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HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-20-2014 pc schmidtKremke, Kate From: Sent: To: Subject: Public comment for 05/20 Anthony J. Mejia I City Clerk 990 Palm Street Sari Luis Obispo, CA 93402 tel 1 805 781.71a2 Mejia, Anthony Thursday, May 15, 2014 11:40 AM Kremke, Kate FW: Egg on your Face -- Public Comment 5/20 meeting MAY 15 2014 AGENDA CORRESPONDENCE Date � �Xo i i_ From: Richard Schmidt [mailto:slobuild @yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 11:34 AM To: Marx, Jan; Ashbaugh, John; Christianson, Carlyn; Smith, Kathy; Carpenter, Dan; Mejia, Anthony Subject: Egg on your Face -- Public Comment 5/20 meeting Public Comment for May 20 council meeting. Dear Council Members, Let's be clear on why you found yourselves in such an uncomfortable position May 6 when you were confronted with a marijuana ordinance that made no sense: the city's undisciplined, insubordinate, poorly -led staff decided to ignore your directions and cook up and dump on you in public an ordinance from hell that apparently fit their purposes but not yours, nor those of the city's residents. You rightfully put your foot down, and said NO. Good for you. What troubles me, however, is that this sort of insubordination of your directives and of the interests of residents is commonplace, and that typically you do nothing about it. Take, for example, the general plan update. You gave very clear direction to staff — this was to be a focused revision of the existing general plan, not a total rewrite, and you directed that if it wasn't broken, don't try to fix it. Staff ignored your directive, and with their over -paid fast - talking slick big -city consultant set out not only to totally rewrite a perfectly good general plan, at more than a million dollars' cost, but to undo and subvert much of the good substance of the existing consensus plan. Every neighborhood, for example, is on the chopping block, and so, is the environment. None of this came from residents — it is being imposed upon them by a runaway, arrogant staff. This document is loaded with political bombs waiting to explode in your face (just like the marijuana ordinance) — all because staff was allowed to run wild with no constraint from the city manager (who by all signs approves of what they're doing to subvert your directives) or from you. Why is that a smart thing to let happen when none of this explosiveness would have come about if staff were treating your directives with the respect they deserve? You are aware, for example, of the ridiculous proposal to demolish many homes and businesses near and along Foothill to "realign" neighborhood streets that don't need realigning, and to direct even more cut - through regional traffic through the linear neighborhood south of Foothill. You are also aware that this did not originate from the neighborhood, but was 100% staff - driven. Staff even attempted to confuse you by saying the proposal came from the LUCE task force, but that isn't true. Staff had it in THEIR draft BEFORE the LUCE task force ever saw that draft, then staff rushed it through the task force so that group barely had the time to realize the seriousness of what was before them. You are also fully aware that the neighbors affected by this scheme were never noticed (staff arrogantly asserted that the scheme's presence on a website 99.9% of residents don't know exists was sufficient notice), so they didn't have any chance to raise hell like the marijuana people just did, or like the Pacheco School neighbors, who were noticed — probably because the mayor lives there - -, did. Even with all this knowledge — staff insubordination of your if- not - broke - don't- fix -it directive, the fake blathering about public involvement, attributing the idea to a committee that was not its source, total lack of notice to those directly, affected, the patent ridiculousness of this costly multi-multi-million- dollar project itself — three of you instead of standing up for your directives to staff (and for your neighborhood constituents' welfare) and kill the idea kicked the can down the road and included this awful proposal in the super - costly EIR, which means it is now just one quick vote away from full approval and implementation. Watching this unfold is very disappointing to your constituents. am very concerned about the future viability of this city if the Lichtig -led LUCE becomes law. But I'm even more mystified why the Council doesn't stand up for its own directives, which should have taken this LUCE update in a very different direction from the one staff is pursuing. am troubled that you give your misbehaving staff this sort of pass. Instead of stopping staff misbehavior, you seem to want to be "nice" to them, and again and again let really bad stuff roll on down the road. Why? Where is YOUR outrage at their repetitive thumbing their noses at you? Where is your commitment to protect residents from staff subversion and oppression and denial of due process? Why are you not whipping staff into line, to do YOUR work, to do the RESIDENTS' work, instead of covering for — and suffering political fallout from — their misbehavior? You all got egg smeared on your face by staff on May 6. Isn't that enough of a wake -up call? Please start making them behave, to serve YOU and to work for the benefit of residents — or send them packing to some place where their insubordinate "leadership" better fits the political climate. I believe if you don't, the egg smearing will just continue and become more frequent. You'll look really bad (as if you need thatl), and people will no longer have the slightest trust in or respect for your city. It takes a long time to build the sort of trust this city had, say, 15 years ago; it takes even longer to regain it when trust is lost for good cause, as trust in the current city regime has been and continues to be lost. I urge you to get the junk out of the LUCE update BEFORE it comes back to you for the quickie pre- election approval hearings staff has engineered. Last time we went through an update, chaos erupted at that time, and it took another three years to get it straightened out. With all the anti - resident anti - environment junk in the proposed LUCE, I see a differently -aimed but equally powerful explosive environment building this time. And that's such a shame: A general plan revision should be a time of coming together for a community's residents and city government, not a time for driving them apart as this exercise has done. This adversarial city- resident tone is so unnecessary, since from the beginning staff ignored your directives, which had they been followed — and followed up upon by the Council — would have made ALL of us happy campers as the process winds down. Sincerely, Richard Schmidt P.S. Looking at the schedule for "approval" of the LUCE, it all seems very rushed, and not good. Even before the closing of the draft EIR comment period, for example, public hearings are scheduled. Why the rush? On what are those hearings to be held? My impression is one doesn't have a project on which to hold public hearings till the EIR is complete — meaning a project has been modified and mitigated which means probably significant changes to all the draft documents. These hurried approval hearings are just one more indicator of staff's railroading this thing through the process before the public has a clue what's at stake. You need to slow down, back off, clean up the dreadful draft, let the EIR dust settle before you proceed to any sort of public adoption hearings. There's no hurry — the city has already met the state grant's requirement to have a draft completed in June — you're ahead of the "game," so just slow down and try to get this mess fixed before it blows up in your face right before the election. Because, the way things are going now it WILL blow up. When that happens, you may wish then you were dealing with something as simple as marijuana.