Sunday, February 10, 2008

General Plan to Go Before Council Monday

There will be a special joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning commission tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 11 at Ganesha Park Community Center, 1575 N. White Avenue, to discuss the city's general plan update. The actual agenda is:

A. ENHANCING PROTECTIONS FOR NEIGHBORHOODS AND RESIDENTIAL USES
B. ADDRESSING DOWNTOWN ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE LICENSES
C. UPDATING THE GENERAL PLAN
D. REFORMULATING THE DRAFT DEVELOPMENT CODE (Zoning Ordinance)
E. REVISING THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION PROGRAM
F. ESTABLISHING AN ART IN PUBLIC PLACES PROGRAM
G. ESTABLISHING A DOWNTOWN SIGNAGE PROGRAM
H. ESTABLISHING A NEW DESIGN REVIEW PROCESS

Public participation will be allowed for each of these items with a 3 minute time limit.

This is a second attempt to come up with a plan. The last time that the council met on this the former city management was unable to please any of the council with their proposal. It will be interesting to see what they come up with this time.

Of special interest to those of us in the historic preservation community are the revising of the Historic Preservation program, Downtown Signage program, and Design Review process, although all the issues are significant to all citizens of Pomona.

I think it would be great if we saw a large number of interested folks come out for this. This is the document that will be governing Pomona's development for at least the next 10-15 years.

Will we get what we saw last time with high density housing along all of our major corridors, and be told that Pomona has a surplus of commercial development? Or will there be a better sense that Pomona is a city that cannot support growth at an increased rate and needs to get itself together before building for a population growth that it can't support with the current infrastucture?

I should be posting a report on the meeting on Tuesday.

3 comments:

Ed said...

John, thanks for the notice. After multiple clicking in the city's website, I finally found the agenda at the City Clerk's link.

This question ventures into the rhetorical, but anyone have a good explanation for why the City Clerk couldn't post the meeting on the City Calendar? And why don't the Council members check the website? And before any writes it, yes, I am going to send a few emails to our elected officials asking for more notice on the website.

Anonymous said...

I was on the General Plan Advisory Committee and most of the council members were on Council when that plan was meeting. The City has gone through multiple planning directors in the past few years (Gomez, Bassi, LeClair, Valencia-Dupret) and it seems to me like the environment is somehow toxic. I believe the contract for the last General Plan consultant (Dyett and Bhatia) was in the six figure range. In addition, poor Joan Isaacson, the lead on the project, commuted every week from San Diego just to shepherd a project that was summarily tossed out after an unlcear two hour meeting where LeClair backpedaled. Since then, it has stalled. I doubt the city wants to spend any more money on consultants at this point, and LeClaire left, which was probably a good move considering that the Council doesn't know what's going on.

We had good representation from the community. Heck, Xavier Alvarez participated for two or three meetings. Hundreds of people turned out at workshops and sounding sessions. Now, we are going to start all over again? No wonder the last time we did this was 35 years ago.

Anonymous said...

What happened at the meeting?