HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-13-2015 BW1 Schmidt 2Subject: FW: Goal Setting Agenda Item COUNCIL MEETING:
Attachments: goal setting 2015.doc ITEM NO.:
RECEIVED
From: Richard Schmidt [mailto:slobuild@yahoo.com]
JAN 13 2015
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:13 AM SLp CITY CLERK
To: Marx, Jan; Ashbaugh, John; Christianson, Carlyn; Carpenter, Dan; Rivoire, Dan; Mejia, Ant
ony—
Subject: Goal Setting Agenda Item
Dear Council,
Please see attached for goal -setting suggestion
Richard Schmidt
January 13, 2015
Re: Goal Setting
Dear Council Members,
It is imperative that the city give top prioritization to life safety, health, and property
protection for residents prior to any more costly adventures to please the business
establishment or pressure groups armed with t -shirts and dots.
Life safety and property protection have been neglected by the city for more than
a decade, and there's a huge backlog just to get things back to a basically fair
and functional level. The city can afford to do this, and I urge you to do it pronto,
which is the ethical application of your oaths of office.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Sidewalk Safety. Massive spending on making neighborhood and "commuter"
sidewalks safe. Sidewalks throughout residential areas of town are a disgrace. They are
dangerous, and the city is indifferent. This is wrong, and it represents misappropriation
of available resources. The city has spent and authorized spending more than $2 million
for fancy designer sidewalks to make the business establishment happy, even as it
spends only a few thousand dollars per year on safety repairs. For the foreseeable
future, this needs to be reversed. The city should allocate at least $1 million per year for
reconstructina unsafe sidewalks till the backloa is done and you can aet back to more
modest annual maintenance.
2. Flood Safety. Clearing out obstructions to flood structures in neighborhoods, and
resumption of annual creek maintenance to keep conditions from ever again reaching
the crisis they are at present. The city's lack of flood maintenance for more than a
decade has placed neighborhoods all over town in great danger — a danger whose
promise has not been realized solely because we haven't had a big storm in more than
20 years. Throughout town, flood structures large and small like culverts and bridges
don't work anymore because they're overgrown, clogged, or both, and the city does little
to fix any of this. Last month Ms. Lichtig sent you a newsletter in which she crowed
about removing trees from in front of a culvert, with before and after pictures. Folks, this
is an indictment of city policy and inaction, not an achievement; trees would never grow
up in front of culverts if the city were maintaining those culverts annually! After the 1973
flood, the Waterways Planning Board, on which I served, helped the city establish a
modest annual maintenance program that kept our creeks flowing smoothly till
Administration dismantled it in the 1990s to spend its modest budget ($40,000 per year
at that time) on more sexy things. We need to re-establish that sort of program. The city
should allocate at least $1 million per year for clearing overgrown floodways and petting
flood structures back into working order until that job is completed at which time an
annual maintenance program similar to the one dismantled 20 years acro should be put
in place.
(What the city does not need to spend money on is what you are currently spending big
money on — big projects like the Mid-Higuera Bypass, an environmental atrocity shot
down by both the Army Corps and Fish and Wildlife Service under Bush I, which went
away, yet unknown to residents is now making its way inexorably back through the
"process" to be sprung someday on an unsuspecting public. Not only is it cheaper to
floodproof individual buildings than to build this project, these sorts of projects are
maintenance -heavy and will drain maintenance funds from neighborhood flood
maintanance just as the Mississippi River portion of SL Creek at the lower end of town
has done for decades. It's the wrong way to go. Deal with finding ways to maintain what
you've already signed up for before any big projects.)
3. Renewed Greenbelt Protection. Resumption of serious protections for our
greenbelt, which were promised under both Measures Y and G, but which have not
lived up to promise. The city's efforts in preserving open space have lagged in recent
years, leaving most of our greenbelt unprotected. One council member while running for
office even stated that the job of creating the greenbelt is nearly done, and attention
should focus elsewhere. That is a false proposition. Here are the facts. The greenbelt
area is 54,000 acres. At present less than 18,000 acres is protected in public ownership
or by city easement. The remaining 36,000 is essentially unprotedted private land
(some has temporary "protection" of the Williamson Act, which could go away at any
time the owner wishes). We have a long way to go to protect our greenbelt, and the
longer we wait the harder that will become. Green space is a public health benefit (it is,
for example, cited as such as in the City of Richmond "health and wellness" general
plan element — an element we don't even have).
To live up to promises made for Measures Y and G as well as the city's open space
planning, the city needs to allocate at least $1 million per year from G funds towards
open space preservation.
4. Energy -Scrimping Buildings. Planning for a resilient future requires that we change
how we conceptualize and build buildings so that they aren't energy white elephants.
SLO lags terribly in this area, and that needs to change immediately. Some thoughts.-
A.
houghts:A. Net Zero. Architects use the term "net zero energy" to describe a building that
over a given period of time produces all the energy it needs to operate. This is state
of the art in the profession, and it's achievable today. We're not talking high-tech
stuff for the most part, but about relying on time-honored principles by which a
building can heat, cool, ventilate and light itself by dint of its inherent design — and
these things aren't successful add-ons to conventional design, but rather are rooted
in the building's conceptual core. It amazes me that SLO pats itself on the back for
being "green" even as it promotes new energy dinosaur buildings as its present and
future contribution to the energy albatross that drags down the earth. We are very
much behind the times: Net zero will be the legal mandate in Great Britain for new
commercial construction in 2 years (!), for California residential in 2020, and
California commercial in 2030. Why are we, a "progressive" city, not at least moving
in that direction today?
