HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-17-2012 Agn C Schmidt B1From :Richard Schmidt [slobuild@yahoo .com ]
Sent :Monday, January 16, 2012 12 :56 P M
To :Marx, Jan ; Carpenter, Dan ; Carter, Andrew ; Smith, Kathy; Ashbaugh, Joh n
Subject :LUE update proces s
Dear Council Members ,
Attached is a letter I've written to you in response to Kim Murry's memorandum .
Richard Schmidt
hard copy:email:
a COUNCIL a CDD DIR
a CITY MGR a FIT DI R
a ASST CM a FIRE CHIEF
a ATTORNEY a PW DIR
a CLERK/ORIG a POLICE CHIEF
a PIE a PARKS & REC DIR
a TRIBUNE a UTIL DI R
o NEW TIMES a HR DIR
o SW CITY NEWS a COUNCIL
a CITY MGR
a CLERK
STING AGENDA .
`;ATE /'Y id,ITEM #.
RICHARD SCHMIDT
112 Broad Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93405 (805) 544-424 7
e-mail :rschmidt(c~rain .org
January 16, 201 2
Re : Staff memos on LUE update
City Counci l
City of San Luis Obispo
990 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 9340 1
Dear Council Members :
I have watched with interest the way the staff has been trying to manipulate the Counci l
with regard to the LUE and CE updates, and marveled at their every effort to dilut e
meaningful public involvement .
I want to comment specifically about the contents of two recent Kim Murr y
memorandums, those dated December 9, 2011, and January 12, 2012 .
In the earlier memo, Ms . Murry stated, "The previous General Plan Update process too k
over seven [sic]' years to complete and had several task forces that participated i n
sequential order ." Her implication, which she clearly intended to convey to you, is tha t
the process took "over seven years"because of the task forces .This is a fiction of he r
own making to try to manipulate you .
As one who was intimately involved in that LUE/CE update from beginning to end,I
want to set the record straight about why that update took so long, and wha t
constructive role the Environmental Quality Task Force played . I was a member both o f
the Planning Commission which did the original democratic update, and of the EQTF ,
which rescued democracy from a staff-engineered coup d'etat .(I have also over th e
years had significant authorship roles in two housing element updates, intimat e
involvement in the conservation element update, and lesser involvement in the 197 7
LUE update which set the high standard for democratic public planning current staff i s
hellbent on destroying . It's fair to say, therefore, I've got more SLO general pla n
experience than any of your staff.)
The "1988 LUE update," as we called it, was undertaken by a planning commission an d
staff dedicated to the notion of continuing the democratic planning tradition set in plac e
in 1977 by Mayor Ken Schwartz, who tapped community sentiment for dialing back a
I'm not sure "over 7" is even a correct number . My notes show the work began in 198 8
and was finally completed in 1994, which isn't 7 years .
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1960s general plan map with no boundaries, a projected quarter million population ,
houses up all our hills, etc . Since 1977, "development pays its own way," among othe r
things including controlled residential growth rates and the concept of an ultimat e
buildout, have been the law, and they've served our community very well .
In 1988, we began with brainstorming about public involvement, and determined t o
focus in two specific areas : meetings with the public before staff or commission bega n
their work, and a carefully crafted poll of community attitudes towards planning issues .
Under the able leadership of CDD Mike Multari (and with the day to day help of tw o
stellar planners, Terry Sanville and Glen Matteson), it was decided to go out to th e
people and have neighborhood brainstorming sessions with residents . These wer e
literally that — no staff-or-consultant-controlled dog and pony shows like current staff
puts on under the guise of "public input" after everything important has already bee n
decided . Our workshops allowed residents to brainstorm on their own . We gave the m
butcher paper and markers, and said tell us in words, in diagrams, or in pictures what's
important to you . They loved it, appreciated the city's respect for its residents, and gav e
us generous initial input for our work . Sure, it's messy, but democracy is messy — all th e
oars don't row in the same direction outside of city hall, and out of that messines s
comes good stuff that doesn't come out of a manipulated public forum .
