Council poised to enact unfair design law Council poised to enact unfair design law (December 10, 2003)

By Patti Fry

After a shameful series of quietly rescheduled meetings this fall, Menlo Park's City Council is poised to hold its final public hearing December 16 on the proposed residential development rules promoted by City Council member Mickie Winkler. Despite repeated requests from the public, there has there been no outreach to help residents understand the impacts of this proposal.

Not only is this rules-based, tiered review system a radical departure from the current rules and review processes, it totally ignores proven systems that have long been in use by other cities. The supposedly "stringent" rules of the first tier allow much larger houses that are much closer together than are allowed on comparably sized lots in Atherton, the only other local city that relies solely on a rules-based system. In fact, this tier allows even more massive houses than could be built today -- and the project developer is now entitled to a building permit without any other reviews.

Unlike tiered review systems in other cities, the proposed tiers are not triggered by design features most likely to cause impacts and are not accompanied by design guidelines that enhance predictability for all parties. Instead, only four easily avoided design features trigger reviews, and these are limited to the concerns of adjacent neighbors only. In a cruel twist, these neighbors then can only request changes to those specific design features even if these would not resolve their concerns with the project.

Like speed limits, zoning regulations should protect the majority from the behavior of the few who don't think or don't care about the impact of their actions on others. This proposal's proponents avoid discussing that its excessive streamlining allows uncaring speculative developers to build more massive projects while making neighbors powerless to influence designs that affect them.

Proponents say that residents concerned about this proposal should simply institute a neighborhood overlay. They neglect to mention that overlays can only institute different rules. Neighborhoods cannot impose guidelines, change the review process or modify decision criteria. They must somehow concoct rules to address highly situational issues such as protecting privacy or preserving their neighborhood's unique character.

The City Council majority of Ms. Winkler, Mayor Lee Duboc and member Nicholas Jellins has explicitly rejected council member Chuck Kinney's reasonable suggestion to require city staff to evaluate the proposal's ability to address problems that project developers and neighbors have experienced with the current rules and review process.

Instead, the council is rushing this untested concept into an 18-month trial run with real houses next to real neighbors with real impacts that can't be scraped away like roadway obstacles when the trial results prove undesirable.

Don't allow the council to experiment with your most precious investment with an unproven schema that is being sold with hollow promises and a wink that says, "trust me." Menlo Park deserves better than this. Patti Fry is chair of the Menlo Park Planning Commission.

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