City Pares Down Costs of Proposed General Plan, But Still Doesn’t Get it

So the staff is looking at creating a general plan update program that can adapt the tasks to the current fiscal situation.

“Sensitivity to budgets. The program would allow for an evaluation of budgets and funds after the first year, and again after the second year. The program is intended to limit costs in the first two years in recognition of current budgets.

Phases. The program would be broken into phases of: Year 1; Year 2; and Years 3 – 4.”

The years would be broken up as follows.

In the first year they would amend the General Plan text to incorporate current planning efforts which would include a housing resolution, climate action plan, business park land strategies, and parks master plan and sports park studies.  Second they would review the existing document to “review policies and actions to determine if some are no longer useful or need updating / amendment” but also evaluate whether the overall document could be shortened without losing core content and determine if priorities can be assigned to actions in the plan.  Further they would look at senior needs that include housing, transportation, recreation, and social services.  A reconciliation of the General Plan update with the Measure J renewal would ensure consistency.

From one standpoint most of this is already being done (or in the case of Measure J likely will be done) in one form or another.  So if the plan is to take existing work in these areas and amend the General Plan with those aforementioned changes then it seems perfectly reasonable to proceed.  If the plan however, is to reinvent the wheels and do something wholly new, that does not make a lot of sense at this time.

If the plan stopped at Year 1 and incorporated existing work into it, it would in general be acceptable.  The city just underwent a rather lengthy Housing Element Update process.   A number of housing options were identified, and certainly the scope of that plan far exceeds the five year time horizon it represents.  In other words, when we go down the list and get to No.20, we are not going to have developed twenty properties within five years.  There was a good deal of detail and work involved in that process, and those comments do not expire in 2013 even if the plan itself does.  Certainly given the housing situation, the decline in housing demand, and other issues, that plan is adequate at least through its expiration date of 2013 (still four years away) and probably longer.

If the city wants to incorporate existing work on issues such climate change and senior needs, work that is already being done independent of this process, there is no objection.  However, beginning in Year 2 and extending through Year 3 and 4, it moves from short-term and intermediate-term concerns to long range concerns.

Year 2:

“The key task in the second year would be a 2035 community visioning process and preparations for addressing important long-range issues in the third year.”

Year 3-4

“The key task in the third and fourth years would be to address important long range issues. Such issues are to be determined but may be those issues identified in the housing resolution and at the Council study session on February 10, 2009.”

For me there are a number of reasons I think we can still utilize the basic framework of the existing general plan.  If we are looking at year 1, most of that is really about updating the general plan.  I think that is largely okay.  What I do not see the need to do is create a whole new document.  If we want to incorporate things such as climate change and senior needs into the existing document, that is fine.  If we believe aspects of the current general plan are outdated, then we should update them or fix them.

There has been a long focus on 2035 as a time horizon.  I fully understand the desire to plan the community long term, I just think now is not the time to do that.

The world is changing very rapidly.  I do not know what the world is going to really look like in five years, let alone 25 years.

First, right now we are the middle of the most serious recession since the Great Depression.  People are throwing the word depression around .  We have suffered through a housing crisis caused by a rash of foreclosures that will likely bring about permanent changes in credit and lending policies.  That may forever change the housing market.  But right now, we do not really know what changes that will bring.

Should we be planning for a 2006 housing model in 2011?   Do we even know what that will look like right now in 2009? What will the housing model look like in 2013?  On the one hand, people will argue we are looking at properties not housing developments, but by the same token, the realities of the new world will determine how, where, how much, and when we develop.  Maybe we ought to wait to see the situation stabilize before we proceed planning into the future using present money and time and resources.

Second, along the same lines what is the economy going to look like?  We have relied upon the engines of economic growth for a long time.  It gives us the capacity to purchase bigger and bigger homes.  But that may be incompatible with new realities which we do not really know or understand, and really may not know within the time frame of this plan.  Again, cause for caution and patience.  I ask over and over again, why does that this need to occur now rather than in two years, five years, even ten years?  What necessitates this immediate time horizon is it really planning concerns or is it political concerns?

Third, we have the issue of global warming.  Davis is starting to address global warming.  I applaud some of those efforts even while I criticize Davis for thinking old school in its development.  The same people who are pushing for a climate action model are also bringing Target into Davis.  Those are incompatible.  Target is the kind of commerce that was the culprit for Global Warming. 

People believe Global Warming prevention begins and ends with where consumers have to go to get the products rather than how the products were produced and how far they had to go to get to the consumers.  The amount of energy to produce and transport these products outweighs the amount of effort it takes people to drive to Woodland.  The answer to this is that we need to start thinking about changing our consumption habits.  No one wants to deal with that reality.  We just like the idea that we can bike in town to our Target to save gas without considering the energy it takes to get the products to town.

The realities of transportation and commerce may change dramatically in the next ten years.  We are trying to hit a moving target (no pun intended) by trying to vision our community 25 years into the future.

These are just a few uncertainties.  We may develop a plan and spend money and resources and have it be obsolete even before it is complete.  If I saw a compelling to do a new General Plan, I could understand the push to do it now.  Right now I see no reason it has to be now rather than in five years when the current HESC study expires–except that the current council majority wishes to leave its mark on the city and will not be on the council in five years.

So my recommendation is that we could really do year one as we are doing it anyway.  We can use the Housing Element that was just completed and make some modifications for senior needs, climate change, and transportation and call it a general plan update and have it done within a year.

I do not see this as the time to look twenty-five years into the future.  If we do that we may plan for the Jetson’s future and end up in the Walton’s society.