A Call to Action
The Downtown Overlay being pushed by the City Council.
An Opportunity to stop the overlay.
There were two major issues that compelled me to run for city council. One was to bring our planning staff back in-house and not have it all outsourced to a private, for-profit consultancy (the M Group), and the other was to stop the overlay that would allow an out-of-scale 6-story hotel to be built in our downtown historic district (which violates current historic regulations), as well as allow additional high-rises to be built throughout our downtown.
During the campaign, all 7 candidates for city council vowed to bring planning back in-house. Recently I heard that Alex DeCarli wanted to bring up fulfilling that promise, to which Brian Barnacle responded that it was “too expensive” to bring the planning back in-house. Brian’s commitment to bringing our planning department back in house was apparently a lie, one of many in his campaign.
The other big issue to my mind is to stop the downtown overlay. My prediction is that the city council will approve it by a 5 to 2 vote tonight (although I heard they are strong-arming the two holdouts to make it unanimous). That starts the clock ticking on two things: one is a deadline to file a lawsuit, and the other is to get enough signatures to put this matter on our next ballot so that it can be voted on by Petalumans in a referendum.
Petaluma Historic Advocates is taking a leading role on this issue and they are going to have a community meeting at the Woman’s Club on Tuesday, February 25th at 6:30 PM (tomorrow). They will probably tell you the results of a poll they conducted, and tell you their plans to stop the overlay, and they will ask for you assistance in organizing against it. I strongly suggest you attend if you are against the EKN hotel and the accompanying rezoning of our historic downtown.
Some of my observations over the past few months.
Did anyone notice Brian Barnacle trying to change course on the proposed overlay such as restricting housing to 4 stories back in November? I think he finally realized the state actually CAN mandate 9 story buildings if we have a 6 story housing limit (which he said was a lie during the campaign). He also proposed changing the density for housing, since he realized that the proposed overlay wouldn’t make 6 story housing units feasible. The city attorney and others dissuaded him from making any changes that would slow down the timeline for getting the overlay approved. He was totally played by the M Group.
Has anyone noticed that there hasn’t been any planning commission meetings since September? I guess there is nothing profitable for the M Group to consider at the moment.
Did you notice that our “Climate Ready” city approved the installation of artificial turf recently? Artificial turf is toxic for our environment and to those who play on it. It is not recyclable and will pollute our environment long after its useful life is over. Brian voted in favor of it.
In Conclusion
In spite of what is happening at the local and national level, in our political system, the people have the ultimate power. We just have to organize.
I won’t be attending tonight’s city council meeting since I think it would be a waste of my time, but if you would like to attend and don’t wish to speak. You can help by signing up for a speaking slot and you can cede your 2 or 3 minutes to others who want to speak longer about the problems with the overlay (you do have to be present to cede your time).
I hope to see many of you at the meeting on the 25th at the Woman’s Club.
Lance