Our other starting point was a mail poll . This was again a joint staff-commissio n
collaboration . The questions were thoughtfully constructed to ascertain communit y
attitudes about key issues, as well as general background attitudes . The questions ,
unlike those concocted for the city's "scientific" consultant-driven pools, weren't
manipulative . The poll, I should add, was done entirely in house — no costly slick-talkin g
consultants were involved . Staff and commission were perfectly capable of doing thi s
themselves, and the main cost other than some staff time was postage and printing . We
had a large percentage return on the poll, too . (So, it baffles me, frankly, that staff no w
says it wants to gauge whether community attitudes have changed, and although th e
only way to gauge that is to readminister the same poll, staff has convinced you instea d
to hire a costly consultant to do a "scientific" poll with new questions that canno t
possibly do anything but forever obfuscate the question of whether attitudes hav e
changed . To me, this is just more evidence of manipulative anti-democratic intent b y
staff, and a willingness by all to waste public funds on meaningless exercises .)
So, while our outreach wasn't as extensive as I would have liked, it was genuine, and i t
was meaningful — and it came before staff or commission had made any policy
decisions .
The work of the commission was exemplary and the most inspiring public servic e
experience I've had in a long life of voluntary public service . As one might expect, th e
commission members held a wide range of attitudes towards planning and busines s
and environmental issues, and its votes on projects were often fractious . As a plannin g
group, however, things were different . We decided to meet weekly, for about two years ,
in public study sessions to guide and then to edit and refine the revised plans (LUE an d
CE). The format was something like a graduate seminar in planning, I guess . (And yes,
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the public did attend and our around-the-table informality allowed them to join th e
conversation .) That meant we were meeting six times a month most of that time! Durin g
this prolonged process, a remarkable thing happened : we began to reach consensus o n
things . By consensus I mean we were able to find the common ground on which all
could stand, so no one had to "compromise" away essential tenets . This continued, an d
we ended up with general plan updates of substance and quality which were finall y
adopted in whole by consensus . I believe this shows what is possible when people ar e
allowed to reach agreement without being manipulated, and when they understand tha t
there is wide public agreement behind what they are doing .
So, to reiterate the process : genuine unmanipulated democratic involvement followe d
by two years of give and take engendering a consensus document .
So, amidst great good feeling among the Commission, the Council scheduled th e
ceremonial turnover of the general plan draft to them, we all twelve sat on the dia s
(commissioner-councilor-commissioner-councilor-commissioner) across the front of a
room that had a goodly audience in it . The commission explained its work and it s
conclusions and formally turned over its draft plan .
At that point in the meeting the city administrator said he'd like to add something . Wha t
he had to add was a report from a "Citizens Advisory Committee" that alleged th e
planning commission draft was too environmentally friendly, and that the general plan's
goal instead of protecting the environment should be "the care and feeding of business ."
The CAO presented this document as fully co-equal with the Planning Commission's
years of public work . The only problem was of the 12 persons on the dias, only one ha d
ever known of the current existence of such a committee, and nobody knew it wa s
"working" on the general plan update . Under sharp questioning, the CAO admitted h e
had formed the CAC under long-forgotten council authority, personally selected it s
members, written their report, asked them to ratify it, and that they had met only 3 times .
It turned out that they'd met in private, without benefit of Brown Act daylight, and tha t
none of the small number of members had any planning knowhow or experience . Thu s
began the derailing of the LUE/CE update, and the reason for its ultimately taking th e
alleged "7 years" instead of less than three .
This council had an anti-environment majority, and although seemingly publicly caugh t
off guard by the CAO, they were only too happy to be lobbied by Chamber an d
development facilitator types who'd absented the entire Planning Commission process ,
yet wanted the PC plan thrown out . It was through city chicanery with these anti -
democratic forces that the process fell into chaos . Needless to say, there was publi c
consternation and outrage at this pulling the rug out from beneath a democrati c
planning process . The situation got even worse when the council constituted a new
predominantly anti-environment planning commission, fiddled a bit with the general pla n
draft then returned it to this reconstituted commission with orders well understood b y
that commissison, then, as if that didn't put a thumb on the scale sufficiently ,
established an Economic Stabilization Task Force to further muck around in th e
planning process . (I hope this is starting to sound familiar, for you're falling into exactly
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the same trap under similar staff manipulation .)
As the predictably reactionary reports began to emerge from the commission and tas k
force, there was a new wave of public revulsion . This helped shift the balance on th e
council as residents registered their disgust at the polls . The environmental communit y
went to the council and demanded parity with the economic task force, whose work wa s
being used to influence the political manipulation of the general plan . And the counci l
agreed that was appropriate, given the chaos created by the original coup .When th e
council made this determination at one of its meetings, there was a remarkable displa y
of public insubordination by staff . The assistant CAO had "staffed" the Economi c
Stabilization Task Force, since, in reality, this was a plaything of the administration . H e
was notably pro-business and anti-environment . Without the question of staffing th e
EQTF having even arisen, he blurted out that no way, no how would HE staff it .
