Over the course of three meetings — October 11, October 25, and November 8, 2022 — the Planning Commission and City Staff created a list of what are called “Gateway Concerns.” The list was created from suggestions from Staff, Commissioners, and the public (via Slido input). 

To skip to the full documents, click here.

The title that City Staff is using for this list is “Planning Commission Concern/Solution Set”; however the work and the list provides no solutions — None. The third column (Column C) has the heading of “Solutions” but this column appears to be indented sub-headings of that particular topic.

The originator of this list perhaps does not understand the meaning of the word “Solutions.”

We have been told that this list is not a final document and that it can be added to at any time, as Commissioners may choose. The list is considered as “interim” and not in any way a full recommendation to the City Council.

This list, as it exists following the November 8, 2022, Planning Commission meeting, is included here, below.

The larger problems with this document

1. There is a column called “Expert” — but what are shown are not experts, other than the City’s Form-Based Code consultant Ben Noble. All other names are City staff members. I understood the wishes of the Planning Commission to be to identify outside experts in various areas who the Commissioners wanted to set up meetings with. 
2. What happened to “Affect the Character of Small Town”? That was present in the October 11 list, but somehow vanished. That was vote “yes” and had an “x” — see the YouTube video of the October meeting at the 1 hour 1:49 minute mark. 

   Are other items that the Commissioners wanted to discuss also lost?

3. An honest listing would have not only the items that were accepted but also the items that were not accepted.  That way, a Commissioner or a member of the public could, in the future, look at a “rejected” item and possibly recognize a new importance to it, and bring it back for discussion.
4. Among the conversations that have been part of earlier Planning Commission discussions but which are not on this list is the discussion about a re-alignment of the district zones in the Gateway area to better align with Coast Zone boundaries, and the possibility of one or more new districts. This was spoken to by Commissioner Mayer at the October 11, 2022, meeting. The text of this is at the end of this article, click here.
5. Another missing item is:  Coastal Commission approval of the zoning changes — for everything south of 8th Street. Much unlike what the Community Development Director has been maintaining, this is approval cannot be counted on as being a certainty.
6. Some topics are abbreviated so greatly that the topic itself cannot be understood — or the topic becomes minimized. An example is the issue of the Draft Plan’s proposal for the L Street – K Street Couplet, the lack of any proposed alternative traffic plans, and the concept of the L Street Linear Park.

   In the list this is shown as: “L/K Couplet-L Street Impacts”
   What the Commissioners asked for was “L and K couplet with detail on alternatives” — and more.  This can be seen on the YouTube recording of the November 8th meeting at around 1:05:35.

   The “Followup” column says “see above” but it is not at all clear what “see above” refers to. And the Linear Park concept has been lost on this list.

   The list indicates the YouTube recording of the GHD presentation on the L Street – K Street couplet as a reference.  In my view, a far better way to view this presentation is on the Arcata1.com website here — the entire presentation was transcribed and all the images are included, so you can read it and study it. In addition, added commentary shows where the presentation is misleading or actually false. (For example, in the design as shown, and emergency vehicle cannot adequately go down L Street and pass other vehicles — there’s no room. There is also no sidewalk in the plans on the west side of L Street.) More information, including videos of Transportation Safety Committee discussions, maps, transcriptions, etc., can be found among the 20 articles on this topic on the Arcata1.com website here.

   It would seem that a discussion of the L Street – K Street Couplet would not be complete without the Commission inviting Dave Ryan, the Chair of the Transportation Safety Committee, to speak.

7. This is just a list.  There are no priorities. Perhaps the next step is to establish priorities.
8. There is no indication of the time involved in pursuing discussions and receiving testimony from experts, as was discussed. Could perhaps the Planning Commission or Staff make a guess on this? 

   There are 24 topics. Some might be able to be handled well in a portion of Planning Commission meeting. Others may take up one or two meetings — or more. Some topics will likely be taken up with sub-committees.

