HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-21-2014 ph2 schmidtcrT 0'1 9RiA '
Kremke, Kate
From:
Mejia, Anthony
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:44 AM
To: Kremke, Kate
Subject: Fw: LUCE "kerfuffle"
Please distribute for PH2 10/21/14
Sent from Windows Mail
AGENDA
: ,Y)HESPONDENCE
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From: 'Richard Schmidt'
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:58 AM
To: Marx, Jan, Smith, Kathy, Ashbaugh, John, Christianson, Carlyn, Carpenter Dan
Cc: Anthony Melia
Dear City Council Members,
I wish to thank Kathy and Dan, and congratulate the rest of the council, for derailing this awful general
plan update.
Perhaps now we can go back and get an update that works for residents of this city, and creates a
future somebody other than the Chamber and its developer cronies want.
There is precedent for starting over. That's what happened as the 1988 update became the 1994
update.
The council promised this would be a focused resident - centric update, then stood by as staff turned it
into a radical Chamber - centric update that closed out residents and environmentalists from significant
roles in the update.
This plan is a dagger to the heart of every existing neighborhood's quality of life.
Its promotion of profligate and unnecessary "infill" will destroy the physical character of every existing
neighborhood.
It is a gift to developers, particularly the sort who purchase land that's cheaper because it's not zoned
for their intended use, then try to get profit- raising land use changes approved.
This plan is transformative -- the most radical and reactionary plan ever created for this city's future. It
totally reverses the "Schwartz Revolution" which made SLO "happy" and great, and launches the city
into a future of mediocrity and worse -- Slum Luis Obispo is what it will create.
The plan fails utterly to take any significant steps towards making our city a more sustainable
organism, or towards making it more resilient in the face of coming climate change.
All of this reactionary change is justified by the mumbojumbo of questionable academic planning
theory that has zero relevance to a place of the size and physical character of San Luis Obispo -- and
as a reformed academic planner I know what I'm talking about!
Almost everything about the changes made to the perfectly workable 1994 plan is a step in the wrong
direction.
This plan, in short, is a disgrace.
You need to go back to the starting point with it, involve residents and environmentalists in actively
shaping its successor, and come up with a modestly- revised version of the 1994 plan that deals with
solving actual problems, not turning the entire city into a Monopoly board for developers.
You need, in short, to start over.
Sincerely,
Richard Schmidt
PS. As for the proposition of putting high density housing beneath the most dangerous parts of the
approach and takeoff paths of planes from our growing airport -- you've got to be out of your minds.
Thank you Kathy and Dan for saying no to this insanity. It's not a question of whether such poor
planning will result in a horrific accident, it's only a question of when that will happen.