Council wants more planning oversight

<p>Major development proposals in Petaluma will have their fates decided by the City Council, not advisory committees as proposed under a controversial process, the council decided Monday.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>The decision means large subdivisions — along with projects that require environmental impact reports or fiscal impact studies — will get a council hearing after the lower bodies hash out design and land-use details.</p><p>“As Harry Truman said, the buck stops here,” Councilmember David Glass said, voting with four of his colleagues to reject a recommendation from an advisory committee tasked with updating and improving the city’s zoning regulations.</p><p>As part of its work, the Development Code Advisory Committee recommended that some “conforming” projects meeting city zoning and land-use goals could be approved by the Site Plan and Architectural Review Committee or Planning Commission. Those boards’ members are appointed by the City Council.</p><p>But on a 5-2 vote, council members said the development review process should end with elected leaders.</p><p>“At the end of the day, I do think the elected officials should be the accountable body,” said Councilmember Mike Harris, who joined Glass, Mayor Pamela Torliatt, Vice Mayor Teresa Barrett and Councilmember Tiffany Renée in voting for such a process.</p><p>They asked city staff to craft a new set of development review steps that could include a combined SPARC and Planning Commission hearing for projects. The council may also change the way members of those bodies are appointed to give each council member the power to name someone to each group, rather than the at-large appointments now made by the entire council.</p><p>“If we are willing to combine Planning Commission and SPARC, that certainly streamlines the process,” Torliatt said.</p><p>Council members Mike Healy and David Rabbitt voted against the proposal. Rabbitt, who co-chaired the Development Code Advisory Committee with Barrett, said he was OK with a council-level review being the final step in the review process, but wanted to give the committee time to recommend steps to make that happen before a new policy is adopted.</p><p>A “roles and responsibilities” subcommittee of the larger development code group had crafted a 14-step process for major projects that began with a neighborhood meeting so developers could explain their plans to neighbors of project sites.</p><p>Rabbitt said the step-by-step process was designed to be “front-loaded” with public input so development decisions would be less controversial.</p><p>Harris agreed, saying the new process would “keep the rhetoric down” at hearings because projects would have greater public participation at the beginning.</p><p>Although council members agreed on the need for earlier public participation, they split on the issue of which body has “final say” over large development approvals. The 24-member development code committee itself did not reach consensus on the question.</p><p>“This has been an issue that has very passionate voices on both sides,” Torliatt said.</p><p>The council moved more quickly in confirming its approval for other recommendations from the committee, including the need for a mandatory green building law and a policy for exceptions to the Smart Code that governs building details in the Central Petaluma Specific Plan redevelopment area.</p><p>The council asked its staff for progress reports on the new policies in the next few weeks, but when the rules will take effect is unknown.</p><p>Due to budget cutbacks and layoffs in the community development department, there are few resources for implementing the regulations, city staff said.</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier.com)</p>