Council members embrace need for higher height limits; chickens, bees, trees regulations are fine-tuned; another extension in Old Train Depot talks for new museum; and the most read posts of 2023
Claims that the Council members are concerned about the risk of losing even more local control over future growth ring hollow, because what did they do ... they accepted, without question, a height limit formula pulled out of the air by some unelected Housing and Community Development bureaucrat in Sacramento. The Housing Element is supposed to be OUR vision for how we want the city to develop. So, what does “12 feet for each 10 dwelling units per acre” look like? Is it a building that’s set back from the street or a vertical wall butted right up against the sidewalk? Does the building have underground parking? is it apartments built atop a first floor a parking garage? or do the residents park on the street? Are the units 700 sqft urban nooks... or 2,400 sqft four bedroom suites? By green lighting taller buildings without a clear vision of what those buildings will look like, and how they will blend into our community, the City Council has let us down.
The “12 feet for each 10 dwelling units per acre” height limit is not a state law. It was not something that was discussed during the General Plan Update public hearing process. It was not part of the first draft of the Housing Element that was submitted to Sacramento. The letter HCD sent to the City asking for revisions to the first draft didn’t include this formula. The letter did say that “based on a complete analysis, the element may need to add or modify programs committing to increase height requirements”. But our City planners didn’t determine that height limits needed to be raised on certain parcels by comparing lot sizes and floor area ratios to the residential densities already baked into our updated General Plan and Zoning ... that’s not where this height limit came from. Instead, it was something that someone at HCD told our Planning Manager was the magic formula to get the plan accepted. So, now it’s in.
Planning Manager Michael Cass would be the person to address that question. As far as the power that the elected members of the state legislature granted the HCD to impose such demands on cities such as Martinez, I think it's also important to note that this power came about because cities such as Martinez refused to make good faith efforts to comply with their previous Housing Elements. The city was allotted a relatively modest RHNA number of 194 very low and low-income units to be built in its 2015-2023 Element, and it created zero. When local jurisdictions fail to comply with state law designed to provide a basic need, as Martinez did, I think it's to be expected that they will have their local control taken away. Residents who are upset with this and other impositions from HCD should probably be as upset with former Mayor Rob Schroder and past city councils for doing nothing to comply with previous Housing Elements as they are with the folks at HCD. Nevertheless, the Housing Element can't force anyone to build anything, so whether these provisions actually lead to hope-for or feared results, only time will tell.
As you say, Housing Elements can’t force anyone to build, they only identify appropriate sites for development ... and I believe the 2015-23 Element did just that. Regarding your statement that the City refused to make a good faith effort, you have a much longer history here than I do ... during that eight year period did the City ever deny a low income project that a developer brought to us?
I don't know if they did. I didn't follow housing as closely as I wish I had during that period. But I don't think the idea behind a Housing Element is to sit back and let it collect dust and just hope development materializes on its own. It should be a pro-active document, and a good-faith effort means trying to implement it in a way that encourages the development necessary to hit these targets, or at least approach them. If developers weren't coming forward with low-income projects, city officials and staff should have investigated why that was and tried to offer incentives and programs to change that. Sort of like if you have a target staffing ratio for your police department and you don't get anyone applying to work here, you figure out what you need to do to change that. When the city decides to focus on things like improving the marina or purchasing open space like Alhambra Highlands or bringing in cannabis dispensaries, it seems to have some success. I think it could have had some with affordable housing, too, if it had tried. My impression is that the city leadership at the time didn't care about affordable housing, and they certainly weren't receiving any pressure from the public (including myself, which I regret), and, therefore, the Housing Element became a meaningless document.
It’s one thing when the State passes a law ... the City has to comply. But “12 feet per 10 du/ac” isn’t in any law. We didn’t have local control taken away ... we gave it away! Michael Cass publicly admitted at the City Council hearing that the formula was “indirectly said to us” (about 3:35:30 in the video) by someone at HCD as the way to get the Housing Element approved. No one on the City Council, or on the Planning Commission at their November 14th meeting questioned whether some unelected bureaucrat at HCD should be dictating Martinez height limits to us ... they just went along with it.
