Tensions between the Palo Alto City Council and the influential Planning and Transportation Commission flared up again this week after council members rejected the commission's request for more time in reviewing the city's land-use constitution, the Comprehensive Plan.
The council voted 6-3 on Monday night to deny a request from planning commissioners for a 120-day review period of the document, which the city has been updating for nearly a decade. The commission also requested that the review period begin in September to better comport to commissioners' vacation schedules, a request that council rejected as well.
Instead, the council directed the commission to complete its review within 90 days, as originally prescribed, with the review period kicking off in the beginning of July. While council members Karen Holman, Tom DuBois and Lydia Kou all supported giving the commission more time for its review and moving the schedule to accommodate them, the majority opted for the more expedited timeline.
DuBois said the council "should respect the PTC's request and give them some additional time." But Mayor Greg Scharff and Vice Mayor Liz Kniss both said they'd like to see the update completed at the end of this year. Scharff noted that planning commission Chair Michael Alcheck has offered an assurance that the work can be completed within the 90-day period.
"They have July, August and September, that's more than enough time to have enough meetings on this issue and to delve into it," Scharff said.
Kniss urged her colleagues to resist the temptation to "push it off a little further."
"I really feel committed to getting it done this year," Kniss said. "I think it's important for us to finally deliver something that's over and done with."
The vote triggered an immediate backlash during the commission's Wednesday meeting, with two members suggesting that the group simply take a pass on reviewing the document. Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel and Ed Lauing both said that the council's directive makes it impossible for the body to adequately review the document.
Lauing noted that the draft plan had already been vetted by the Citizen Advisory Committee and the council. He questioned the usefulness of having commission review the entire document in a "very time-compressed scenario." A more useful process, he said, would be to have members work on actual zoning upgrades.
"We should take the option of saying, 'We don't need to do the report, we need to work on implementation as it applies to necessary code change,'" Lauing said.
Waldfogel said it's "unreasonable" for the council to expect the commission to take up the topic in July and August with any intensity. Even though the commission, unlike the council, doesn't take July off, individual commissioners often take trips during the summer. Waldfogel said that he has "both personal and work travel booked during that period."
"I just think given all these dimensions, if the council is intent on having a response in 90 days after they submit (the document) to us at the end of June, our best alternative is just to say we can't issue a meaningful report or a meaningful analysis in that period."
Alcheck rejected that view and said his biggest takeaway from Waldfogel's and Lauing's memo is that "it seems a bit rude."
"You're basically saying (to the Council), 'We don't want to participate in the process, despite your repeated requests and instead we'd prefer to criticize it after the fact.'"
Alcheck also rejected Waldfogel's argument about commissioners' summer vacations, and noted that the commission only needs a quorum to proceed with its review.
"There's seven of us," Alcheck said. "As long as we have four (present), we can proceed."
The commission ultimately voted 4-2, with Przemek Gardias and Waldfogel dissenting and Susan Monk absent, to accept the assignment and move ahead with a 90-day schedule that includes six meetings. The commission also agreed to revise the scope of its review so that it would focus almost entirely on the Land Use and Transportation chapters, to the exclusion of other sections of the plan.
Lauing ultimately supported the 90-day review period, despite a council-imposed timeline that he called "arbitrary." Gardias said speeding ahead with the review is "risky" and said the council's decision to insist on a "rigid timeframe" positions the commission for failure.
Gardias also noted that the specially appointed Citizens Advisory Committee had spent more than a year putting the updated document together. And City Council has been reviewing the document, chapter by chapter, since the beginning of the year before voting this week to forward it to the commission.
"I thought that, professionally, there should have been an effort to rely on our perspective on how much time it would take for us to review the Comprehensive Plan," Gardias said.
Members of the council, for their part, recognized before the vote that if the commission fails to complete its work in 90 days, it can always seek an extension.
"If we schedule it for seven months, it won't be any sooner than seven months," Councilman Eric Filseth said. "Whereas if we stick to the current schedule and the PTC gets halfway through it and goes, 'Woah! It's going to take a lot more time than we thought!,' we'll always have the latitude to move out the dates."
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Comments
Downtown North
on Jun 15, 2017 at 5:56 pm
on Jun 15, 2017 at 5:56 pm
So glad Mike is moving this along. We just spend way too much time rehashing the same stuff. Just finish the process and let's get the new regulations in place already! We are years overdue on this.
Charleston Gardens
on Jun 15, 2017 at 6:08 pm
on Jun 15, 2017 at 6:08 pm
Shame on those members of the City Council who keep rushing us into unsupportable growth without adequately or sensibly considering what they're actually doing and what it will cost.
More gridlock, more underparked buildings, more erroneous traffic studies conducted at the lightest times, more parking wars, more cars stuck in the intersections, more rushed plans for ADUs with no occupancy limits or rent control...
