Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutComplaint regarding council Code of Civility16 June 2020 Dear Christine: I don’t know if you’re the right person to lodge this formal complaint with, but I know you’re involved at some stage, so you’ll know the right person to forward it to. At the City Council’s 2 June 2020 hearing of an appeal of a Planning Commission decision on a project at 545 Higuera, three city council members concluded their remarks with ad hominem attacks against me for using “trigger words” in my testimony. In addition, Council Member Gomez suggested he was (1) nauseated by having to listen to debate or conversation on these issues and (2) has found everything that I have ever said in council testimony something he has “never really enjoyed,” (3) accused me of never engaging in “conversation” but only “intellectual competition” and not talking about the “true realities of any of these projects,” and (4) grossly misrepresented appellants’ claims by saying, “The basic reality is they just don’t want anything on this site unless it looks exactly like a home that exists right next to it,” a statement whose falseness is abundantly clear from the record. These attacks on me and the many people who brought and supported this appeal both violate the city’s Code of Civility and are clearly intended to have a chilling effect on speech in front of the council. I’m assuming—perhaps I’m wrong—that what council members meant was not “trigger word” in the dictionary definition (“a word that initiates a process or course of action” [Collins]) but what Wikipedia redirects to “trauma trigger”: “a psychological stimulus that prompts recall of a previous traumatic experience,” citing a 2016 article in Slate by staff writer Katy Waldman, “The Trapdoor of Trigger Words.” I’m not aware of a formal city prohibition on employing, in front of council, either words that “initiate a process or course of action” or words that may prompt “recall in someone of a previous traumatic experience.” I note that in Waldman’s article it is never suggested that prior restraint should be imposed on the use of “trigger words,” only that students at undergraduate institutions could be provided with a “trigger warning” that suggests such a word might be used. (Trigger warnings in the conduct of business of legislative and quasi- judicial bodies were not discussed in the article.) Waldman writes, “The most innocuous form of trigger warning—the one that simply alerts readers that difficult material is coming and advises them to be on guard—seems compatible with a full, humanist embrace of what some philosophers might call the ‘lifeworld,’ the coherent universe of things we might experience. Except maybe it’s not, not really. ‘I think trigger warnings are counterproductive to the educational process,” [Joan] Bertin, the National Coalition Against Censorship director, states flatly. “By all means, tell students what you’ll be teaching in your course. But don’t tell them how they’re going to feel about it.’” As I have a lot of business in front of the council in my professional practice, as chair of the city’s Cultural Heritage Committee, and as a citizen exercising my rights to free speech and assembly, I sent each of the council members in question a transcript of my remarks and asked them to please identify the trigger words in it and define for me what words they might consider triggers in the future and therefore unacceptable in testimony, as it is reasonably beyond me to guess what words—especially regarding environmental and social policy—might unintentionally prompt recall of traumatic experiences. Council Member Christianson sincerely and kindly apologized for her remarks, which I accept, and we were able to have a discussion about what she and I might disagree are “tropes.” Council Member Stewart said she’d get back to me and never did. Council Member Gomez never responded at all. So I still don’t know what “very triggering” words I used that might have prompted recall of council members’ traumatic experiences or that council members speculated would prompt recall of traumatic experiences in others. I include here the same transcript of my remarks that I sent, as well as a transcript of council members brief conclusions on the appeal before Mr. Naficy claimed the remainder of his time and Mayor Harmon spoke. I also note that, before my spoken testimony on June 2, council members already had more than 7,000 words of written testimony from me in the record, including not only more than 3,000 words of expert testimony to ARC and the Planning Commission consisting of fair argument based on substantial evidence, but 4,400 words of analysis of staff’s report on the appeal, in the context of CEQA statute, guidelines, and ten relevant California Supreme and Appeal Court precedents. I assume every member of the council fulfilled their fiduciary responsibility to the city by studying this material and understood it perfectly, since no one asked any questions. It’s not clear to me which of these documents—whether my fair argument or my analysis of CEQA case law—was the “previous very attacking email to today’s” testimony that Council Member Stewart referred to as using “very different words, both very triggering.” She may be able to clarify. As you may know, I’ve criticized the Code of Civility in the past in the Tribune as seeming to allow, for instance, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to be promulgated in front of council without comment or reproof or the opportunity for anyone else to object. But as the council has accepted the Code and seen fit to apply it to others, I don’t suppose they consider themselves to be exempt from its obligations. The Code begins by stating, “A healthy democracy respects the people’s right to debate issues with passion.” Yet I was disparaged for “emotion” and “drama.” The Code states, “We will make an honest effort to understand views and reasoning of others by listening to understand, not listening to find fault.” Yet I was accused of “not engaging in a real conversation” but merely in “intellectual competition,” as if fair argument based on substantial evidence is—rather than being a standard required under CEQA— unacceptable public