   My guess is that there is about a year or a year-and-a-half of work here — if it is to be handled in the manner that things have been done on the Gateway issues over the past 11 months.

9. The majority of these topic headings were a part of the “Priority Issues” Table that was generated by the RGA proposal for an Advisory Committee and included in the October 11 packet. This list was created to empower the Planning Commission to “identify, prioritize, and assign resolution process for these Priority Issues.”

Other problems with this document

1. The document has no title, date, or version number. It does not say “draft” or “interim” — there is no clue on the document just what it is or what it represents. At a glance, it looks the same as other documents that City staff have issued during this process, as they had no title, date, or version on those documents also. This is very sloppy on the part of the Community Developer director.
2. The use of an “x” to mark the items that the Commissioners wanted to talk about is odd and problematic. You will note that even David Loya got confused at the November 8 meeting about the “x” was supposed to represent. Why not “Yes” or “For future discussion”? The column title at the top just says “Planning” — what does that mean? 
3. The final item on the list is — and this is exactly as it appears:
   “Bring wiyot into the discussion”
   First, of course, the name of the Wiyot Tribe should be capitalized. Second, the Tribe is the Wyiot Tribe, not “wiyot.” Third, the wording in its brevity is, as I read it, dismissive. 

   Do you think I am being picky on this?  Well, look at the list and you will see dozens of words that are properly capitalized. You’ll see dozens of names that are listed by their correct name. And you’ll see wording that forms complete phrases, such as “Get technical experts (topic work group) to address impacts of environment on the project, of soils on geological vulnerability, groundwater levels, etc.” and “Plan aligns with HCAOG’s 20-year Regional Transportation Plan (Ref letter dated 7/19/22).” What you won’t see is an abbreviated comment along the likes of “Bring police into the discussion.” Does that sound discourteous to you?  It does to me.

   An example of a far more considerate entry here might be “Invite members of the Wiyot Tribe to a meeting with Planning Commissioners for open discussion on Gateway matters.”

The process

1. The idea of having short periods of time (5 or 10 minutes; sometimes just a few minutes) for the one dozen or so members of the public — who are using the Slido app for input — to weigh in on what the Planning Commissioners should take up in their deliberations is absurd. 
2. The process ignores the months of public input which preceded this exercise, and more specifically ignores the public input accumulated at the January 2022 Open House. 
3. The chart from which the Commissioners and Staff were working at the October 25th meeting was available to the Commission but was not made available to the public. This is a violation of the Brown Act. This late delivery was mentioned by Commissioner Mayer at the about 2:43:10 on the YouTube recording of the October 25th meeting. In the agenda packet for the November 8th meeting the current draft could have been included (it’s only 3 pages) but was not included. Instead there was a link to the page on the City’s website that has a link that then has a link (yes, that’s 3 links) to the document. Why could David Loya not have put the actual link — who can say why he did not do that.  And why the actual document could not be reproduced in the agenda packet.

   At the meeting, Commissioner Mayer suggested that paper copies of the document could be printed so that audience members could follow the discussion — and she also did not have the updated chart. But then David could not find the document, and after two minutes of us watching while he looked (33:18 – 35:28) the idea of printing it out was lost. See the YouTube video Of the October 8th meeting at 33:10 here.

4. As it has been done to this point, a straw vote is required to determine whether further discussion is desired or input from an expert would be beneficial. The decision is based on a majority vote. Shouldn’t any Commissioner be able to request more information? You are all reasonable people — it’s not as though one of you were going to be making unreasonable requests. Why can’t a single Commissioner be able to make the request for further inquiry or further study? Please do not say that this would slow things down. What is slowing things down is that Staff does not already have on hand information on such topics as “Fiscal Impacts” or on how to create ownership opportunities.
   

   Arcata, we can do better.

“Priority Issues” Table that was generated by the RGA proposal for an Advisory Committee — from October 11, 2022

The three-page Planning Commission Gateway Concerns and “Solutions” document — November 11, 2022