Everyone present was speechless . Advocates of the EQTF pointed out they might no t
need staffing, since the cost of staffing was a legitimate city concern . Ultimately, th e
EQTF acquired a "volunteer" planning staff member, Glen Matteson, who sat in on th e
group's meetings, and like the professional and gentleman he is, offered sound advic e
when asked or concerned about implications of a discussion, and didn't try t o
manipulate the group .
Given a broad mandate, the EQTF decided to focus specifically on correcting th e
damage to the general plan unleashed by the staff coup d'etat.Working in the sam e
legislative draft format that the PC had used, the EQTF prepared its ow n
recommendations, so the council when adopting the plan could easily refer to th e
various recommendations . In the process, the EQTF also restored the thrust of th e
original Planning Commission draft of the LUE . Most of what the EQTF recommende d
found its way into the 1994 plan, including the prefatory material reaffirming th e
democratic nature of planning in San Luis Obispo .
So, that, dear Councilmembers, is why the previous LUE/CE update took so long . I t
wasn't because of sequential task forces, it was because of a staff-engineered coup
against the democratic process, and the resulting tumult to restore the democrati c
legitimacy of the process .
When Ms . Murry states in her most recent memo, "Two task forces would require a
substantial revision to the public outreach strategy and the additional allocation of bot h
consultant and staff resources," that is simply more manipulation of the same ol d
canard . As I've shown, a task force need not result in any significant additional staff
effort, and the notion of consultants is total rubbish . No consultant was needed fo r
anything other than the EIR last time around . You supposedly have a competent staff ,
so the only reason to hire consultants is because they want to manipulate somethin g
with the advice of an "outside expert for hire ." As for "outreach," what the publi c
deserves is public input up front, not "outreach" (equals manipulative dog and pon y
shows after the decisions are basically made — more on this below). Unfortunately, i f
you deconstruct what they say, your staffs anti-democratic attitude is blatantly front an d
center in everything they write to you . (And they continue to be insubordinate of council
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direction, as well ; how many times has the council told them the update is to b e
resident-centric, and how many times have they come back with yet more bante r
focused on non-resident "stakeholders"?)
There's additional staff history regarding the EQTF you need to understand to gras p
their current posture . Planning staff has resented the EQTF contributions to the genera l
plan ever since 1994, and has been hellbent on eradicating this evil input by "amateurs "
from intruding on their "professional" policy manipulations . When digest general plan s
were put on line, for example, staff rewrote the LUE to leave out much of the EQT F
material, raising the interesting question of there being two different versions of th e
LUE, one adopted by Council, the other adopted by and used day to day by staff an d
applicants . Staff's excuse when challenged? There wasn't enough space on thei r
website . What a clever way to rationalize unilaterally changing our land use constitution ,
eh ?
Since 1994, staff has consolidated their anti-democratic, anti-environment stance . First ,
in my personal witness of this, was the fiasco of the Conservation and Open Spac e
Element update, loudly trumpeted as a needed update to the city's environmenta l
policies . Guess who was systematically excluded from input into this process? Th e
enviro community, of course . Staff, under the leadership of Mike Draze, decided the y
didn't need and wouldn't accept input from the guardians of the environment . As thei r
proposed anti-environmental Chamber-inspired dilutions began to leak out, a delegatio n
of distinguished city enviros, including alumni of the EQTF and a number of electe d
officials, met with Draze, who slammed the door in the face of any sort of public polic y
input participation for them (all the while staff was privately taking input from th e
Chamber). Supervisor Kurt Kupper, who had chaired the EQTF, told Draze bluntly : "Thi s
will blow up in your face if you continue on this course ." And it did . When staff's
capstone environmental plan revision went to the Planning Commission, we saw th e
bizarre spectacle of the environmental community opposing it and the Chambe r
supporting it . It turned out the staff had even concocted a scheme to keep th e
commission in the dark about a lot of things – presenting them only with a complete d
draft in a format that made it impossible for commissioners to understand what wa s
being changed . I submitted written comments critical of the plan and referring to a
legislative draft I'd seen . Commissioner Mike Boswell asked staff "What's he talkin g
about? What legislative draft?" Commissioners didn't know there was a legislative draft .
