Zoning and Design Guidelines Do Not Provide the Protection Many Believe
The Vanguard has argued the need for the city to first update what appear to be outdated guidelines, rather than approving Trackside and continuing with a patchwork approach to planning and hit-and-miss exemptions to zoning and other guidelines.
The Old East Davis Neighborhood Association points out – and I think correctly – that Trackside represents a violation of the design guidelines for the city.
“It doesn’t fit the design guidelines that are intended to make a transition from our traditional neighborhood into the downtown core area,” Rhonda Reed said in an interview with a local media 
outlet.
Indeed, the city’s guidelines for 3rd Street describe that a mix of “commercial and traditional residential building types is appropriate in this area.” It also states that “two- and three- story buildings should predominate.”
City staff argued at the Planning Commission hearing that these are only “guidelines” or “suggestions.”
Ash Feeney, Assistant Director of Community Development and Sustainability, attempted to clarify the design guidelines process, noting that the “proposed design guidelines do not prescribe specific architectural styles or images, nor do they encourage direct imitation of the past or radical departure from the existing design context.”
He said the “guidelines describe a preferred policy direction but are intended to provide flexibility.” He argued that the “project is substantially consistent with Design Guidelines.”
On the Special Character Area of Third Street, he noted, “Two- and three-story buildings should predominate,” which he later argued by no means precluded a four-story building. “It does anticipate a vision for greater heights,” Mr. Feeney explained.
But it turns out, as Mayor Pro Tem Brett Lee pointed out last week, these arguments represent largely a false hope. Even if the Neighborhood Association is substantially correct in their interpretation of the design guidelines, the city council simply has the ability to override and amend them – on the fly.
“I would like to add a caution, it sometimes surprises people – the zoning is the zoning until the city council changes the zoning,” the mayor pro tem explained during the Vanguard Conclave last Wednesday. “Sometimes we feel that there’s certainty because of the zoning and because of the design guidelines, essentially three city council members can change that.
“This is a very important piece because a lot of people spend a lot of time working on the General Plan and they’ll spend a lot of time on this updated form-based code for the Core Area Specific Plan, but ultimately you need council members who will agree to follow what’s been worked on,” he continued.
He then brought up the most pertinent example.
“We have some good examples of that and we have some not so good examples of that. I think Maynard Skinner is here, I thought he was here, and he’ll be happy to share his thoughts on what happened with Mission Residence,” Brett Lee explained. “That’s a good example of where the neighbors in the core area had come up with a fairly recent review and plan for what that neighborhood should look like and it was not adhered to by the council majority.”
Mission Residence, in my view, represented one of the more egregious moves the city has done with respect to ignoring agreed-upon design guidelines.
The problem here is not that the project is bad – it is a good densification infill project, that, taken alone and in isolation, would provide a great model going forward for an efficient use of space.
The problem is that there was a tremendous and egregious abuse of process to get to approval.
The city went through an extensive visioning process for B Street. The process included a large amount of community feedback and extensive community buy in – give and take and compromise.
This wasn’t a 20-year-old planning document, this was an agreement that was completed in 2008 and the project was approved in 2013. Five years.
This is an egregious lesson because, once again, we have council asking the public to weigh in on a Core Area Specific Plan process but, just four years ago, we see what the city did with respect to the B Street Visioning Process.
We want public participation, we want public buy-in, but if the city is simply willing to throw out the agreements without even a reasonable showing of change in circumstances, it will undermine that process. What incentive do residents have to compromise if the city is not willing to stick to their bargains and agreements?
The Old East Davis neighbors have complained about Trackside, but in a way Trackside is fairly reasonable compared to what happened with Mission Residence where the council on a 4-1 vote simply disregarded the agreement from a few years before.
And that’s the problem we face – we have a system where any agreement can be thrown out with three votes. Brett Lee has this one right, and in the end there will be little Old East Davis can do to change that.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
So… into the new Downtown Core Area Plan and others we build in a requirement for Council consensus on non-adherence on the new Davis Downtown (Form-based) Code (that was decided by Council majority vote)? (I assume that this is Brett Lee’s implicit intent…)
The problem as I see it is that anything they can pass can be undone by three votes. Now one place that Brett didn’t go is the idea of codifying some of these codes through referendum.
And as to,
is potentially scary proposition… do you mean just zoning codes, or all codes?…
Thoughtful consideration is not an essential attribute, for what sometimes becomes, the ‘tyranny of the majority’…
The referendum process exists… were you suggesting ‘pre-approval’ by voters?
