Process, Standards, and Sugarloaf By Terry Brown, DPPA steering committee member DPPA has long been a promoter of open, transparent, and inclusive process. So we'd be really pleased with the way the Sugarloaf development decision was made, right? Well, no, not entirely. Overall the process was a good model for land use decisions where a development must be carefully designed to fit local social, economic, and environmental parameters. A good model, that is, for cases where it's clear that some sort of out-of-zoning development is desirable. It's not clear that the Sugarloaf development was such a case. One concern voiced by some members of civic activist community was that of inclusiveness or openness. Is the process really open and transparent when discussions are held in private between the developers, one or two councilors, and a few community representatives selected by the councilors? Compared to the Housing Redevelopment Authority's numerous public meetings on the Hawk Ridge Estates development - no, the process wasn't particularly open. But HRA is a public entity. In the Sugarloaf case a private developer is developing private land. Although it would be a great gesture on the developer's part if they were to hold open public meetings, it's not something they can be forced to do. So long as the councilors and community representatives are sufficiently representative of the various sides of the argument, such meetings are a definite improvement over a disconnected competition to secure the most votes. Another issue raised by many was that of spot re-zoning on the eve of a comprehensive plan. It's true that the comprehensive plan has been in the pipeline for many years and that the final plan and associated re-zoning work may not be completed for another two or more years. But it's also true that mature drafts of the comprehensive plan's land-use maps should be available early next year. Preempting the comprehensive plan process with such a large re-zoning to a significantly different land-use type doesn't project a lot of commitment to the comprehensive plan process. While the current zonings are old, they are not random - the S-1 zoning of the greenbelt was actively maintained by the City Planning Department for many years, with a forward looking vision that is echoed by the preliminary land use maps coming from the current comprehensive plan process. But perhaps the biggest danger in the precedent set by the Sugarloaf case is that of a process without adequate standards. No matter how open and inclusive a process may be, if the standards used to measure outcomes are inappropriate or absent from the discussion, the result can not be sound. A concrete example of "standards" makes this clearer. In the Sugarloaf case the process leads to significant improvements in the proposal by appearance standards. But the obvious environmental standard, percent of forest cleared, was not part of the discussion. The decision to turn forest into subdivision, which is at the core of the the decision to move from S-1 to R-1A zoning, was made by default, without being addressed by the process. The relevant standards weren't necessarily omitted from the process deliberately. The developers final pre-vote proposal included construction envelopes intended to minimize tree removal on individual lots. While such constraints often fail on the ground, on paper at least it appeared that the issue of percent of forest cleared had been addressed. But without explicitly evaluating the project against an appropriate standard like total canopy removal under both an S-1 and an R-1A scenario, the core decision was made not consciously, but as a side effect of the decision to enter into the discussion process in the first place. The risk of this type of accidental decision making is of particular concern as the comprehensive plan consultants have also been promoting a process oriented approach that "maximizes opportunities and minimizes risks", while vilifying the up/down vote approach. In a perfect world a case by case evaluation of every proposal on its own merits would be great. But it would be a terrible mistake to underestimate how difficult such evaluations are. How are cumulative impacts addressed? Zoning does this implicitly, ignoring zoning can ignore cumulative impacts. In many cases a proposal may be a good idea in the wrong place. How often is the standard of appropriate location likely to be included in the discussion? For a developer it's usually "here or nowhere". Has the process been successful if a developer adds assurances that they'll use Best Management Practices and mitigate negative impacts? Shouldn't those assurances have been included from the outset? Does having a process that adds assurances replace the need to decide whether the project itself is really appropriate? Win-win situations are great, and they are out there. But let's not confuse them with situations where discussion occured. It's not the same thing. These articles are retained on the web for historical interest and do not necessarily reflect the views or goals of DPPA today.

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