HomeMy WebLinkAbout09-06-2016 Item 13, Schmidt
To:
Subject:
Gallagher, Carrie
RE: Agenda: Zoning update
From: "Richard Schmidt" <
Date: Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 10:15 AM -0700
Subject: Agenda: Zoning update
To: "E-mail Council Website" <emailcouncil wslocity.org>
Re: Zoning Update
Dear Council Members,
COUNCIL MEETING:
ITEM NO.:
-AECEIVED
SEP 06 2016
SLO CITY CLERK_
support the comments of Sandra Rowley on behalf of RQN, so will not repeat those, simply ask you
to consider them carefully.
would like to emphasize two items:
1. It is absolutely essential that the changes BE DEVELOPED VIA LEGISLATIVE DRAFT. Doing it
any other way is simply a recipe for perpetrating mischief and sowing distrust.
Consider the political logic of working via legislative draft, and the illogic of doing it otherwise. This is
an update of an existing document. Therefore, the starting point should be the existing document. In
places where changes are needed in the existing document, those changes should be interpolated
directly into the existing document. That is what we call a legislative draft. It is a draft that progresses
with clarity through many iterations. It becomes very clear to all — to those doing the revision, to those
following the revisions, to the decision -makers — exactly what's being changed, and what's not. In
terms of policy, this is the honest way to revise an existing code. In terms of cost, it is the most
economical since one isn't composing changes willy-nilly, but responding to the existing document's
template, thereby reducing waste work.
Consider the alternative being proposed by the consultant. Instead of starting with the existing
document which is to be updated and using that as a policy template for many layers of sequential
iterative changes, we instead just start composing a new document, without following an already -
adopted template. This new text is then presented to the public and to decision -makers for approval,
even though in the absence of a legislative draft nobody has a clue what's actually being changed,
then, as a final step to make things look pretty, the tentatively -adopted new text is somehow
interpolated into a template that was not previously used to guide the development of the new text.
This is form without substance (putting lipstick on a pig), a recipe for bad policy-making and for
abundant mischief. It also clearly would cost a lot more than using an iterative legislative draft
approach used to guide and test changes from the beginning of the process.
In conclusion: A legislative draft approach from the very beginning is the most disciplined,
transparent, honest, and superior way to perform this incremental revision of the zoning code. It
should also be the most economical method, as it eliminates the waste of drafting new text in the
abstract then having to figure out how to insert it into the existing document to make a fake legislative
draft, and also eliminates the waste of pursuing tangents that ultimately go nowhere.
For anyone to claim this disciplined, economical -of -effort approach would cost more than the willy-
nilly approach talking nonsense.
2. A second;point.is this is exactly the sort of work that should be done in-house, by our own
staff. Hiring a consultant is unnecessary, and simply drives up costs, as staff will have to constantly
be telling the consultant what to do. So why not have staff just do the work?
Prior to the beatification of the consultant in very recent years, such work was customarily done in
house, and it was done very well, since the staff are close to the subject matter.
When I was on the Planning Commission and we began updating the Land Use and Circulation
Elements, ALL that work was done quite competently in house, by staff and the commissioners
themselves. The result was a superior document that all the commissioners were willing to stand
behind not by majority vote, but by consensus.
When some political provocateurs sought to derail that general plan update, it went through another
iteration, this time again by staff and by two advisory bodies of mere mortal citizens.
And when that blew up, it went through a third iteration, this time authored by mere citizens with a bit
of staff advice.
And out of that came the 1994 general plan, which was an excellent document, that cost taxpayers
next to nothing, and was so thoroughly vetted by citizens that there was public trust behind it.
This is so in contrast to the huge monetary cost and huge loss of citizen buy -in and trust that the
proposed consultancy would likely produce.
The update needs to be done in house, with full citizen participation, to assure a respectable level of
public trust. A consultant not answerable to the public directly in all likelihood can never achieve the
needed level of trust.
(As a management observation, one has to note that whenever some work needs to be done,
management today turns to a consultant, spending million$$ per year on consultants, rather than
letting staff do it. This is a bad habit many in the community are questioning, but it's also bad for staff,
as it gives the public the impression we're paying them for nothing since all major work gets farmed
out, so why should we continue paying them well at all? If you love your staff, have them do this sort
of work and prove their worth, so they can preserve their jobs.)
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt