Home > Resource Center > In the News Home > Greenbelt Alliance in the News

Greenbelt Alliance In the News

August 9, 2006

Now’s the time to see city plan

Subheading

It has taken a while, but the draft of the city’s new general plan is now available for review and comment. This document, which may escape the notice of a vast majority of the residents of this fine municipality, is nevertheless of critical importance to those of us who plan to live, work, do business or play here in the coming couple of decades.

The general plan is indeed the blueprint for how our city will grow and operate in the foreseeable future, and the decisions made this year will guide the disputes of next year and beyond.

There is always grumbling back and forth about the lack of planning in city growth, but the truth is, there is plenty of planning. It is just that sometimes we don’t agree with that planning, but we wait until it is too late to say anything about it.

In Petaluma, we not only have the general plan, which dictates in broad outlines how our city will grow, but we also have specific plans, which go into minute details about the ways a specific area should be developed. In recent years, we have had two specific plans. The first, the Corona-Ely Specific Plan, was for the northeast section of the city, embracing the SRJC campus, the shopping center, the Sonoma Mountain Parkway, and all the housing.

The second is the Central Petaluma Specific Plan, which took a citizens’ committee years to fashion, and which dictates in detail how the downtown area should grow.

In both cases, people who weren’t paying attention reacted with shock and surprise when the designs were put into place.

On the east side, planners knew years in advance exactly what would happen along the old Ely Boulevard north of East Washington, but many residents were stunned when the building commenced. In central Petaluma, the specifics for development have again been on the record for years, but at least two developers have reacted with righteous ire and indignation when informed their plans don’t fit the city’s plans for this area.

It should be mentioned at this point that there is another facet of planning that affects the growth of our city, and that is the ballot box. A century or so ago California decided that government should not have too much power, so the citizenry was empowered to vote in its own laws without the influence or control of our elected officials or hired managers. The ballot box has given us Proposition 13, the lottery, and a number of other statewide laws.

In Petaluma, the ballot box gave us the urban growth boundary, a fixed line around the outskirts of our town beyond which we shall not and can not build. The proposal was sponsored by the Greenbelt Alliance, which advocates infill development and higher density as a means of preserving open space around cities. This proposal passed in Petaluma overwhelmingly.

The Greenbelt Alliance was not only upfront about the potential for infill development from their urban limit line, they actively promoted it as the key and essential component of smart growth. They listed all the available properties in the city that had development potential in lieu of sprawling outward, and the people spoke.

Unfortunately, there are many who now don’t like the infill, and among their numbers are those who voted for the initiative that mandates this infill development.

The point we are getting to is this: in every instance cited above, in general plans and specific plans and ballot initiatives, there was an open public process in which everything being proposed was there for public review and comment. In every instance cited above, there have been those who have been shocked and enraged, after the fact, at plans that are either too permissive or too restrictive, depending upon one’s bias.

The time to fluff one’s feathers over planning issues is before the fact, while decisions are being made. Think about it the next time the nose gets out of joint over a new crop of houses on the next hillside.

(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues dating back to the growth control plan of the early 1970s. A 12-year veteran of the Petaluma Planning Commission, he currently serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission.)

###