor remember that actually happened. Also many members of the Community I have asked do not remember such vetting nor remember seeing any of the alternative maps you highlighted in the video. As I remember the “recommendation”, as you call it, for the K/L couplet by the Planning Commission was a “Straw Poll” and the final chart used on the “Other Considerations” table showed a fairly split opinion.

In addition, your email response is lacking on many of the important points I stated and I would hope you will address these as well:

“Further, you highlight a group of “alternative” options, that include a white box with descriptions of the negative aspects for each option…. Except you neglect to include the same description box for the K/L Couplet that would show many of the same problems and issues as most of the other options, including Property acquisition, wetland problem, neighborhood single family homes, etc. Any fair and equitable comparison should have included the negative aspects of the K/L Couplet as well.”

“There are many negative aspects that the K/L Couplet would create and you also have missed those talking points in the Video. I will send a follow-up email for that discussion at a later date.”

“I would also add that there has been a general lack and disregard for all the prospects of improvements for K Street. This should be a separate conversation and should have been on the table for complete discussion long ago.”

Feel free to “talk through” my points when you have time and send them to me via email. I encourage we all take the time to do our best as everyone’s common goal is a successful future for Arcata.

Thanks for your efforts to include my comments for Community Members and City Council. I also requested that the Planning Commissioners receive a copy as well.

Thanks and Regards- Chris

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