January 15, 2009

Concerned Citizens for Santa Rosa
Issues meeting notes

Our guest at this well-attended meeting was Wayne Goldberg, the city’s Advanced Planning Director. The subject was the recently released draft General Plan update 2035. For financial reasons, the Council last year voted to restrict the update to the state-required Housing Element update, inclusion of some policies regarding climate protection, and inclusion of several already approved special plans.

We asked Wayne to offer a view on what is different about this plan. First, is the “buildout” population for 2035: to 233,500 people versus General Plan 2020, which projected about 205,000 people. All increases are to occur within the current Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which sunsets in 2016 unless a new ballot measure renews it another 20 years.

The second big change is in the Housing Allocation Plan (HAP), which was enacted in the early 1990s to ensure numbers and good distribution around the city of affordable housing. When the Station Area Specific Plan (now in the updated plan draft) was considered, there was a call to a) eliminate the exemption from HAP for mixed-use projects, and b) make the threshold for inclusion of affordable units a “unit-based” rather than parcel size-based figure. Those changes were rejected for just the Station Area Plan, as they were said to be appropriate to be considered for the whole city.

Questions: 1) How did the population number from when the current plan was approved (193,500) creep up to 205,000? Wayne’s answer: When staff examined the densities in approved projects they found greater than expected densities, housing more residents.

2) Should there be a commercial linkage fee to assist in affordable housing, along with the HAP? Wayne: “A previous Council asked for studies on this, received them and never voted on it.” Currently, Sonoma, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, Cotati and the county have enacted these linkage fees that require commercial and industrial projects to pay into the Housing Trust fees to support housing for the types of employees they’ll have.

The draft Plan will be presented on 3/26 to Planning Commission. The draft EIR on this draft plan will be out in mid-March. City Council hearing on 6/2, with submittal to the state required by 6/30.

 Anne E. Seeley