Community Center
on Jun 15, 2017 at 8:14 pm
on Jun 15, 2017 at 8:14 pm
the fact that 2 commissioners-- Waldfogel and Gardias-- claimed that they couldn't do the review in 90 days is weak. They're planning and transportation commissioners. They should be well informed on the comprehensive plan process throughout the last couple of years. There shouldn't be much that is unfamiliar to them. They can certainly comment on the work in the next 3 months.
Furthermore, the super-majority of the commission disagreed with them.
I'm glad to see the commissioners step up to do their job for the city.
Downtown North
on Jun 15, 2017 at 8:30 pm
on Jun 15, 2017 at 8:30 pm
Send the #%& mess back to the drawing board. Our starstruck planning staff let it languish while they played footsie in private with John Arriaga over 27 University. A couple months more won't matter. City hall will ignore its inconvenient provisions either way.
Community Center
on Jun 16, 2017 at 9:39 am
on Jun 16, 2017 at 9:39 am
Allow me to offer more comprehensive perspective to this topic. Discussion
related to the review of Comprehensive plan hinges on two different legal
options for Comprehensive plan update: Council or PTC led. First one
governed with Government Code sections 65511 through 65513, second one with
Government Code sections 65501 through 65510. While both options are viable
in the PAMC, it also includes provision stating that "The planning
commission shall have the primary duty to prepare, adopt and recommend to
the city council for their adoption, a long-range, comprehensive general
plan" (Section 19.04.010 of PAMC), to my understanding enacted by Palo Alto
voters.
Fulfillment of the above obligation and desire to provide best advice on any
matter pertaining to land use planning and transportation systems affecting
the city, as requested by the city council, are the true drivers behind the
worries to meet this responsibility within 90 days. It needs to be mentioned
that 90 days period is an artificial one, and is not related to any
assessment of the scope of work. Council's preference to lead the
Comprehensive plan, to my understanding, limits the PTC's primary duty to
prepare the plan. However, the PTC remains Palo Alto expertise center on
city planning and transportation. and if it was for this reason only, it
should be granted sufficient time to provide quality advise.
PA Council's preference for 90 days review has been communicated to the PTC
just recently, after long separation from the Comprehensive Plan process.
Giving 10 years in the making, 18 months of Citizen's Advisory Committee
detailed work, Council's reviews, PTC is simply not up to date on the
content of Comprehensive plan.
There is also risk of using the review process to force agenda of influence
groups over planning and transportation considerations. Recent hearings on
Accessory Dwelling Units and Ground Floor Retail are examples, where PTC
rescinded professional discussion only to advance shallowly discussed
topics. As I pointed out in my letter to the Council and to my PTC
colleagues, it is the Council, an elected body, where such agendas should be
advanced, leaving PTC free of such discussions and to focus on planning and
transportation related arguments. Hoping for professional discussion, we
need time to prepare, think through our arguments, exchange them and find
common ground. Such discussion needs to be respectful to the consensus
achieved by the CAC and City Council. It may take more than 90 days to
embrace all programs and policies in the Comprehensive plan.
In my opinion those are the true professional reasons to grant PTC sufficient time.
Despite sustained 90 day restriction, I am deeply convinced that all the
commissioners will contribute their best to this process.
Old Palo Alto
on Jun 18, 2017 at 10:23 am
on Jun 18, 2017 at 10:23 am
"There's seven of us," Alcheck said. "As long as we have four (present), we can proceed." The time includes vacation periods so it is much shorter than it appears.
Grammatical mistakes aside, Mr Alcheck prefers a smaller group so he can push it in his big-development direction. With Kniss and Scharff supporting him, he has become more vocally aggressive.
I miss some of his snarky, unprofessional remarks because he often does not speak into the microphone. He doesn't care that the public doesn't hear, in fact, it's probably intentional.
Charleston Meadows
on Jun 18, 2017 at 12:11 pm
on Jun 18, 2017 at 12:11 pm
Remind me again why this Los Altos hyper-developer is a PA commissioner!
Web Link
Los Altos official blasts Palo Alto planning commissioner
Original post made by My Nguyen, Old Palo Alto, on Dec 9, 2014
Palo Alto planning Commissioner Michael Alcheck is perhaps the city's most strident advocate of growth, but his pro-development message proved to be a hard sell at the Dec. 4 meeting of the Los Altos Planning and Transportation Commission, which was reviewing a mixed-use development in the Loyola Corners area where he works. After more than a dozen speakers criticized the proposal, Alcheck said the opposition "is exaggerating every angle here because they oppose change." "They hear the word 'developer' and they start picketing,'" Alcheck said. In response, Commissioner Ken Lorell said it was "really amusing to me that a member of the Palo Alto planning commission would come here and lecture us on how we should build our buildings when the stuff that has been going on in Palo Alto is absolutely amazing." The commission ultimately turned the project down.