My point is not one of advocacy, but part of the problem you have right now is that the position of the city is that codes are guidelines and the council can simply use three votes to changes zoning or design guidelines, so if you are concerned about how the city operates, you only have one real recourse which is to take the power away from the council to change things on the fly. You rightly point out there is a downside to that, but guess what, there is a downside to the current system too.
So your goal is to get rid of our elected representatives and have the public vote directly on all issues that you deem important?
A more rational approach is to realize that zoning regulations and design guidelines are tools that we use to guide the evolution of the City, not the end products that need to be protected. When your chosen tool does not fit the job at hand, you change to a different one. Your approach assumes that if you only have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
Mark did you not read the first sentence I wrote: “my point is not advocacy” so when you say “your goal is to get rid of…” you are false. I have no such goal. My only goal is to explain to people that these rules that they think are guiding policy, actually aren’t.
They are real policy, but in real time… stuff happens… policies need to adapt to internal/external realities… not by whim, but exercising reason and judgement…
This is the problem that you have with Trackside. You have a bunch of neighbors saying, hey wait a second these guidelines are being violated. You have the city staff saying, oh those are just guidelines. And the council saying, hey we can do whatever we want with three votes (which they pretty much can). That’s why Harrington’s suit had no chance, the city could always change the Affordable Housing ordinance with three votes.
So you may want something to be flexible and adapt in real time but there are people in this community who want to know what the rules are and have them mean something and my only point here is that if that’s the case, there is really only one answer.
They are guiding policy, but the reality is that the world changes faster than the planning documents, and consequently, the CC needs to have the flexibility to respond. What you, and Tia, et al. are proposing is to take away the ability of the CC to respond to the changes going on around us. That approach, quite frankly, is short sighted and foolish. State law allows for amendments to all zoning regulations for a very rational reason. You either don’t understand that reasoning, or you don’t care. Either way, what you are proposing will harm the City.
Key word is “something”… not ‘absolute’…
If some folk want to politic for something, and have it be etched in stone… I care not for those views…
There are some basics… and by myth/legend/history, they are indeed etched in stone… think there are ten of them… they do indeed mean something…
Building heights/density not so much…
Mark: Once again, not proposing or recommending it as a course of action.
Mark
“So your goal is to get rid of our elected representatives and have the public vote directly on all issues that you deem important.”
Not at all.
I believe in equal treatment for all by our elected officials. I believe that there is a third way. We have two seats coming available on the City Council. One way to achieve a paradigm shift from the “count to three” process we have now would be for candidates to step forward who pledge to not over ride the new zoning and design guidelines that will be a consequence of the upcoming visioning process. That would provide certainty to all members of the community that the agreed upon plan will provide rules which apply to all, not provide a separate set of rules for those well connected enough, socially, economically, ideologically or politically to persuade three council members to vote in their favor. There is precedent in our community for paradigm shift. Two examples come readily to mind for me. The first was when Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson agreed not to accept bundled contributions from specific employee unions. The second was when Robb Davis actively advocated for restorative justice. Both actions made fundamental changes to the way major aspects of our community function.
These kins of changes in previously accepted practice are possible. I would like to see two such changes with regard to city planning.
1. A stop to the “rewriting of rules on the fly” which potentially advantages one set of city investors by changing the rules at the cost to another who have also made major investments in accordance with the “rules”.
2. I would argue that city council members have the ability to encourage developers indirectly to work with the close neighbors and community at large by making it known that they will not consider projects that have not adhered to a collaborative process before being brought forward.This is not impossible and I would hold the Lincoln 40 project up as an example of a pre project submission collaborative approach which is still ongoing as I write.
There is an alternative… are all familiar (and as all ‘citizens’ should be) as to the vote counts required to change the US constitution?
“One way to achieve a paradigm shift from the “count to three” process we have now would be for candidates to step forward who pledge to not over ride the new zoning and design guidelines that will be a consequence of the upcoming visioning process.”
I for one would not support such a candidate. A bureaucrat in a leadership position? No, thank you. What I expect from my leaders is for them to exercise their judgement, in the best interest of the community, based on their values. Our current mayor, for example, likely would have flunked your litmus test, Tia.
In all honesty, Trackside is the “worst of the bunch” (in terms of immediate neighbor impact), compared to Hyatt, Sterling, and even the B Street developments.
Make it 3-stories (as allowed by the guidelines), and move on. End of “controversy”. Why all the “hand-wringing”, over something so simple?
In all honesty, you’re suffering from recency effect.
Why all the “hand-wringing”, over something so simple?”
Because what is simple to you, turns out to just be your opinion and not necessarily one that is universally shared.
I strongly suspect that I’ve been following (and commenting on) growth/development issues in Davis longer than you have.
Yes, there’s often more than one opinion.