I guess the question is what would have happened if the city had rejected HCD's requested revisions? I don't know the minutia of how the state laws are currently written on this topic, but I don't get the impression from what I've heard at Martinez meetings, or the brouhaha over Paso Nogal in Pleasant Hill last summer, that the cities felt they had any leverage in these talks about what was necessary to get their Housing Element certified. These HCD requests seem more like demands to me, and if cities refuse, I guess they face steep fines or legal action. Martinez was also being sued for failing to adopt its Element on time by a bunch of housing nonprofits, and I guess that probably played a role in the urgency to pass it. In any case, the council members all seemed to be in favor of higher height limits; as Jay Howard said, builders can't make money at 2 stories, which might be why we got no projects built under the last Housing Element. Debbie McKillop did express reservations about the parking reductions but indicated that there was nothing they could do about it.
I know Thousand Friends was raising lots of these questions in their newsletter throughout the process and said they were talking to city staff about how much flexibility they had to push back against some of these state demands. As the process went on, they stopped raising concerns in public comment at meetings, and no one from the public spoke against the council adopting the revisions on Dec. 20, so I can only assume they accepted the city's rationale for the revisions; of course, it was 11 p.m. because the first half of the meeting was consumed with the latest refinery outrage.
Are they going to keep public comment to two minutes from now on, Craig? Also, I did not appreciate Satinder Mahli comment about NYMBIism nor yours about Pine Meadows. Satinder was appointed to that position because he is Siek and his behavior on PRMC showed he was not involved in what was going on in the City even in an immediate sense. Pine Meadows was not just about that park, which I agree went on and on and on and I was not part of it--but really about Measure I and F, which were about government transparency, honestly, and at its heart Democracy. We sacrificed for these ideals and we were not in the way of housing development--there were plenty of opportunity sites in the Downtown but Council wanted a very corrupt Redevelopment Scenario--one that denied our very history with help from the historic society; hence, the Berrellesa Palms lawsuit--and everything was done for the benefit of one property owner--not for the good of the people. We were not NIMBIs, we were political activists for some of the very best reasons. Way better reasons than a liquor store on every corner run by people who refuse to assimilate, which is far more detrimental to the citizens than a refinery could be.
Thanks for your comment, Kristin. To clarify, I never said in my public comment that Pine Meadow was about NIMBYism. The reference I made to NIMBYism came earlier in my comments and had nothing to do with Pine Meadow.
I brought up the golf course at the end of my public comment to make a point (that was also illustrated earlier in the meeting by the uproar over the refinery, over which the city has no control) that the issues that draw crowds to City Council meetings and inflame passions are not necessarily the most important issues when it comes to the public interest and welfare. I made the argument that the activism and community uproar over the fate of the golf course was not nearly as important as the housing crisis that we've allowed to grow and harm too many people for far too long. People are welcome to disagree, but that's how I feel.
Pine Meadow and the golf course never interested me one way or another. It was never about creating affordable housing, which is what we need in Martinez. I have no interest in catering to developers who only want to build million-dollar homes here, or in pretending that a golf course is "open space." The reason Martinez and cities like it had their local control over housing stripped away from them by the state is they made absolutely no effort to work in good faith to comply with our state's housing laws and their own Housing Elements. When you're required in your own Housing Element to produce 196 units of low or very low-income housing in a span of eight years, and create zero, you're going to have your local control taken away from you, because you clearly can't be trusted to provide a basic human right in your town. The people behind the Pine Meadow fight then, as with the fight over the refinery now, see themselves as heroes, and they're welcome to feel that way; but the fact of the matter is that those who have suffered the impacts of the housing crisis in our town, and children like my own who have lost hope of having the same opportunity that Satinder referenced "to plant roots in this community like many of us did," have had no one to fight for them, and they could only wish that the most important concerns in their lives were the fate of a golf course or refinery incidents (most of which have been minor). They needed heroes, and we all failed them, including the people who were on both sides of the Pine Meadow fight, including our former mayor of 20 years who did nothing to bring affordable housing to our town because it simply wasn't a political priority with his political base. To me, that's a bigger deal than the golf course, refinery or local history.
