HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/04/1997, 3 - STUDY SESSION: CONSIDERATION OF REQUIRING A SCREENING STEP FOR PROPOSED GENERAL PLAN AMENDMENTS council M",..,
j ac,Enaa nepont
CITY OF SAN LUIS O B I S P O
FROM: Arnold B. Jonas, Community Development Director 10
Prepared By: Glen Matteson, Associate Planner (5''"?
SUBJECT: Study session: Consideration of requiring a screening step for proposed
General Plan amendments
CAO RECOMMENDATION
Hold a study session to review the current General Plan amendment process, and a proposed
alternative that would require City Council authorization for proposals to proceed to hearings.
DISCUSSION
Situation
In December 1995, a citizen proposed that the City require preliminary review of development
proposals outside the urban reserve line (attached letter). The preliminary review would
include the Council making a decision whether to authorize processing of the proposal.
Virtually all development proposals to the City involving land that is outside the urban reserve
line, which is shown on the Land Use Element map, need amendments to the Land Use
Element. Therefore, the proposed screening process would take the form of Council decisions
to proceed or not with amendments to the General Plan. When the citizen's proposal was
received, Council expressed interest in possibly changing the amendment process. In this
report, staff is providing information. If Council wants to change the current procedure, it
would direct staff to prepare necessary resolutions or code amendments for a future hearing.
In San Luis Obispo, the Planning Commission's initial review and recommendation for
General Plan amendments have been important input to Council decisions. The Planning
Commission has not formally considered this procedural issue. Though a Planning
Commission recommendation on a procedural change is not required, it would be appropriate
for the Council to request Commission comment before adopting a change.
Current Procedures
Currently, any person can initiate an amendment to the General Plan by filing an application.
Filing the application starts a process comprised of environmental review, public notices, staff
evaluations, and a hearing by the Planning Commission and then the City Council. This
process usually is concluded by the Council deciding to approve or deny the amendment.
Occasionally, an application will be withdrawn before that point.
Any person can bring to the Council, before submitting an application, a concept plan for
review and comment. If a significant policy conflict is apparent, staff may suggest to
applicants that they seek Council comment before submitting an application and paying fees.
CS
Council Agenda Report- General Plan amendment procedures
Page 2
This voluntary conceptual review step allows a prospective applicant to find out if the Council
is receptive to considering the proposal, including any changes to City policies that may be
required. Council consideration must be at a public meeting, and the Brown Act requires that
the public be given an opportunity to comment on all items on a public agenda, even though
such comment does not constitute "formal testimony" at a "public hearing." The Council
need not provide comments. In fact, because environmental review and full public notices
have not been provided at this stage, the scope of comments is limited. Council members
cannot make commitments to a particular action, but they can say whether or not they would
be willing to consider policy changes that would be needed for the project. Also, they can
identify aspects of the project which they see as desirable or undesirable. An applicant may
pursue continued processing even if Council members do not indicate support for policy
changes that would be needed for project approval.
A Council member may request at any time that an item be put on Council's agenda. If a
Council majority agrees, the item will be scheduled. In this way, an anticipated or recently
received development proposal may be put on the agenda for discussion if a Council majority
thinks it merits early consideration.
Some projects receive a limited early review by Council when initial environmental
determinations are appealed. Typically, right after an application is received, staff prepares an
initial environmental study and makes a preliminary determination to either approve a negative
declaration (no further study because no significant impacts are foreseen) or to require an
environmental impact report. If no one appeals the staff determination, the project proceeds
through hearings and the final decision-making body makes the final environmental
determination with the project action. If the staff determination is appealed, the question of
the appropriate type of environmental document goes directly to the Council for resolution. At
that point, Council's decision authority is limited to the type of required environmental
document. In making that decision, Council considers characteristics of the project, its
setting, and City policies that determine consistency or that set thresholds for significance of
impacts. Council's decision to support a negative declaration is sometimes seen as favoring
the project, while the decision to require an environmental impact report is sometimes seen as
opposition to a project, though these conclusions do not have any basis in adopted policies or
procedural requirements.
