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Home My WebLink About04-12-2017 Item 1, SchmidtRECEIVED CO, TNC'Ti 11�1��'�l�r(r: IV -1 Z — 1�, -•--.....�..:__ _ 1 APR 12 2017 From: Richard Schmidt Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 201710:36 AM To: E-mail Council Website <emaiicouncil@Slocity.org> Subject: To Council and Planning Commission re zoning regs Please be sure this gets to Planning Commission today. Thanks. April 10, 2017 Dear Mayor, Council, and Planning Commission Members, Some broad picture thoughts about the zoning code rewrite. 1. The purpose of our zoning code needs to be revisited and restored to provide order and predictability to development outcomes. Zoning codes exist supposedly to promote the public good. They are intended to provide order and predictability, and protect the public's interests. Ours has ceased to do any of those things. Those PUBLIC purposes and outcomes need to be restored. A brief summary of how we got here: In the bad old days, before there was zoning, developers could do pretty much what they pleased wherever they pleased. As they did more and more of what THEY pleased, they displeased the public, and zoning — a regularizing of what's permitted and what's not, formatted to protect the PUBLIC INTEREST — was the result. Overall, that system worked well to provide order and predictability. The public knew what to expect, and so did developers. Both sides benefited. Until very recently, that's how our city's zoning worked. Then our zoning code became something else altogether. It became a blueprint for disorder and unpredictability, just like in the pre -zoning days, as staff worked overtime to please developers and ignore the PUBLIC GOOD. The zoning code became a collection of ways to evade the basic purposes of zoning — the promotion of order and predictability. What we have today isn't a zoning code, it's a MISCHIEF -MAKING CODE. It has created chaos with the ways it enumerates the means to evade its purpose. Many of the zones themselves have become such permissive junky collages it's hard to tell one from another, or even what the intent for the zone might be. Project after project we see this chaos play out, the public furious, and decision -makers going along for the wild ride. Given planning staff's current ideology that they work for developers and not for the public that pays their salaries and generous pensions,' I fear this rewrite by them and their consultants will make things even more chaotic. ' One has to be touched by a planner who quits to draw an $85K pension, and promptly goes to work for the largest local development advocacy outfit, representing the very applicants whose projects the planner consistently urged approval for while a PUBLIC employee. Even the "swamp" in Washington has rules against this sort of self-dealing. Why don't we? So, I would request the following of this rewrite: Systematically root out the enumerated ways to evade the rules, and restore order and predictability to what citizens can expect from application of the code. (This was the source for much of the turmoil over 22 Chorro and Santa Rosa/Monterey.) Go back to a code that has clear expectations and boundaries on what can be done on specific properties. 2. Restore purpose to Planned Development zoning. Our Planned Development zoning overlay has the potential to be something really great. Originally, the Planned Development ordinance applied only to parcels of one acre or more, and existed to encourage innovative creative design opportunities that required exceptions to otherwise strict zoning rules, provided those exceptions produced a project that met the purpose and intent of the excepted rules as well or better than if the rules were strictly applied. Today two things have happened: - The large plot size has been eliminated, so virtually anything can apply for a PD. This produces improper "spot zoning." • The notion the project must produce results as good as or better than what otherwise could be done has been tossed in the trash. Instead today's PD application has become a hunting license for mischief. For example, using the PD, we find applicants making a case for, staff supporting, and decision -makers approving, 7 story buildings in a zone whose maximum height would allow 3 stories. Such a project, densely built out, is not superior to anything. It's simply a spot -zoned evasion of the rules to facilitate greed. This shows disrespect for and makes a farce of the entire zoning code. Furthermore, given all the instructions in the code for evading regulations (see #1 above), it seems as if there's no need for the PD zone as applied today. It's redundant. I'd like to see a reversion to the original PD concept and purpose as envisioned and put into practice by Mayor Kenneth Schwartz — large parcels only, and required truly creative design that exceeds in quality what could be done otherwise. We have some good projects that resulted from that sort of application of the PD (Los Verdes Park and Serrano Sircle come to mind), and none that have resulted from the current mishmashed PD concept. 3. Revisit whether there should be any "mixed-use parking reductions," bike parking reductions, shared use reductions and the like. When the city first began dealing with mixed use parking reductions, during my 8 years on the planning commission, they made sense. If there was a genuine case to be made that the totality of a project needed fewer parking spaces than the sum of the parts would require, we granted a reduction. Intelligent analysis, however, no longer seems to play a role in granting such reductions. In fact, typical of what's discussed in #1 above, Zoning section 17.16.060 Parking space requirements states: "This section is intended to ensure provision of adequate off-street parking," then immediately proceeds to lay out method after method of how a developer can evade that stated intent. This is lunacy. And thus we are getting project after approved project that fails to provide adequate parking. For example, anyone looking intelligently at the reduced parking allowed for 22 Chorro would conclude the project has about one third the number of parking spaces it needs. To get to that point staff added together and then compounded one reduction after another when in fact none of the reductions alone would have made sense. The result will be a parking nightmare, for residents, for customers, for neighboring businesses and residents, and about 100 totally unused bike racks which staff permitted as a substitute for parking spaces. Let's restore sanity to our parking regulations. ONL Y if it can be conclusively demonstrated that a reduction will "ensure provision of adequate off-street parking" can a parking reduction be granted. Rewrite the parking regs to eliminate all the "if this, then that" unworthy reductions. Yes, that includes automatic bike reductions. In most instances, bikes will not reduce the need for parking, no matter how many bike racks a project incudes. Cars are not going away, whatever the current planning Kool Aid may say. Bikes will always be an adjunct to cars, not a large-scale replacement.2 Thank you for considering these broad brush thoughts. Richard Schmidt 2 To show how daft the bike premise is, just remember that according to your adopted plans, in just 3 years (2020), one fifth of today's vehicular trips will be eliminated and take place on a bike. Really? In 1990, the planning commission adopted the first bike modal shift plan — a single digit percentage shift — and it still hasn't been achieved, even with the specious counting of recreational trips as car -replacement trips. Meanawhile, vehicular trips have continued to increase at an astronomical rate.