Claims that the Council members are concerned about the risk of losing even more local control over future growth ring hollow, because what did they do ... they accepted, without question, a height limit formula pulled out of the air by some unelected Housing and Community Development bureaucrat in Sacramento. The Housing Element is supposed to be OUR vision for how we want the city to develop. So, what does “12 feet for each 10 dwelling units per acre” look like? Is it a building that’s set back from the street or a vertical wall butted right up against the sidewalk? Does the building have underground parking? is it apartments built atop a first floor a parking garage? or do the residents park on the street? Are the units 700 sqft urban nooks... or 2,400 sqft four bedroom suites? By green lighting taller buildings without a clear vision of what those buildings will look like, and how they will blend into our community, the City Council has let us down.
Some of that is supposedly answered in the GPU, but the GPU was also done purposely just as a stepping stone, and not the carving of the stone.
The “12 feet for each 10 dwelling units per acre” height limit is not a state law. It was not something that was discussed during the General Plan Update public hearing process. It was not part of the first draft of the Housing Element that was submitted to Sacramento. The letter HCD sent to the City asking for revisions to the first draft didn’t include this formula. The letter did say that “based on a complete analysis, the element may need to add or modify programs committing to increase height requirements”. But our City planners didn’t determine that height limits needed to be raised on certain parcels by comparing lot sizes and floor area ratios to the residential densities already baked into our updated General Plan and Zoning ... that’s not where this height limit came from. Instead, it was something that someone at HCD told our Planning Manager was the magic formula to get the plan accepted. So, now it’s in.
Planning Manager Michael Cass would be the person to address that question. As far as the power that the elected members of the state legislature granted the HCD to impose such demands on cities such as Martinez, I think it's also important to note that this power came about because cities such as Martinez refused to make good faith efforts to comply with their previous Housing Elements. The city was allotted a relatively modest RHNA number of 194 very low and low-income units to be built in its 2015-2023 Element, and it created zero. When local jurisdictions fail to comply with state law designed to provide a basic need, as Martinez did, I think it's to be expected that they will have their local control taken away. Residents who are upset with this and other impositions from HCD should probably be as upset with former Mayor Rob Schroder and past city councils for doing nothing to comply with previous Housing Elements as they are with the folks at HCD. Nevertheless, the Housing Element can't force anyone to build anything, so whether these provisions actually lead to hope-for or feared results, only time will tell.
As you say, Housing Elements can’t force anyone to build, they only identify appropriate sites for development ... and I believe the 2015-23 Element did just that. Regarding your statement that the City refused to make a good faith effort, you have a much longer history here than I do ... during that eight year period did the City ever deny a low income project that a developer brought to us?
I don't know if they did. I didn't follow housing as closely as I wish I had during that period. But I don't think the idea behind a Housing Element is to sit back and let it collect dust and just hope development materializes on its own. It should be a pro-active document, and a good-faith effort means trying to implement it in a way that encourages the development necessary to hit these targets, or at least approach them. If developers weren't coming forward with low-income projects, city officials and staff should have investigated why that was and tried to offer incentives and programs to change that. Sort of like if you have a target staffing ratio for your police department and you don't get anyone applying to work here, you figure out what you need to do to change that. When the city decides to focus on things like improving the marina or purchasing open space like Alhambra Highlands or bringing in cannabis dispensaries, it seems to have some success. I think it could have had some with affordable housing, too, if it had tried. My impression is that the city leadership at the time didn't care about affordable housing, and they certainly weren't receiving any pressure from the public (including myself, which I regret), and, therefore, the Housing Element became a meaningless document.
It’s one thing when the State passes a law ... the City has to comply. But “12 feet per 10 du/ac” isn’t in any law. We didn’t have local control taken away ... we gave it away! Michael Cass publicly admitted at the City Council hearing that the formula was “indirectly said to us” (about 3:35:30 in the video) by someone at HCD as the way to get the Housing Element approved. No one on the City Council, or on the Planning Commission at their November 14th meeting questioned whether some unelected bureaucrat at HCD should be dictating Martinez height limits to us ... they just went along with it.