B. Building Energy. To understand why energy -scrimping buildings are so important,
it is necessary first to understand how energy is used in the US economy. So, let's
picture a very crude pie chart representing principal economic sectors and their
energy use. Divide the pie chart into quarters. Approximately one quarter of total
energy is used by industry, about another quarter by all forms of transportation
(motorbikes, cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes), and the remaining two
quarters by buildings. The bulk of building use is for building operations — AC,
heating, lighting, plug loads. To make a dent in total energy use, things like shifting
transport from cars to bikes make little overall difference (personal use of cars is
only a fraction of that quarter of energy use by transport, and the absolute worst use
of energy is air transport), while focusing on the Big Half of energy used by buildings
can have major payback. That is where the city should focus.
B. Residential. Today's residential construction in the city is an energy disgrace.
The new homes along Prado Road are Exhibit A in this disgrace. To achieve energy
resilience, buildings must be able to capture the abundant natural energy flows
available on a treeless virgin site like Prado Road. (This isn't anything new. Village
Homes in Davis dates from the 1960s, but it uses techniques articulated in 5th
Century BC Greece.) To the extent these natural flows are captured by the inherent
design of a house, they obviate the need for using electric or carbon -based fuels for
building operations. The starting point for natural energy flow capture is in the layout
of the subdivision; Prado does this exactly 100% incorrectly, with lots oriented 90
degrees from what's optimal. Next comes the configuration of the houses on those
sun -favored lots; again, Prado does this exactly 100% incorrectly, with narrow ends
facing south, and at that largely shielded from winter sun by porch roofs. Even when
the builder threw in something intended to be "green," it's done wrong: because the
building configurations and orientations are wrong, the optional solar panels are on
west -facing roofs where they function poorly. The net result is these houses will be
an unnecessary energy drag for the duration of their century -long lives. This is a
tragic loss of opportunity, and the city needs to do better in other new subdivisions,
starting with the layout of the subdivision itself, and continuing to the design and
detailing of the houses thereon. We're talking about the need to use brains in
planning and design, not the need for fancy costly construction stuff. Today,_ net zero
houses, with the majority of energy flows captured from free sources available on
site and the residue made_ up from PV panels, should be the norm in SLO's new
residential areas
C. Commercial: Our commercial construction likewise lags in terms of energy
wisdom. We have come to take for granted things like air conditioning, which aren't
needed in a properly sited and designed building in our climate, and the massive use
of "energy efficient" electric lighting when daylight could be sufficient. Aside from
whether we should be building big boxes, since we are, we should make some effort
to do it right. In typical commercial buildings lighting accounts for about half the
electric budget, two-thirds of that for the lighting itself, the rest for dealing with the
collateral effects of all that lighting — heat dispersal and disposal, meaning larger
ventilating and AC systems running more. In one-story big boxes, there's a lot of roof
where daylight can be brought in for cheap. I only know of one well-daylit store in
SLO — Ralphs on Madonna Road. There, the central portion of the store is so well lit
from overhead that electric lights are usually off, and what a joy it is to shop in all
that light. (Do an experiment: go to Ralphs, then to next door to Kohls. Which is
better lit? More pleasant to shop in? More pleasant to work in? WalMart has found
that sales in daylit store areas exceed those in artificially -lit areas.) The new box
stores around Target are energy Neanderthals, requiring use of fossil -fuels to light,
and then to cool buildings that could have been designed much better. (In that area,
wind scoops could provide non-mechanical ventilation as well.)
Recommendation: That the city quickly move to create basic, simple, not fancy,
planning and building criteria for land subdivision and building configuration to maximize
use of site -available natural energies. (You'll have to do this eventually to accommodate
net -zero regulations coming soon. Why not do it now in a way that makes the most of
what we'll be doing anyway?) As stated before, this is both state of the art and ancient
art — no need to invent anything to accomplish this, just change attitudes and
sensitivities of those doing development.
5. Sustainable Food Supply. A resislient community is one with abundant food
resoures. God gave us the some of the best soil in the world with the best growing
climate in the world, with plentiful sub -surface water underlying those soils. We should
cherish this gift, and steward it for the future. Instead, we keep planning as if such
natural gifts were commonplace and plentiful (whereas in fact in some parts sof the
world people go to war over such natural bounty), covering them over for development
and destroying God's work instead of stewarding it. At present, Dalidio and the Avila
Ranch both have such soils and potential. The city cannot claim to be sustainable while
moving in the direction of unsustainability, and destroying its future resilience. Serious
protection of our remaining world-class agricultural soils instead of converting them to
hard-scaped built -over uses needs to be a top city priority. This might dovetail with open
space preservation.
Making these top priorities shows respect for the people you are elected to serve.
Putting residents' health and safety first and foremost in your spending priorities is
needed to convince people this is still a place worth owning a home and setting down
roots.
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt