The first of the public hearing and Arcata City Council review meetings on the finalized General Plan 2045 updates took place on Wednesday, May 29, 2024. The second public hearing and Council review is scheduled for Wednesday, June 5. (After that, no meetings are scheduled, until what is said to be their vote for approval on July 17, 2024 — six weeks later.)

We have audio of the Council. We don’t have video of the Council.

Skip to: A solution.  Skip to: Legalities.

If you tried to watch the live video stream of that May 29th meeting or wanted to review it by video, you may have felt some frustration or confusion.

On the live video stream or in the video, we can hear the City Council — but we couldn’t see the Council. For long stretches in the video, there is no image of our City Council, or of staff or of any human being. Instead, we see a shot of the Community Development Director’s notes. Or we see a static image of a section of the General Plan that’s being discussed. 

Some amount of a display of the words of the existing documents is good, and necessary. And it is good to see when the Community Development Director is typing his notes, so watch if what he is typing is truly what it seems the Council expressed.

But over 12 minutes straight of just looking at text on the video? That is way too much. We want to see the City Council.
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A balance is necessary. What can be done to correct this situation?

Clearly, the way in which the IT personnel who handle what will be on the screen is not working well. The Mayor, the City Manager, and the Community Development Director are all in a position to have a sense of what is important to the public to be able to see. All of t those persons are very engaged in doing all the tasks they already have to do.

For purposes of these General Plan public hearing meetings, may I suggest that the Community Development Deputy Director, Jennifer Dart, who was present at the meeting, establish some sort of direct link to the person making the camera/video decisions. Jennifer Dart can then determine what’s important for the public to see, and for how long and how often we might need to view the wording of a policy or paragraph that’s being referred to.

The Community Development Director will still be the one who is putting material onto the screen. He cannot be expected to keep track of for how long what he puts there should stay in public view. Jennifer Dart can do that.

LU-9, the up-zoning of Bayside, Sunset, and Northtown residential neighborhoods.  Over 12 minutes of discussion — and not one second of the City Council talking.

This 12 minute and 11 second video segment on this very important discussion on the Implementation Measure to up-zone some current established Arcata neighborhoods to contain 4-story buildings and “Local-serving commercial uses such as corner grocery stores and coffee shops.”

In the 12 minute 11 second segment, there is 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the Community Developer’s notes, and 9 minutes and 31 seconds that shows the paragraph in the General Plan with the wording of this Implementation Measure.

If you watched the live video stream or the YouTube or City video of the May 29, 2024, meeting, this is what you saw for 9-1/2 continuous minutes.

The total amount time that we see the Councilmembers or City staff talking? None. Zero. Not one second of camera time on any human being. That’s 100% of the video segment without the Council.

You can watch, listen, or skip through this video here below.

The discussion on Ministerial Review and Zoning Administrator Review. Almost 18 minutes, and we see the Council for 4 minutes.

We can see the Community Development Director’s notes for 10 minutes and 11 seconds. We can watch the Gateway Zoning Code section on what was proposed for Zoning Administrator review (up to 47 feet) for 3 minutes and 32 seconds.

We see the City Council and staff for 3 minutes and 49 seconds at the very beginning of this video segment, plus 15 seconds later. The rest of the time — 13 minutes and 43 seconds is on images of words. That’s 23% of the video segment on the Council, and 77% of the video segment with just the words. 

You can watch, listen, or skip through this video here below.

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The Legalities of this

The live-stream and recorded videos are not, in theory, a legal record of the meeting. And, it could be argued, there is no harm in only being able to listen to the Councilmembers speak, and not being able to see them.

Still, the meetings are advertised as hybrid meetings. As the meeting’s agenda states:

Observe:
Members of the public can attend the meeting in person or observe the meeting on Zoom (see  below), on Access Humboldt Channel 10, online by visiting www.cityofarcata.org and clicking on the See Live Meetings, Agendas, and Archives button on the home page, or on the City’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/CityofArcataCA

If the meetings are promoted as where can can observe the meeting and then the public is deprived of the opportunity to observe the meeting, then I’d say that’s possible lawsuit material.

It boils down to: What was the meeting? Does a meeting include watching one paragraph of text from the General Plan for nine and a half minutes?

In law, there is the concept of “implied contract.” This is based on the reasonable assumption (often taken from actions of the past) that there is an expectation of a certain product or action being delivered.

In this example, the City in essence promised a public hearing meeting of the City Council to the members of the public who wanted to watch this meeting live at home or later by video. By failing to show the City Council for long periods of time on important issues, the City failed to uphold its portion of the implied contract. In the case of the very important LU-9 neighborhood rezoning issue, there was not one second of time during that that discussion that showed the City Council.

Lengthy examples of no Council visible at the May 29, 2024, Public Hearing meeting

On the YouTube video of the meeting:

• Retain Class I trails. From 3:10:39 to 3:15:35. Almost five minutes of no humans on the video.
• Billboard discussion and LU-9 Implementation Measure. From 3:28:15 to 3:47:47. 19-1/2 minutes straight of no humans on the video, just words.

At the meeting at one point I attempted to attract someone’s attention to correct what the public was able to see on the screen. This is about 2 hours 41 minutes on the YouTube video. Councilmember Stacy Atkins-Salazar was speaking on the Arcata Fire District safety issue. This was not the first instance of the Councilmember not appearing on the screen, and it was definitely not a longer instance, not by a long shot.

At that point, the Community Development Director’s list of discussion topics had been gone over by the City Manager. The list continued to stay on the screen, even as Councilmember Atkins-Salazar was speaking.

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Video segments

Land Use Element Implementation Measure LU-9

12 minutes 11 seconds. Total time of people on-camera:  0 seconds.

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Ministerial Review and Zoning Administrator Review. 

17 minutes 47 seconds. Images of the Council speaking for 4 minutes and 4 seconds.