The current procedures are summarized in attached Flow Chart 1.
Minimum Required Procedure
The current procedure follows the minimum required by State law. Under State law, general
plan amendments must come to the Council on recommendation by the Planning Commission,
or on appeal. Council must approve them before they take effect. Both the Commission
consideration and the Council consideration must take place at public hearings. In addition to
the usual State requirements for open meetings and publicly available agendas, potential Land
Use Element map amendments generally require mailed notice to nearby property owners.
Environmental review of proposed amendments also involves public notice and opportunities
for comment.
Council Agenda Report- General Plan amendment procedures
Page 3
Considerations
Following are some "pros and cons" of requiring an initial screening. Most of these
considerations also apply to proposals which may voluntarily seek early Council comment
under the current procedure. For some items, what is seen as a pro or a con depends on a
person's point of view.
"Pros"
• If the screening step does avoid processing some proposals, the City would save the staff
time and materials, and therefore cost, that would have been spent on further processing
(since the City aims for only 25 percent cost recovery from application fees).
• Applicants whose proposals are not authorized for processing would save time and cost. (If
an amendment is initiated despite identified policy conflicts, an applicant still could
withdraw and be refunded the unused application fees, as in the current procedure.)
• There would be savings in time and cost for interested citizens who would otherwise make
the effort to support or oppose the screened-out proposals.
• Early identification of environmental and policy problems could allow a proposal to be
modified to avoid them. (Under the current procedure, the initial environmental review by
staff and the opportunity for public comment should achieve this same objective, but
Council involvement at this stage could be seen as more definitive.)
"Cons"
• The Council may be tempted to initiate all requests, because it is hard to say "no" when
someone is asking only for the opportunity to proceed through hearings. If all requests are
initiated, the screening step would become a time-consuming formality, with testimony
repeated at actual hearings. (The County. Board of .Supervisors, operating under a
requirement for Board authorization for amendments to proceed to hearings, has authorized
nearly all requests.)
• If Council authorizes an amendment request, the applicant will be tempted to present it at
future hearings as having Council support simply because Council allowed it to proceed.
• Applicants or others may think the City is being inconsistent if it authorizes processing an
amendment and then denies it following public hearings. All parties involved would need
to understand that authorization of an amendment by the Council should not be taken as a
commitment to make a particular environmental determination or to approve the
amendment. Even if all those directly involved understand that authorization does not
imply approval, the broader public may interpret Council authorization as approval.
• The screening step would place initial Council consideration ahead of any consideration by
the Planning Commission, which would tend to de-emphasize the role of the Planning
Commission in comparison with the current procedure.
• Council members may not be comfortable deciding even the question of authorizing
processing with "conceptual level" information. Staff would have to use judgment in
deciding what level of information is appropriate for the first screening consideration.
Staff foresees not providing detailed evaluations. There would be a summary of major
expected environmental and policy issues. Staff anticipates not providing a
recommendation at the screening step, though the summary evaluation would note major
policy inconsistencies.
3-3
Council Agenda Report - General Plan amendment procedures
Page 4
Cons - continued
• If Council does not authorize hearings on an amendment, applicants and project supporters
may feel that all aspects of a proposal have not been considered in depth, since the
screening step would not be structured to evaluate the details of a development for which
the General Plan amendment is sought, or all points for alternative policies.
• If Council does authorize hearings on an amendment, project opponents may feel that
objectionable details of a project have not been fully revealed or have been glossed over,
precluding effective arguments against authorizing the amendment.
Neutral
• For applications that are approved, the added screening step would be largely a shift of
resources in time; there would be no overall additional effort because material prepared for
the screening step would serve as a platform for later staff reports.
