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Canceled meeting shakes trust in planning process |
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Written by PI Editorial Staff
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Saturday, 22 December 2007 |
It came as a shock to several City Council members and planning commissioners last week to learn that their Dec. 15 meeting on the general plan had been canceled less than a day before it was slated to take place.
It was interesting timing, coming on the heels of a memo from City Manager Cleve Morris that called council members and commissioners to look for good growth, “despite concerns raised by land owners.”
Mayor Becky Campo said this week that some local landowners presented her with information she thought should be reviewed by the General Plan Advisory Committee before going before the council and commission. Campo said she decided to cancel the meeting because she was afraid the process was being rushed.
Council members and commissioners expressed similar concerns about slowing down the process when they met Oct. 29. However, they decided it would be wiser to meet as a body and do some more serious number-crunching before the GPAC reconvened.
And that’s exactly what they should have done.
It’s important to remember that one person does not a city council make, even if that person is the mayor. Patterson is not a monarchy.
Unfortunately, the meeting’s cancellation has aroused suspicions among some who pay attention to council matters.
When comparing the plan proposed by the GPAC with the one proposed by consultant Dave Moran, there is no question that the GPAC plan is more developer-friendly. It comes with a higher population target and lower population densities and is generally more accommodating to landowners in town.
Is it all a coincidence that the GPAC was given the next crack at reviewing the general plan?
There might not be any shenanigans going on, but the cancellation of last week’s meeting has caused multiple people to suspect possible undue influence from developers, and that’s unfortunate. That can erode the trust of the community, which Campo says she values.
Yes, the GPAC is supposed to be representative of the community. But the community also includes council members, commissioners and local residents who planned to attend last weekend’s meeting.
Hopefully, the commission and council will have the opportunity to do what they said they would do Oct. 29. Follow-through engenders trust, and residents need to trust the process that is guiding their city’s future for decades to come.
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The biggest problem with the GPAC committee, of which I was a member, is that they tackled a longer period of time, 40 years, for the general plan, which I was opposed to. The size of the plan meant a totally different way to calculate the future population, one that was potentially misleading. A big part of the discussion on that issue, was whether the population would be compounded. The majority of the GPAC wanted it compounded, thus it ended up with 140k in 40 years. I never saw a reason why it should the town should grow per year more than it has already.
As for the public workshops held before the GPAG started meeting, I thought those meetings were something of a joke put on by the consultants. For one thing, a large number of the participants were stake holders and that was their privilege as many of them are long time if not native residents. But even the general public members where drawing lines way north and all the way to the river with no concept of geography, etc. Some even wanted to take in all of the whole Crows Landing area. By the second meeting I stopped participating because there was little reason to so much of what was drawn on the maps.
The biggest problem has been and still is, that the majority of the general community members have sat out the process. They had a chance to participate and they didn’t even attend. This was especially true of the GPAG meetings. I would bet that the ration of speakers was 10 stake holders to one regular citizen.
Clearly something went wrong with the process and I have my own opinions. I don’t see that postponing last Saturday’s meeting was a bad thing. If the city needs to take some more time to work out the process, then why rush ahead? I can see no need to rush ahead with a general plan at this time, especially with the slow down in the national housing picture.