Analysis: Should the City Undertake a New Citizen-Based General Plan Update?

covell_village-600The city of Davis has been undergoing major changes in the last year or two.  As the city undergoes a change of direction on economic development, it needs to reach some sort of consensus on future growth and the issues of affordable housing, infill and peripheral development.  Now might be the right time to approach the question about a General Plan update.

Like so many things, the past council and city management made some critical errors in their approach to the last General Plan.  The result was that, while they may have been able to ram through the process by a 3-2 vote, there was not a community consensus of backing for them.

From our standpoint in February 2009, the city made two critical errors.  While city staff wrote at the time, “Staff recommends that the Council determine what kind of a General Plan update is wanted/needed while being sensitive to the difficult budget conditions the City faces,” the price tag they put on the effort that would have been led by professional consultants ranged from $1 million to $4 million, with the expectation that a “typical cost” would be between $1.5 and $2.5 million.

Given the decline of the city’s economy at that time, that was a tall task and it would only get worse.   Ultimately, the cost was probably the chief reason that the process was dropped by the city.

But there is a secondary reason.  Many citizens who worked on the previous General Plan looked upon their work with pride.  It was a citizen-based General Plan.

However, the staff report denigrated that work.  While the stengths included the fact that it was comprehensive, addressed and contained “smart growth principles,” and was citizen-based, city staff criticized the previous General Plan as being long and unfocused.

They wrote, “The lengthy document of almost 400 pages and 1,000 goals, policies and standards is difficult to use and focus on overall themes, key issues and trade-offs. The connections between the plan’s general visions and principles and more specific implementing actions are not always clear. Policies related to sustainability are not well coordinated.”

Moreover, they added that it was “not clear in its guidance of how the community should evolve in the long term, particularly in terms of residential and non-residential growth.”

Bottom line, staff’s approach here offended many that worked hard on the previous plan and looked upon it with pride.

Former Councilmember Sue Greenwald would argue, “Personally I think there’s no reason to spend 1-2 million dollars that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel when the wheel that we already have is a Michelin. Yes, it would cost 1-3 million dollars to do a comprehensive General Plan. Sometimes discretion is the better form of valor.”

She added, “We have an extremely high quality advance General Plan, we don’t need a new General Plan right now. Our General Plan is what other cities are trying to do. When you hear other cities are doing a General Plan, they are trying to do one similar to the one that we have now.”

And cost was a critical factor, as well, she said.  “We can save 1 to 3 million dollars by re-adopting our current plan in essentially similar form. The Housing Element Update which is our legal requirement is good until 2013.”

Meanwhile, Don Saylor followed or perhaps directed staff’s criticism of the citizen-based General Plan.

“I think the General Plan is, as our staff has said, long and unfocused. It is not clear in its guidance. It does not provide for reliable projects for financial and infrastructure planning,” he said. “It requires us to have constitutional crisis over any project that comes before us. It has a lack of coordination with UC Davis plans and is not in sync with the state requirements, some of them are still shaping on climate change, water supply, environmental justice and other issues.”

In the end, the idea of a new General Plan at that time was ultimately scrapped.

But there may be a new opportunity to renew the process.  It would have to be a citizen-based approach, that accounts for the viewpoints of a wide spectrum of different views.  One of the reasons behind the arguments is that the General Plan in 2009 was questioned with differences between the land use values of the majority on the council and that of the citizens.

So what would the community think of a new citizen-based process?  First of all, the city has an immense range of talent on staff right now.  City Manager Steve Pinkerton, Planning Director Mike Webb, and Chief Innovation Officer Rob White all have considerable land use experience.

The city has the expertise to allow staff, rather than paid outside consultants, to direct the effort.

Second, some of these processes are already under way in other forms – we have had task forces that have looked into business parks, we have the work of the Housing Element Steering committee from five years ago, much of which has not even been touched, and we have the work on parking and the downtown.  We would need additional work to bring all of this together into a cohesive document that can lay out the vision for our community.

By including a wide range of citizens we could ensure that this is a collective and joint vision for our community, rather than a vision shared by three on a council majority that, while elected by the public, was often at odds with the public’s views on land use.

By keeping the development in-house and under the direction of city staff, we would eliminate the huge price tag.  Because a lot of the work has already been done, the biggest task would simply be to bring it all together into a shared vision.

Of course, on the one hand and as we have laid out this week, we have a lot on our plate.  On the other hand, in a way we are spinning our wheels if we are trying to develop housing at the same time as looking at Cannery, Nishi, Mace Curve and other parcels for potential business development, if we do not have a vision and a plan to go forward more cohesively.

Our question to the community then is whether the time to do this is right now.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

Related posts

21 Comments

  1. JustSaying

    I’m not sure that the views that Saylor and and others made amount to denigration of the well-meaning citizens and those who guided the process. The criticism seems mild, in fact, if the observations are accurate.