Conclusion
The City's process allows for an initial Council screening step, but does not require such a
step. Based on the considerations above, there appears to be no clear advantage to be gained
by requiring a screening step.
What Others Are Doing
In preparing this report, staff contacted 12 Central Coast cities to find out what procedures
they use and what their experience has been (attached Survey Summary). In addition, City
staff talked with County staff about the County's process. For several years, the County has
required all proposed general plan amendments to be reviewed by the Board of Supervisors,
and only those which are initiated by the Board go on to public hearings.
Of the 12 cities contacted, four require general plan amendments to be authorized for
processing by their city council. A fifth requires an initial screening step, but an applicant can
proceed even if the council does not indicate support for further consideration. Those cities
requiring council authorization are about equally divided between conducting the screening
step as applications are received, or screening batches of proposals once or twice a year.
When a screening step is required, applicants generally submit a complete application and fees.
The fee is refunded for proposals that are not authorized for processing.
Staff of the cities which require authorization gave the impression that their jurisdictions
emphasize the view that "it is the city's general plan, so the city should have the authority for
initiating hearings to change it." There may be a connection between this viewpoint and
receiving relatively few amendment proposals, and in seeing general plan amendments more as
part of a regular citywide revision process. On the other hand, cities not requiring council
authorization seemed to emphasize the desirability of an applicant being able to request a
change at any time.
Council Agenda Report- General Plan amendment.procedures
Page 5
Possible Changes to Procedures
A mandatory, pre-hearing screening step is allowed by State law. However, it would require
changing the City's code concerning General Plan amendment procedures. The preceding
discussion assumes that the screening step would apply only to General Plan amendments —
development proposals not needing General Plan amendments would be processed as they are
now. Two options for a screening step, summarized in the attached Flow Chart 2, are:
• An initial Council screening only for those General Plan amendments involving sites which
are outside the urban reserve line, including changes to the urban reserve line. This would
be the most direct way to accommodate the citizen proposal in the attached letter. This
approach would establish a required step for screening of proposed amendments by the
City Council before further processing.
• An initial Council screening for all General Plan amendments.
FISCAL IMPACT
The fiscal impact of adding a screening step depends greatly on the fraction of proposals that are
screened out. If a reasonably high number of proposals are screened out, staff time might be
saved. If most proposals are allowed to proceed, the demand on staff resources is likely to
increase, since there would be an added step.
ALTERNATIVES
The alternatives are:
• No further action.
• Support a change to the current procedure. Two options are described above. If Council
favors a change, it would refer the matter to the Planning Commission and direct staff to
return with materials to change the current procedure.
Attachments
Letter from C. Mulholland, 12-1-95
Amendment procedure flow charts
Survey Summary
gpaCARI-28
CHRISTINE MULHOLLAND
1334 DIABLO DRIVE
SAN LUIS OBISPO? CA 93405
City Council
San Luis Obispo
December 1, 1995
Dear Mavor and Councilmembers,
At the October 17th council meeting, you agreed to hold a study session
with regard to the Prefumo Creek Homes and the Emerald Hills projects.
At a subsequent meeting you further agreed to hold off on authorizing the
EIR workscope and RFP preparation and contracting for Prefumo Creek
Homes until the study session, tentatively scheduled for January 9, 1996.
At the Oct. 17th meeting, CAO John Dunn said, regarding the council's
request for a preliminary review of these projects, "We don't have any
such normal practice in our development review process." And, "Do we
want to change or modify the normal development review process?"
The City Attorney Jeff Jorgensen recommended that you "Proceed quite
cautiously in this area in the absence of policy." And, "The projects have
applications to annex or to amend the General Plan or to change city policy.
They have a due process right to do that." Strictly speaking, only the
Prefumo Creek project has made any formal applications to the city.
In light of the above, and the certainty that the city will continue to have
to deal with pressures to develop outside the Urban Reserve Line, (La
Lomita is another example), I am suggesting that, yes, you do change or
modify the development review process.