speech. The Code states, “We will invite and consider different perspectives, allowing space for ideas to be expressed, opposed, and clarified in a constructive manner.” Yet, when faced with a series of complex legal issues, council members made no reference to the detailed arguments presented by the more than two dozen constituents who wrote in on the issue, a number of them experts who were making fair argument based on substantial evidence, or to any evidence or arguments provided by me in thousands of written words of testimony, but instead attacked my expression of the kind of city I hope we will construct—with affordable housing, preservation of cultural and aesthetic resources, and good projects produced by rigorous state and municipal review. The Code states, “We will treat all colleagues, staff, and members of the public in a professional and courteous manner whether in person, online, or in written communication, especially when we disagree.” Yet, when I chose to speak on concerns of cultural preservation, equity, and social justice that are central not only to the discourse of my profession but the discourse of current events, I was rubbished for using words “that cause a lot of emotion, a lot of drama” and were “very triggering” and was accused of not communicating to council members like “human beings.” The Code states, “We strive to advance solutions to community issues; when faced with disagreement, we do more than simply share our concerns with differing positions, we work to propose a course of action of mutual benefit.” Yet no such course was proposed or sought, no questions were asked, and people carefully presenting positions regarding our community that are not held by council members was derided as “distasteful,” nauseating, and not “real.” (In my five years on CHC, we have never had a hearing where members had no questions regarding a project. It would suggest a degree of prescience or omniscience no one the committee possesses. I would find it astonishing.) The Code states, “We will focus on the issues, and not personalize debate or use other tactics that divert attention from the issue.” Yet in response to a serious, detailed, and (to appellants) expensive appeal that they spent months preparing for, council members made no reference to the issues, evidence, and arguments that appellants provided regarding the Community Design Guidelines, exemptions and exceptions under CEQA, and obligations under the LUCE EIR and Historic Preservation Ordinance, before council members stated their decisions and launched into highly personal disparagement of one person testifying; my choice of individual words; my beliefs; my commitment to and the sincerity of my beliefs; and conflicting accusations of being (a) too emotional and (b) merely engaged in “intellectual competition”—a phrase that might reasonably be considered as synonymous with “debate” about an “issue.” In addition, Council Member Gomez dismissed serious consideration of the appeal’s specific issues, their specific legal basis, and their specific environmental and community impact with the statement “we’ve had this debate and conversation … ad nauseam,” disparaged appellants, and comically exaggerated their claims. I write at this length because I’ve spent almost four decades in nonprofit, local, state, national, and international policy; have developed a reasonably thick skin; and even I found this episode discouraging and humiliating. What about the ordinary citizens who expect a fair and thorough hearing from their city council? Does this encourage them to participate? The power of the rostrum bears a responsibility for those who are powerless before it. I do not recollect ever having encountered in a legislative or quasi-judicial body this kind or degree of condescension toward its constituents. And those were bodies that didn’t feel they needed a Code of Civility to treat people and their ideas with simple dignity. Sincerely, James Below is a full transcript of my remarks to the City Council, 2 June 2020 Yesterday morning, I never imagined I’d be standing in front of a line of cops in riot gear. Yesterday morning, I never imagined that line of cops would take the knee. I was standing with fifteen hundred young people who realized the world has changed. Encased as they were in armor, the cops realized the same thing. My question to council is: Do you? Most of those changes are going to be bad for most of us. The rich are going to do exceptionally well, the poor exceptionally badly, and the people in between will disappear, the pattern for forty years hitting with massive new force through a twin pandemic of disease and joblessness—unless we make a massive, sustained, and unified effort to fight back. The kids who took the freeway yesterday, the cops who took the knee, were just beginning that fight. And here I am asking why, once again, the city is suspending its guidelines, ignoring extant mitigation, avoiding new environmental review so a multi-millionaire can build million- dollar condos for other multi-millionaires with glorious views of the ninety-nine percent in the canyons below? We’re sick and tired of listening to the city bang on about housing when what you mean is ultra-luxury housing with a penthouse skybridge and twelve-foot ceilings to solve the Great California Pied-à-Terre Crisis. We’re sick and tired of the cynicism of pitting old against young, as if it’s impossible to build new affordable housing that doesn’t shatter the beloved sense of place that long-time locals and restoration pioneers have fostered in the North Higuera neighborhood. Where, calling out, has been this project’s constituency? 545 Higuera doesn’t benefit the people in its working-class neighborhood. It sure as hell doesn’t benefit the kids I marched with yesterday for a brave new world. 