    A 400-page “plan” that lists 1,000 goals, policies and standards definately is guilty as charged and very well could lack focus. But, this is a failing of the staff and contractors who who facilitated the participants.

    A general plan that doesn’t provide clear direction for dealing with potential developments isn’t of much practical use, regardless of how citizen-based and comprehensive it is. A flat Michelin is no better than a flat Firestone.

    Maybe the plan could be “updated” or refined by taking one more step with it and the many commission proposals that have been developed since. Coming to agreement on what should stand as a general plan from a long list of generally great ideas is the most difficult part of a planning process, however.

    Sue mentioned that the housing element “is good until 2913.” Do we really have the option to put this off?

  2. David M. Greenwald

    “I’m not sure that the views that Saylor and and others made amount to denigration of the well-meaning citizens and those who guided the process. The criticism seems mild, in fact, if the observations are accurate.”

    The point isn’t whether the comments were meant to be or were objectively denigrating, my point was that part of the effect of them was that there was distrust of the process which led to objections and ultimately the process failing to move forward.

    What I’m suggesting here is going back to the approach of a citizens-based plan with help and direction from staff rather than outside consultants.

  3. David M. Greenwald

    Mr. Bisch is having trouble posting (is anyone else?)

    He asked me to post this for him.

    —-

    1. The Sue Greenwald quote is quite ironic. There’s very little evidence that she was guided by the GP during her last term in office. It was all about the Sue Greenwald plan.

    2. Whatever his motivations, do you disagree with the Saylor quote above, David?

    3. The current GP, along with the underlying Specific Plans, arguably “accounts for the viewpoints of a wide spectrum of different views.” That’s what makes the Saylor quote accurate. Many of the principals in the current plans are in conflict with one another leaving the Council to thrash around trying to figure out which principal to elevate, all the while narrowly focused interest groups are agitating for their pet principal to be elevated, ignoring the others, and paying no attention whatsoever to the larger vision. It seems to me, Robb Davis’ article from yesterday partially addressed this dysfunctional dynamic.

    -Michael Bisch

  4. David M. Greenwald

    My answer to Michael is that I don’t know that Mr. Saylor was wrong on that point, but I think the process from a number of angles was not done correctly and that ultimately led to the downfall of it.

  5. Davis Progressive

    a lot of people like to focus on side issues, to me the key question is what does a general plan gain us and what process do we need to pursue for maximum benefit?

  6. Frankly

    I don’t understand. Why in this most educated little city in the world of top-heavy, over-compensated, government labor, do we need to spend $1.5 – $2 million on consulting to develop a general plan?

    Heck, why not make it a graduate project for the university? I am guessing that those smart graduate students would do it for free. We could pay for a mentoring consultant at a price that I am guessing would by quite a bit less than $1.5 million.

  7. David M. Greenwald

    “I don’t understand. Why in this most educated little city in the world of top-heavy, over-compensated, government labor, do we need to spend $1.5 – $2 million on consulting to develop a general plan?”

    We don’t. That’s what the proposal was in 2009. What I’m proposing in a citizens based approach with in-house staff that shouldn’t cost much at all.

  8. Frankly

    I agree with you.

    I have a lot of experience with doing organizational strategic and project planning. But nothing that comes close to having to deal with this large and diverse of a group of stakeholders.

    But I would start the process by designing a “community values” survey to send out to the residents of the city to get bottom-up feedback. I would provide that survey in paper form, and also provide a link to a website where it can be completed online from a smartphone, tablet or computer.

    We do a lot of second-guessing about the opinions of the population. I would collect those opinions as a prerequisite to the planning process so that we have understanding ad credibility related to the TRUE opinions of the population.

    My guess is that there will be a lot of conflict over what questions we would ask and how those questions would be worded. But assuming we do it right, once collect and report the results, it should help leaders beat back all those with a blocking agenda.

  9. Ryan Kelly

    I’m not willing to spend millions on an outside consultant to create this plan or run the process. If this money is available, then I’d like to give it to the Planning department and have our City staff do the work (hire additional help, if needed).

    Whatever the plan, you know that there will be people who aggressively attack, threaten to file lawsuits, etc. Some of this money should be set aside to deal with those now predictable actions.

  10. JustSaying

    “…the staff report denigrated that work.”

    That’s where I got the idea that you thought criticisms of the GP “denegrated” the work the citizens performed. I just don’t think the comments rise to that level any more than your criticisms of the plan and the process do. In fact, all the criticisms (including yours) seam reasonable; whether we need an update now seems to be the question.