Staff told the commissioners they didn't think it was necessary to provide them with th e
legislative draft, so they hadn't! Several commissioners were understandably angry a t
this treatment . "This is bureaucratic sleight of hand," said Commissioner James Caruso ,
"and I know bureaucratic sleight of hand when I see it because I'm a bureaucrat ."
The COSE update was also when staff pioneered its now familiar after-the-decisions-
are-made "public outreach" dog-and-pony shows . Staff apparently thought throug h
these they could co-op the enviro community and the general public, but people aren't
that stupid ; the "input" meetings weren't attended because the public understood the m
to be a farce . (I have great concerns that this is the extent of "public input" under th e
proposed LUE plan . It's clearly what staff intends . This will further alienate residents
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from the city, and that's chickens to roost for Measure Y .)
The COSE episodes were when I became fully aware of the extent of the staff hubri s
which makes them think they can manipulate all of us all the time . As a result of thi s
experience, and the following one yet to be described, I've gone from one of the mos t
ardent and enthusiastic supporters of our city's planning program to one of its mos t
disgusted critics . These people simply don't give a damn about serving the resident s
anymore, only business . Planning here has become a big-city joke of special dealin g
with vested interests, and the public be damned . (Don't you suppose the fact our cit y
has gone from 60% of residences occupied by homeowners in 1990 to less than 40 %
today might stem from bad city policies like the contempt staff in general have fo r
residents?)
The second experience that turned me off from SLO planning was sitting on th e
Housing Task Force in the early 2000s . As contrasted with the exhilaration of the 198 8
LUE experience, this was a completely negative experience . It was then that I came t o
understand staffs new use of task forces . Instead of constituent task forces, these were
hand picked and manipulated to produce the results staff wanted with the phon y
appearance of actual public involvement . Everything this task force did was engineere d
by staff, starting with the designation of mainly commercial "stakeholders" rather tha n
residents as members . I found myself there officially as an "environmenta l
representative," even though my real reason was my interest in affordable housin g
policy . The 16 members all had their designated slots, but — just as in my case -- thei r
presence wasn't what it seemed from those designations . In fact, 12 of the 16 wer e
Chamber representatives . Of the remaining four, only three attended regularly —a
"citizen at large" who was an architect experienced in housing design, myself, and th e
RQN representative . Even though at every move these three were resoundingly an d
routinely voted down, the Chamber's staff representative felt it necessary to refer to u s
in public as "the troika of trouble," and staff (Draze again) had no problem with that rud e
behavior by the committee's empowered majority agenda setter .
So now, dear Councilmembers, you've hopefully come to understand what's wrong wit h
the message Ms . Murry and Compay keep bringing you — that you should have a
stakeholder task force on the pretext this will somehow produce a stronger outcome .
Yes, indeed it will — the outcome that staff is engneering will be strongly represented ,
and the public will be damned . As on the Housing Task Force, great ideas will b e
smothered beneath the stakeholder majority . In a single-issue task force, those idea s
can be hashed out, refined, and actually daylighted to the council as part of th e
decision-making process . Furthermore, isn't it time those of you who claim to be in favo r
of protecting the environment (and I'm not aware any of you don't make that claim )
actually did something to counterbalance the relentless staff attack on values cit y
residents hold dear ?
Staff is wrong, both on the facts of why it took so long to adopt the last LUE, and on th e
premise of how they're doing things this time around . Please take heed .
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Sincerel y
Richard Schmid t
PS . I'll say again what I've said before . Our General Plan in its current state serves th e
city and community quite well . Instead of wasting years of staff time revising the whol e
thing, why don't you just request staff to bring to you a list of things they think nee d
modification, so you -- and the public -- can grasp and judge the actual issues at hand .
There is no need to do a new general plan if there are specific texts that can be update d
because they present actual problems . This would be a lot cheaper, a lot easier, a lot
less disruptive to the community's stability and values, and would save you the politica l
fight of your lives,which I predict you're heading into if you allow staff to continue o n
their present course . If you are a conservative, and I consider myself one, this is how
you can conserve your community (and the community's limited funds). You don't nee d
the grandiose ceremonial complete rewritings staff is forever pushing (mainly to justif y
their own employment and propagandize you with the mysteries of their inarcane art) i f
you're serious about preserving the SLO we have . Please reconsider this whol e
enterprise before it progresses any further . It's not too late to change course and end u p
with something better, simpler, and in the long-run of more benefit to the city and it s
residents .
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