HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/27/2018 Item 1, Schmidt (3)
Tonikian, Victoria
From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com>
Sent:Wednesday, June
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:Planning Commission -- Zoning
June 26, 2018
Dear Planning Commissioners,
As an eight-year veteran of the Planning Commission, I am horrified at what has become of our zoning code – and at how
far the current amendments would push it further away from what it should be about.
The grand purpose of a zoning code is to provide order and predictability in the development process, for applicant and
resident alike. Our code previously did a pretty good job of providing such order and predictability.
But today it doesn’t. Today it consists of a set of rules followed by ways to get around most of them. Where order and
predictability used to result, today we have disorder and uncertainty as the outcome. As far as a predictable regulatory
mechanism goes we now have a farce of planned uncertainty and disorder.
If the commission wants to advance and protect the basic premise of zoning, the code must not devolve further in the
direction staff is pushing for it to go.
There’s a second problem with the proposed amendments – the massive usurpation of democratic control of planning by
bureaucrats. This should be highly offensive to anyone who respects the sort of government we claim to have in this
country.
Why should review powers be taken away from citizen advisory bodies and vested exclusively in staff? Why should the
public be entirely shut out of much of the review process? Why should permits be processed in the dark instead of in full
sunlight?
This massive usurpation of power by staff is a particular problem in our city where anyone who’s been in the development
review trenches knows how disloyal current staff are to community input, community values, and just plain old caring
about the good of the community and the environment, and how biased they are in favor of developers?
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This isn’t how good government is built. It is how Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed are handed the keys to the realm.
Please back off from these two terrible trends brought to you under the pretext of a zoning update. I’d urge you instead to
restore order and predictability as the goal of our zoning code, and to promote robust citizen involvement and review as
the core of the development process.
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt
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