The county has a policy that works well for dealing with individual
property requests for amendments to the General Plan when not part of a
General Plan update. By adopting a similar policy, the council would be
able to review, in a public meeting, a preliminary analysis of the major
issues likely to be involved in such requests. It would then be up to the
council to decide whether or not it would be to the benefit of the city to
authorize processing of the application.
Having such a policy would not infringe upon the due process rights of
individuals to make applications. It would, however, streamline the
process, weeding out those requests with obvious and glaring major policy
inconsistencies earlier in the process.
It should be emphasized that the authorization at this point to process an
application would in no way confer pre-approval of a project. The
development must still go through the full public review process, including
an EIR if required, planning commission and city council hearings.
The benefit of having such a policy would be to lessen the taxpayer
subsidy for development, since the council has not supported full recovery
of development costs. Regardless of the fact that developers pay for EIRs,
there is still a tremendous amount of staff time, i.e., taxpayer money,
required to implement the whole process. And there is a lot of time,
energy, and money spent by the citizens who monitor projects as they
make their way through the process.
Beyond Sprawl, the report sponsored by Bank of America, California
Resources Agency, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Low-Income Housing Fund
states, "California's local governments should encourage more efficient and
coordinated local land-use policies." The city's EQTF recommended that,
"The City and the County have the same planning policies for the city
fringe areas.»
The council should have a policy for preliminary review of development
proposals outside the Urban Reserve Line, and the ability to authorize to
proceed, or not to proceed. It only makes good fiscal and planning sense.
Respectfully,
&�, -(M a,& �.
Christine Mulholland
�7
W
O
0-
0-
LU
a
J 0
(7 z0 z >
Z N D
�
Z T) O aCL
a
LL p
U U z
J
aLLL
Lu
N 2N w
W LU cOG
V
O z w w
LUCL
QO
F" W
Z
W
: z iz
W w� : C7
aw: : : a , : :
Q
: U J; : : U: CL: J LL: : : J �;
J
CL .
..j
W o
Z
0~CLU
a o m
= C7 ; moo } :` cr
U Z aim < a
E- r z L) : z U
O Q Ja > JJ
J X �- i Odua W ` Oa
LL W cn ?.Q.A�•' Y a
w
O
IL
IL
Q
Z
00 �_ W
Z N } U H >
Zc � Z 00
N � � Z2
Q 0 Ua
U Q
W a
CL
F- y
LU
G J :
Q LLLL
ZQ
W Lu
mss cn
Z
LU
Q LU
CC W U
j > O
z wX 0 a
W
LL
IL Q 0
J ~ Z
Q ? W
LU
LU
;: <> W
Q # <{ O Q C7
W
a
CL
N W ... .iz
N
a ` O
� N
C) Z r' UWja '
W
J
: CL W LL
Ocr.V Q Q Y ' 0>...- IL
LL. VA Cl) ....... q
U �
w C > ti p T
e o v o a = n
O cd
� G v
p .y+ y CG i— pp C
O. •.Oi W 'w •� > Y r.+
m00 CLa E ° cc
y
U k y '� 8
e o oo
U�
° LA 4) rA
ot. m ° - ° $ w° ar
rn u `09 oa� a o
ved
C > c P CL
C
s 6 . O a — .5'W. w O v o
cc cc 0
•� ..a O O C N
o .. . c � % E � 0 � � 3 a�
U CC •� C •Y coN y yC. docn
CL On
N y .�
foe s
O
RR%a w �-
o � w
00 v E E E
U 0.O E � y y ycc
as O N U N
[L 4 a A C C C
y
V O O O 4)
T
U
j b fl o
IU W ''' O O O
fO
OG
ati �
u 0 5 '
� y
0 a O o o 0 0 o 0 u a o
T C C C U C C T C C T T C
F
aG W
ad
W Cd 0
U d O t0 2 cd C .> a
.� � H 7 O O