HomeMy WebLinkAbout05_24-25_2017 PC Correspondence - San Luis Ranch (Lopes) Meeting: oS ,Z1 'ZS . Zolq
From: James Lopes <
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 10:46 PM
To: Advisory Bodies; Sandra Rowley
Cc: E-mail Council Website;
Subject: PC communication: San Luis Ranch Hearings, May 24 and 25, 2017
Dear Planning Commission,
Item: SuM LvO< i2A�a-,,
RECEIVED
CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO
MAY 2 4 2017
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
I have two requests for you to consider and discuss with your review of the San Luis Ranch project: 1)
Meeting the foundation City goals in the Land Use Element, and 2) Revising the Final EIR to impartially
and thoroughly analyze several reduced project alternatives.
1. City Goals
I think that the City goals stated below need to be injected into the discussion about San Luis
Ranch. These goals direct decision makers to have the developer pay for the many public improvements
which would be necessary to minimize significant impacts on the public. And, the City services are
directed to be in place with the development, not some years later, without reducing the level of public
services or increasing their costs to the public. Please discuss this foundation of consideration of this
proposal. Bring forward a discussion that opens into the "legislative" role which you have with these
amendments. The City can legally require that the developer pay more than his long-term share of costs
for these services. It's done a lot elsewhere. Sometimes a development agreement is made where the
developer is "paid back" for his expenses beyond his fair share of cost, by other later developments
which rely on the same services (including transportation facilities). These policies are worth your
discussion in regard to the huge impacts which the maximum project sizes are determined to cause in
the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
2014 Land Use Element:
City's Goals - Approach to Planning
The City should:...
25. Have developments bear the costs of resources and services needed to serve them, except where the
community deliberately chooses to help pay in order to achieve other community goals. (p. 1-20)
1.11. Growth Rates & Phasing
1.13.7. Development and Services
The City shall approve development in newly annexed areas only when adequate City services can be
provided for that development, without reducing the level of public services or increasing the cost of
services
for existing development and for build -out within the City limits. (p. 1-20)
2. Final EIR - Proiect Alternatives
The Final EIR is inadequate because it gives the public no viable alternatives to the project, perhaps by
mistake. This important section, starting on page 6-1, thoroughly describes the many un-mitigable,
unavoidable impacts which this project would cause if built out. Its duty is to identify project
alternatives which would meet some of the project goals but reduce these impacts perhaps to
insignificance.
However, the first discussion for a Reduced Project, Vehicle Trip -Reducing, on page 6-5, briefly
describes that just building Phase 1 would still need the major intersection improvements for Madonna
Road & Dalidio Drive and Los Osos Valley Road & Froom Ranch Way intersections. Not stated here is
that the author rejects this alternative because it would not reduce transportation impacts to
insignificance, but it would not require six other major road improvements listed in 4.12-1 Mitigation
Summary Table. According to the CEQA Guidelines cited in this section, potential alternatives shall
include those that, "could feasibly accomplish most of the basic objectives of the project and could avoid
or substantially lessen one or more significant effects." The Phase 1 project alternative (200 residential
units) would not accomplish most of the developer's project objectives, but it would make a major
reduction in necessary street improvements.
The author rejects this alternative and any possible others, stating they would be inconsistent with
(presumably less than) the Land Use Element designations of 350 - 500 units, and they would fail to
meet most of the developer's project objectives. The author apparently thought that all of the developer's
project objectives have to be met by any project alternative.
Who set the project objectives? The developer is only following the City's Performance Standards
listed in the Land Use Element on page 1-88. Those standards are listed in this paragraph, as if they are
inviolate and directory to achieve in total and at the stated minimums listed. But, they are not inviolate:
The minimum sizes listed in this unlisted table, such as 350 units, are preceded by a footnote. The
footnote reads, "1. There can be a reduction in the minimum requirement based on specific physical
and/or environmental constraints."
Most people would interpret this sentence to mean that if the impacts of even the miriitnum thresholds
are significant and cannot be reduced to insignificance, then a reduction in the thresholds, such as to 200
residential units or lower, can be analyzed so as to avoid these significant impacts. The Alternatives
section is supposed to do exactly this; it should be re -thought and revised impartially to describe
alternatives which are less than the minimum performance standards, which will achieve most of the
objectives of this reduced scale of project. The project is entirely open-ended to be reduced to a scale
which will not impose unavoidable significant impacts.
This Alternatives discussion, I dare say, is the most important of all the major issues concerning the
project. It is the duty of the impartial environmental analysis to describe the amounts of development
that will be below the level of significant environmental constraints, and it should be left to the author to
identify if they are feasible.
Since this mistaken approach is used throughout the Alternatives Analysis, I ask you to have the entire
chapter re -written with a more impartial, less project advocacy review of the smaller scale alternatives
which meet one or more of the Performance Standards in the Land Use Element. It is these Standards
which are the "project objectives., and not all of them have to be met, according to footnote 1.
It is not the developer's proposal which is the project objective, since it is guided by the more flexible
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range of sizes in the Performance Standards. The City needs to complete its duty to report on any
feasible alternatives which would result in fewer major impacts than the proposed project, which has
been the maximum of the Performance Standards.
I appreciate your attention to bringing these major issues to a discussion and hopefully giving clear
direction to address them.
Sincerely,
James Lopes
James Lopes