    Maybe your conclusion (“Bottom line, staff’s approach here offended many that worked hard on the previous plan and looked upon it with pride.”) isn’t as serious a problem as you think. The only one you cite who might have been offended is Sue. And, one has to wonder how much her opinion should weigh if she got the housing element update legal requirement wrong.

    It appears you agree that the current plan has shortcomings but don’t want to give the staff and the always obnoxious Don Sayler credit for having similar views.

  11. Don Shor

    The Housing Element Steering Committee was an outstanding example of a group of people with disparate views working together, getting excellent public input, and producing a very useful and credible document. That could be a model for how to run a General Plan update. I think Frankly’s idea of a community survey is also very good.

  12. Michael Harrington

    I would suggest just leaving the current plan in place. It’s the least-cost solution, and besides, anything really interesting in town at this point involves the Con Agra, Nishi, and other exterior sites proposed for development, and they will all be on the ballot anyway. Let the people vote!

    A GP update means spending massive amounts of General Fund money. In contrast, the developers of any large projects have to pay the full cost of the studies, staff processing time, and ballot costs.

    (I know some believe a 3/2 vote of the CC is going to be enough to approve Con Agra, but I dont think so. Time will tell whether the referendum qualifies. If it’s on the ballot, I am 90% confident that the project goes down.)

  13. Frankly

    Funny. I try to guess the author when I read the email alert for a new post. Nailed for Mike!

    Here are some examples of a Community Values Survey

    [url]http://www.largo.com/egov/apps/document/center.egov?view=item;id=8775[/url]

    [url]http://www.juneau.org/cddftp/documents/CommunityValuesSurveyFindings.pdf[/url]

    [url]http://www.wellingtonpark.org.au/survey/[/url]

    [url]http://www.lakelandgov.net/Portals/Root/Community Values Survey Resultsbullet.pdf[/url]

  14. Ryan Kelly

    I looked at a few of the surveys. All were about city services and repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure. None included views on development of land, economic development, or direct vs. representative government, so I imagine the results were fairly friendly.

  15. Frankly

    Ryan – I don’t think you looked close enough. These are “value” surveys, not votes on specific projects or policies. All of these were prerequisites for the development of these communities’ general plans.

    For example, we should understand the weighted value of community opinion of the question about jobs, housing supply, and economic development relative to wanting to control the growth of the population, the geographic boundaries and preservation of farm land.

    There is that question about peripheral development verses expansion of the downtown versus no change.

    There needs to be a lot of thought put into designing the survey so that it calculates contrasting and conflicting viewpoints to provide a majority viewpoint. It would also be good to do some demographic filtering… for example, opinions by age and maybe location within the city.

    The way I see it, we all make a lot of assumptions and bloviate about what we believe the value opinions are in Davis. Having the results of a well-done survey will provide input into the planning process, and give planners and designers some direction and leaders some cover for making decisions.

  16. Don Shor

    Well, I wouldn’t want to be on the committee that tries to write the questions for that survey….better hire a consultant for that one! But I still think it’s a good idea.

  17. Edgar Wai

    [quote]Moreover, they added that it was “not clear in its guidance of how the community should evolve in the long term, particularly in terms of residential and non-residential growth.”[/quote]

    I think it is easier to think in terms of a general plan not in terms of a convergent view of the future, but as a list of conditions/standards that the town must not fall below. When that common standard is maintained, the surplus can be spent on developing/upgrading the community, so that the community can evolve without breaking the contract of the common standard.

    The general standards should include items like safety, air quality, noise, and affordability for people who work in Davis. Where such standards are set should primarily be the result of a derivation by principles of ethics and justice (i.e. there is a way to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible a community is based on what it has and what rules and accessibilities its people are subjected to). When those rules are not articulated like the laws of thermodynamics, a community would conduct discussions and surveys with the intention to identify such ethical principles and to make practical decisions.

  18. Mr.Toad

    So in the last few days you have advocated for popular votes on Water, Cannery, Fluoride, plastic bags and now you want a new general plan process centered on public participation. While i think public participation in civic life is a good thing don’t you think this is getting absurd. Many of these demands are being floated without the City Council having done anything at all. In the case of water where the Council has taken action this is the second time water will go to the ballot.

    Why bother with even having a City Council? I’ll tell you why because we are not ruled by a mob. There is in Davis an outspoken minority of people who can’t win a majority at the polls, or at least haven’t in a decade, who refuse to let the popularly elected representatives of the community make decisions they believe are in the best interests of the citizens of Davis. They oppose everything and are educated enough to use the rules of law instead of torches and pitchforks to try and get their way. This editorial and the Vanguard, an organ that gives voice to that minority, advocates not for better process, but instead, for more obstruction.

Leave a Reply

X Close

Newsletter Sign-Up

X Close

Monthly Subscriber Sign-Up

Enter the maximum amount you want to pay each month
$ USD
Sign up for