“Vice-Chair Davies requested the Commission consider starting its meetings earlier on the regular second and fourth Tuesdays to provide additional time for Commission deliberations on the Strategic Infill Redevelopment Program documents. In recognition of the time needed for the conversation and to keep meetings from running too late, the Commission should consider starting earlier in the evening or late afternoon.”

The Commission did not extend their meetings to have additional time for discussion. They are starting the meetings earlier, and ending them earlier.

To:  City Councilmembers

 

Hello —

 

I’ve been told that the Councilmembers are watching the meetings of the Planning Commission. We are grateful that you are doing this — so you can get a feel for what is going on.

 

In watching the June 13 PC meeting, it does not seem that the Commission or Staff are oriented toward accomplishing much. There is only a minimal amount of discussion — or a complete avoidance — of important Gateway and General Plan matters.

 

David Loya had allotted the two meetings in June to discussions on the Form-Based Code, as well as “bike rack” issues on both General Plan and Gateway Area Plan areas. Conceivably the PC meeting on July 11th would be to possibly wrap things up prior to submitting the drafts of the General Plan and Gateway Area Plan to the Council for your July 19th meeting.

 

The Form-Based Code was just released on June 5th. By any reasonable expectation the Code should be the major issue for evaluation and discussion. We’ve been waiting for it for perhaps 7 or 8 months, or a year, or a year-and-a-half — depending on which of the scheduled times it was supposed to appear that you want to start from.

 

The Commission took a total of only 42 minutes of their meeting on the Form-Based Code. That includes 10 minutes of presentation from our consultant, Ben Noble. (1:51 to 2:33 on the video.) The majority of that first 32 minutes was David Loya speaking, giving an overall review of what the Form-Based code is and and what is in the document, in very basic terms.

 

Following Ben Noble’s 10 minutes the floor was opened to questions from the Commissioners. There were no questions.

How could the Planning Commissioners have no questions of Ben Noble regarding this important part of the Gateway Plan? I don’t understand this.

 

There was no discussion of “Bike rack” issues. The entire meeting was 2 hours 40 minutes. 

 

 

The explicitly stated reason for the change in the starting time of the meetings was to provide additional time for the Commission. But that has not been what has happened. From the March 14 staff report: 

“Vice-Chair Davies requested the Commission consider starting its meetings earlier on the regular second and fourth Tuesdays to provide additional time for Commission deliberations on the Strategic Infill Redevelopment Program documents. In recognition of the time needed for the conversation and to keep meetings from running too late, the Commission should consider starting earlier in the evening or late afternoon.”

The Commission is not extending their meetings to have additional time for discussion. They are starting the meetings earlier, and ending them earlier.

 

Perhaps over the next six months, some substantial work will be done to improve the drafts of the Form-Based Code, the Gateway Plan, and the General Plan.

 

---

 

Councilmembers, I do very much appreciate what you do to keep our wonderful city humming and growing. 

 

At the same time, I regard the process by which this Gateway Plan and General Plan have been developed to be shameful. As it is now, there is nothing in the Gateway Plan to provide for workforce affordable housing nor for home ownership. The miniscule incentives for these goals that our Community Development Director has presented are nothing more than jokes. I regard David Loya as a bureaucrat, not a planner. The boxes are checked, but no good will come as a result. We all care about Arcata. We need a better plan.

 

Thank you.

 

— Fred Weis

 

 

P.S. — At the last Council meeting on June 7th, I did not speak, either at the early open comment or at the end. I had picked up a card to speak (and then an alternate card was given to me) but it was clear that it was of far greater importance that the speakers on the Sanctuary Garden vandalism be heard. The section of the video of the meeting with the impassioned speech from Carlos is on Arcata1.com, along with an English and a Spanish transcription.

 

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“Bike rack” issues are those “that the Commission will resolve as time allows,” as the documents say. “Bike rack” issues can have these characteristics:  

• a) It did not have a consensus vote, and/or the Commission wanted to revisit the vote.
• b) It required further input — from Staff, from a Committee, or from expert views — before a decision could be made.
• c) The Commission ran out of time at the meeting where that item was going to be discussed.
• d) The issue was considered too large an issue for a brief discussion, and should be scheduled separately.

 

• The public comment period ran for 36 minutes. There were 11 speakers. We can note the comments of Peggy Martinez (about 25:36 on the video):

“Hi, Peggy Martinez here. I think it is important that when this body is going to meet, that information about the meetings is shared with the public in a timely way. For the last couple of meetings that the Planning Commission has had, where they start at 5:30, I have gotten an email about those meetings actually after 5:30. I just got one tonight while sitting here. [It came in at 5:36 PM.] And I think that’s a very bad precedent. So I don’t know how it is that meeting information is shared with the community. But I am honestly concerned that the information about them not being shared in a timely way, is potentially problematic and possibly dangerous for the Commission. Because it’s not fair. I mean that people don’t know that the meetings are happening. People that are on your e-mail list that are, you know, interested in attending. So I would ask that whoever is responsible for informing the public, to please look into this and to please put notices forward far earlier. Anyway, thank you guys for everything. I know, this isn’t an easy job. And um, I just think more people would come if they knew that the meetings were happening.”

• The notices about the meetings come in at around 5:36 PM on the day of the meeting, after the 5:30 meeting has started. All the meetings are on the City’s Meeting Calendar Page, of course. But people look there and see “Regular Meeting – Cancelled” and think that evening’s meeting has been cancelled.  I have heard what Peggy said from six or eight people.
• The Design Review Permit for Harder Remodel Addition took 33 minutes.
• There was then a discussion of “taking a look at where we’ve been and where we’re trying to get to. So I think the first order of business is really for the Commission to establish what you plan to do with your next three meetings.” (David Loya, 1:21 on the video.) This took 30 minutes.

  David Loya probably meant “your next two meetings.” There are two meetings prior to the theoretical July 13th presentation to the City Council.

  This is an example of “talking about what we’re going to talk about.” After subtracting time for public comment time, it is common for about 20%-25% of a Planning Commission meeting time to be taken up with discussion about what is needed to be discussed. Since the Gateway conversation started, this has been the case.

• David Loya went over the Form-Based Code document. This took 32 minutes. (Starting around 1:51 on the video.) “And I think that we’re going to be able to sort through many of the issues between now and your July 11th meeting,” David told the Commissioners. During this 32 minutes, the Commissioners spoke, asked questions, and made points for 2 minutes, 5 seconds in total. David Loya spoke for 30 minutes. Mostly he went over the contents of the Form-Based Code, page by page.

  While there were sections of what David Loya said that were of value, by and large his speech was a monologue that seemed to be based on the assumption that the Commissioners had not yet thoroughly read the Form-Based Code. This talk was very basic, and, in my view, a substantial waste of valuable time.

  Here’s how he started, with this one-minute portion of an uninterrupted 7-1/2 minute section of David talking.

“The Gateway Area Plan is an element of the General Plan for a specific geographic region, the Gateway area. And that plan provides policy direction. The policy direction is implemented through the Code. And so the Code implements the element, the element drives the policy. So part of what I want to focus on is a connection between some of the key discussions we’ve had about policy, as we’re developing the plan, and how we’re proposing to implement those in the Code. And one of the pieces of work that we’ll have, you know, in the next several meetings in the next couple of months is really to make sure that we’ve effectively accomplished the goals of that vision in the plan through this implementation, or whether we need to amend that implementation, update the Code to to better implement the plan.”