Thursday, August 17, 2023

To the Councilmembers and Commissioners:

We currently have three scheduled City Council / Planning Commission joint study sessions: For discussion on the Gateway Plan on August 22 and September 26, and for the General Plan on October 24. In the agenda packet for the first meeting on August 22, the Community Development Director has proposed that as part of a framework for the meeting the stated outcome would be:

“Purpose – Our purpose is to develop a final draft of each of the General Plan Elements, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Form-Based Code by November 17, 2023.”

Councilmembers and Commissioners: I strongly urge you to:

a) Reject the notion of a November 17 completion date.
b) Reject the notion of any firm declared completion date.

Frankly, for the Director to propose and promote in the staff report that there would be a fixed date for a final draft — and allotting just three full Planning Commission meetings to complete this so-called “final” draft — I find greatly offensive. I consider this section of the staff report to be in disregard of what the public has been promised, what the Commissioners themselves have spoken on, and on what the Director himself has said.

Included below are word-for-word quotes from the Commissioners and the Director on their views on revisiting this working draft.

We had the date of July 11th set for the forwarding of the Commission’s working drafts to the City Council. That was done to further the conversation — to open the conversation, as it were.

The public was told that there would be substantial opportunities for public input — following the release of this working draft.

To put this in perspective, on October 24 — the single scheduled joint study session meeting for the General Plan — the proposal is to discuss and review all 13 non-Gateway chapters plus vision statement of the General Plan Elements. Even allowing that some elements can be taken as non-contentious, a single meeting to discuss the entire General Plan?

Following that October 24th meeting, the Planning Commission would have one meeting (generally about three-hours) on November 14. And at that meeting, by this proposed framework, the Planning Commission would be expected to develop a final draft of the General Plan.

Between the first and second joint study session meetings, the Planning Commission has one meeting. After the second joint study session meeting, the Planning Commission has one meeting. By this proposal, the Planning Commission is expected in those two meetings to develop a final draft of the Gateway Area Plan and the Gateway Form-Based Code.

In other words, with all the expected new input from the City Council and the input from the public, via letters and and direct participation at these study session meetings…

In the case of changes to the General Plan, the Community Development Director is proposing that the Planning Commission can assimilate that input, discuss and review the suggestions, and incorporate any desired changes — all in a single three-hour meeting.

All through this accelerated view of the General Plan and Gateway Area Plan, the Commission has been told again and again: You will have the chance to review this later. At the polling that was taken to determine which elements of the General Plan any individual Commissioners wanted to revisit, it was about whether they wanted to revisit those elements prior to the July 11 working draft. Most of the Commissioners expressed the desire to revisit the elements of the drafts.

In the meantime, the first draft of the Form-Based code came out in early June — and no further update on the draft there.

The Commission’s meeting minutes say: “The Commission forwarded their working draft of the General Plan Updates to the City Council for discussion and consideration.” This is slightly different than the what was proposed to modify the previously incorrect minutes. That statement — which was to be incorporated into the minutes — was that the Commission “forwarded a working draft of the General Plan updates to the City Council for discussion and our own and their further consideration.

Councilmembers and Commissioners: 

A discussion of the proposal to use this framework and this proposed final-draft date is the first item of business at your August 22, 2023, joint study session meeting.

If you are declare at this very first joint study session meeting that you are setting the date of November 17 for production of a “final draft”– prior to even starting the discussion on the General Plan and the Gateway Area Plan as part of your three joint sessions — then you would be sending a clear message to the public and the Arcata community that their input is not going to be taken into consideration.

The Planning Commissioners are not even close to completing their recommendations. Frankly, I expected discussions on the Planning Commission to go on until the new year. We’ve been told that as the EIR is under review and winding its way through its process, the Gateway Plan and General Plan can concurrently be reviewed and discussed here.

Please make it clear to the Community Development Director that there is absolutely no interest or wish for you to “develop a final draft of each of the General Plan Elements, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Form-Based Code by November 17, 2023” as is suggested in the draft for the framework for the August 22 meeting.

Thank you.

Quotes from the June 27 Planning Commission meeting. The matter of forwarding the working draft of the documents was discussed.

Unfortunately there apparently was a flaw in the formula used in the spreadsheet that was used to tabulate the votes. This was apparent at the meeting, and by observing the video it can be seen when this comes up. The flaw in the spreadsheet tallying was such that it even if three out of the five Commissioners who were present voted “Yes” then the tally still shows up as “No.” (40:02 in the video, for the Introduction.) With Commissioner Mayer’s votes in place, 4 of 6 shows up as “Yes” and 3 of 6 shows up as No. Commissioner Tangney — who requested a further delay — could have had all his votes put in the “Yes” column for further review, but instead his votes were tallied as “No” votes.

The voting was not expected to matter because the Commissioners expected to have time after the July 11th forward of the working drafts.

The Commissioners made it clear that there would be further discussions. As Chair Scott Davies put it, “I think all along we’ve been operating that we’ll get to the City Council what we’ve gotten to by the 11th. And we’ll continue working on it, but they’ll be able to begin working on it in tandem and take up that work on their end. So I think there is time, it sounds like possibly revisiting this after the 11th.”

At least three Commissioners wondered about whether that July 11th date could be extended.

Commissioner Dan Tangney: “I am not quite sure why the timeframe is so set on July 11. And if it doesn’t need to be, I would be happy to go a little longer.” Commissioner Judith Mayer was absent, but had expressed extending the date and reviewing all or almost all of the elements. And since the Council and the Director all said it was okay to go longer, what happened on that?

Commissioner Peter Lehman wanted to review every single element. Commissioner Joel Yodowitz, whose first meeting with the Commission was April 25, wanted to revisit the Gateway element, the Mobility element (including streets and trails), and four other elements. He said “I like the proposal of giving a preliminary recommendation, and then perhaps setting some meeting, you know, after the 11th, and one or more meetings, for those items that we think are important enough to discuss.”

Community Development Director David Loya:

“I mean, the decision on the 11th is not a final recommendation. We’re not even having you adopt a resolution. You’re just forwarding a recommendation, you know, preliminary recommendation to the City Council so that they can start working on it.

And, if you’ll recall, when they asked for a decision in July from the Planning Commission, that was at a time when we weren’t making much progress on making decisions. I think we’ve had a complete 180 since that time, and the Commission is making many decisions and making them very rapidly.

So you could, you know, forward a recommendation that sort of constitutes your current thinking on the elements. And, you know, take them the next couple of meetings, take the next month to, you know, that out these additional details, we can talk about, you know, the items that Commissioner Simmons brought up or that any of you wish to bring up to just really hone in on. That’ll give Commissioner Lehmann, the time to to review the documents in more detail for the holistic point of view. And then you’ll be well prepared, when it does come time for the Commission to adopt a resolution making a formal recommendation to the City Council, that these are the final documents.

I think part of the reason why they made that decision was because the City Council wants to get involved, they want to start reviewing this document, they want to know that they’ve got documents that you all think are close to snuff. And they even said at the time that you know, if you needed an additional month. That wasn’t an issue, it was just not, not making — I mean, this was the subtext, not making any progress was what the issue was. Now we’ve demonstrated we’re making progress. So that would be my suggestion is that, you know, if you want to let the vote stand as it is, to forward these on as a recommendation, that’s kind of a light recommendation, we’re generally headed in the right direction, and let them know, we also may have some additional comments, but this is basically where we’re landing. I think that would be good.”