I guess the question is what would have happened if the city had rejected HCD's requested revisions? I don't know the minutia of how the state laws are currently written on this topic, but I don't get the impression from what I've heard at Martinez meetings, or the brouhaha over Paso Nogal in Pleasant Hill last summer, that the cities felt they had any leverage in these talks about what was necessary to get their Housing Element certified. These HCD requests seem more like demands to me, and if cities refuse, I guess they face steep fines or legal action. Martinez was also being sued for failing to adopt its Element on time by a bunch of housing nonprofits, and I guess that probably played a role in the urgency to pass it. In any case, the council members all seemed to be in favor of higher height limits; as Jay Howard said, builders can't make money at 2 stories, which might be why we got no projects built under the last Housing Element. Debbie McKillop did express reservations about the parking reductions but indicated that there was nothing they could do about it.
I know Thousand Friends was raising lots of these questions in their newsletter throughout the process and said they were talking to city staff about how much flexibility they had to push back against some of these state demands. As the process went on, they stopped raising concerns in public comment at meetings, and no one from the public spoke against the council adopting the revisions on Dec. 20, so I can only assume they accepted the city's rationale for the revisions; of course, it was 11 p.m. because the first half of the meeting was consumed with the latest refinery outrage.
There are height "bonuses" for density which are not explicit in these plans, either.
Yes, density bonuses allow developers to ignore height limits.
Are they going to keep public comment to two minutes from now on, Craig? Also, I did not appreciate Satinder Mahli comment about NYMBIism nor yours about Pine Meadows. Satinder was appointed to that position because he is Siek and his behavior on PRMC showed he was not involved in what was going on in the City even in an immediate sense. Pine Meadows was not just about that park, which I agree went on and on and on and I was not part of it--but really about Measure I and F, which were about government transparency, honestly, and at its heart Democracy. We sacrificed for these ideals and we were not in the way of housing development--there were plenty of opportunity sites in the Downtown but Council wanted a very corrupt Redevelopment Scenario--one that denied our very history with help from the historic society; hence, the Berrellesa Palms lawsuit--and everything was done for the benefit of one property owner--not for the good of the people. We were not NIMBIs, we were political activists for some of the very best reasons. Way better reasons than a liquor store on every corner run by people who refuse to assimilate, which is far more detrimental to the citizens than a refinery could be.
Thanks for your comment, Kristin. To clarify, I never said in my public comment that Pine Meadow was about NIMBYism. The reference I made to NIMBYism came earlier in my comments and had nothing to do with Pine Meadow.
I brought up the golf course at the end of my public comment to make a point (that was also illustrated earlier in the meeting by the uproar over the refinery, over which the city has no control) that the issues that draw crowds to City Council meetings and inflame passions are not necessarily the most important issues when it comes to the public interest and welfare. I made the argument that the activism and community uproar over the fate of the golf course was not nearly as important as the housing crisis that we've allowed to grow and harm too many people for far too long. People are welcome to disagree, but that's how I feel.
Pine Meadow and the golf course never interested me one way or another. It was never about creating affordable housing, which is what we need in Martinez. I have no interest in catering to developers who only want to build million-dollar homes here, or in pretending that a golf course is "open space." The reason Martinez and cities like it had their local control over housing stripped away from them by the state is they made absolutely no effort to work in good faith to comply with our state's housing laws and their own Housing Elements. When you're required in your own Housing Element to produce 196 units of low or very low-income housing in a span of eight years, and create zero, you're going to have your local control taken away from you, because you clearly can't be trusted to provide a basic human right in your town. The people behind the Pine Meadow fight then, as with the fight over the refinery now, see themselves as heroes, and they're welcome to feel that way; but the fact of the matter is that those who have suffered the impacts of the housing crisis in our town, and children like my own who have lost hope of having the same opportunity that Satinder referenced "to plant roots in this community like many of us did," have had no one to fight for them, and they could only wish that the most important concerns in their lives were the fate of a golf course or refinery incidents (most of which have been minor). They needed heroes, and we all failed them, including the people who were on both sides of the Pine Meadow fight, including our former mayor of 20 years who did nothing to bring affordable housing to our town because it simply wasn't a political priority with his political base. To me, that's a bigger deal than the golf course, refinery or local history.
Sikh not Siek and its NMBY.