City approves growth ordinance ballot language

The Healdsburg City Council approved a draft ordinance for a future ballot measure to amend the Growth Management Ordinance.
The measure, which has to be placed during a regular election, will likely be placed on the ballot in 2014.
An ad hoc committee has been meeting since April of last year to form a recommendation for the amendment, and the draft ordinance was prepared in December.
The amendment would apply citywide, and there would be a cap of 226 units in the Central Healdsburg Avenue Plan Area. The amended GMO would start with a bank of 60 building permits, and a cap of 70 permits would be allowed to be issued each year, and there would be no “use it or lose it” provision. The GMO amendment would sunset after a period of 15 years, which supporters said would give a finite end to the process and if the need was there, could always be extended.
“We tried to make this pretty straight forward,” said councilmember Tom Chambers during a meeting in November, when the ordinance was proposed. “Our goal was not to open up some kind of rampant development in south Healdsburg,” he said. While the amendment would approve building more units at once, the overall number of permits issued over the 15-year span of the measure would only be 60 more than what would have been allowed under the current GMO.
The next step is for the city to complete an environmental review. After the review is complete, the city council will again be asked to consider the resolution for the ballot measure and to set a date for the election.