545 is vertical sprawl: nearly twice the volume and land use per comparable unit as the new developments across the street. That’s not dense, sustainable, affordable or a good neighbor to a sensitive historic area. The future is small, not sprawl. There has to be a moment when the rich aren’t allowed to just buy their way out of the climate crisis. Why is Community Development skirting CEQA for this project? Wealth, class, and race have always been privileged in law. The kids yesterday didn’t know they were marching over the bones of Frog Hollow, SLO’s ghetto, plowed under by the freeway in 1954. But now the law’s different. Staff have not presented precedents to challenge any of the six bases of the appeal. The case needs to succeed only on one. It is not Friends of 71 Palomar, where I happily assisted the city and was invoked as an expert. But why go to court? What’s in it for the citizens of SLO to suppress disclosure of impact? 71 Palomar is a strong addition to its neighborhood because it adhered to the guidelines and went through environmental and CHC review. Of the eight multi-unit projects CHC approved in my first year, only one has been completed, 71 Palomar. Good review is not the bottleneck for development, poorly conceived projects are. CEQA was passed by a Republican legislature and Ronald Reagan in an era of protest and optimism. Why is a progressive government a half century later so terrified of it? A government that started the environmental era with Ken Schwartz, the visionary mayor, the design review mayor? Again and again Community Development shows up in the full body armor of infallibility with the weapons of directorial omnipotence and clairvoyance to quash review. I can only respond with what we chanted outside the police station yesterday: I don’t see a riot here, Why are you in riot gear? Below is a full transcript of council members’ conclusions on the appeal before Mr. Naficy asked for and was provided with the remainder of his time: Council Member Christianson: I appreciate the passion behind this appeal. I do not buy the legal arguments. I don’t think there are any good legal arguments. I will not support this appeal for those reasons. I think that this project, when a project fits what our policies have asked for, when it’s promoting several important goals, I’m glad to see it. I find it extremely distasteful to have an appellant present an argument, as Mr. Papp did, that uses lots of trigger words, lots of words that cause a lot of emotion, a lot of drama, and doesn’t contain any actual facts and no law or policy at all that apply to this situation. I don’t like it when somebody is pitting one group against another, we all have to live here together, and I find it very divisive, I don’t buy it, I don’t like it, I’m not supporting this appeal. Council Member Stewart: This is another one of those I asked a lot of questions before, because the basics to me is why not an EIR, how much more does that cost? But I really came down to, to kind of put it in my layman’s terms of, we have a cookbook, right? And we have ingredients, and we have a process, and it sounds as though TenOver has gone through that process. I mean, to be, if it was all about just what we liked, personally, I liked the previous color a little better but with the siding, I’m kind of tired of seeing this beige block everywhere, it’s like the new avocado of the 1970s apparently, but, no offense, sorry, don’t mean to offend anyone, I think the point is we all have different interests of different styles. It sounds as though the architects went through and listened to the feedback they got back from the ARC and the Planning Commission, and my largest concern, one of my large concerns was the height and kind of the extra height that I thought was created by some sort of mechanical piece, I don’t know if it was the lifts or what it was, but in the end it’s within our limits, and there is no variance being asked, it’s not as though we are doing something exceptional. I love the fact that the shadow doesn’t go into the Jack House, I think that’s very appropriate, and more trees seems as though we’ve kind of had them go above and beyond, so I think that was very useful. I couldn’t tell, and I don’t think I, as we talked about scrambled brains at this point, I don’t know how much this project helps our RHNA numbers, it didn’t seem as though it helped a great deal, so that’s unfortunate, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily what our basis of decision is on, so I don’t see a purpose in moving forward with this appeal. And I do want to say something, too, actually to Council Member Christianson. There is the trigger words, I really do appreciate you highlighting that, because in the previous very attacking email to today’s, were very different words, both very triggering, and it’s fine, if that’s what we get to experience as part of what we get to listen to and read, but I don’t think it helped in making a decision one way or the other, so just communicate with us like human beings, and I think that would be great. Council Member Gomez: I, too, will not be supporting this appeal. I think we’ve had this debate and conversation kind of ad nauseam since I’ve been elected in 2016, hence we have these guiding principles for architects to use, and I think the architect in this circumstance showed very well how they stuck to that and how they brought it down from scale comparative to what they could have put on. I think the appeal, we hear it all the time, they could have gone to the maximum degree, and then they would have asked for something smaller; they could have gone to the smaller degree, which they did, and they asked for something different. The basic reality is they just don’t want anything on this site unless it looks exactly like a home that exists right next to it, which does nothing for housing as we move into the future, hence we have set up different guideposts in these areas in order to maximize space, and in my mind if you do a building, maximizing efficiency is better for the environment and it’s better use of that land in order to utilize the space of our city, that is not infinite. And I do, I’ve never really enjoyed Mr. Papp’s dialogues that he has done on some of these circumstances that he does, like, use these trigger words, that, you’re not engaging in a real conversation, it’s almost like an intellectual competition, and we’re not trying to compete, we’re trying to have a conversation, but if you remove that right from the onset, we’ll never be able to talk about this, the true realities of any of these projects, and maybe it’s not the intent, I’m not sure.