IMPORTANT PUBLIC HEARING @ The Chico City Council & Planning Commission – June 22, 2010

The Esplanade League announces an important public hearing on June 22. The Chico City Council and Planning Commission will meet to consider the land use and sustainability components of the 2030 Chico General Plan update. This hearing is THE BIG ONE – the public’s best chance to influence our city’s guiding policies for the next 20 years.

Please read the following information and support our concerns at City Council chambers on June 22nd between 2:00 and 9:00 PM. Public input time is most likely between about 3 and 7.
 
The proposed new Plan needs a strong showing of public support because it includes great new sustainability policies, based on a sound, healthy, realistic community vision. However, for all its vision, many of its proposals are soft, with little assurance that they will be implemented. The expanded growth area proposals rely on unfounded assumptions that past housing demands will continue unabated and that the public’s funds will allow greater spending on freeways, big box stores and parking lots, even with a battered economy, massive debt, the looming impacts of climate change, and the ending era of cheap oil.
 
But most of the new policy language is weak, emphasizing words like “encourage” and “should,” rather than firm commitments backed by “will” or “shall.” It’s a great vision statement without a lot of teeth. Painful past experience has shown that General Plans seldom produce the desired results if they don’t include strong, enforceable commitments. Our planet’s failing life support systems can’t tolerate much more compromise, so the Council and Commission need to hear that mere encouragement is insufficient and that policies need to include much more “shall do” language.
 
Another major weakness is the assumption that retail consumption and housing demand for the next 20 years will continue much like the last, in spite of stagnant wages, overextended credit, tightened lending practices, and deteriorating public wealth and natural resources. Thus, the Plan assumes we’ll need thousands more large lot homes than already planned, more sprawl, and more regional shopping centers to accommodate an ongoing spending spree.

a)     In retail, there’s a sharp contradiction between a) the draft Land Use Element’s proposal for more regional shopping south along Highway 99 and b) the Sustainability Element’s emphasis on convenient neighborhood shopping, less need for driving, and reduced consumption of energy and resources. High consumption is fundamentally inconsistent with long-term environmental and social sustainability. Instead, sustainability requires a shift away from an oil-dependent, imported goods/exported jobs, consumption-based economy and toward more efficient, locally based production of food and goods. We don’t need more regional shopping malls on 99.

b)     In home buying patterns, the land use plan assumes that future demand for large lot houses will require thousands of lots sprawling into the Bell-Muir agricultural area in the northwest and the Schuster-Brouhard land in the foothills. However, past growth patterns no longer reliably predict future needs, given the rising cost of land and construction, reduced buying power, tighter lending, and shrinking household sizes. The National Home Builders Association expects aging baby boomers and younger generations on tighter budgets to demand cheaper, smaller, and/or attached homes; which recent building trends and the record number of undeveloped larger lots already reflect. The Sustainability Element, in contrast with the Land Use Element, wisely calls for more affordable compact growth and careful infill, with less sprawl, reduced auto dependency, and lower public maintenance costs.
 
Strong public support is needed for the Sustainability Element, scaling back the foothill and agricultural sprawl proposed by the Land Use Element, and firmer “shall” language throughout the Plan.
 
The draft General Plan update can be found on a link near the top of a City website at http://www.chicogeneralplan.com/.

Sincerely,

The Esplanade League – Supporting a Carefully Chosen Path for the Future