Main Street

In recent months, Healdsburgers have rallied behind the concept
of a Community Impact Report (CIR), which would require that
commercial and residential development projects receive a higher
level of scrutiny. One way to describe a CIR is that it tries to
quantify impacts that are easy to see and hard to measure.
I’ve been thinking about CIRs for quite a while, and wrote about
the concept in this column years ago, but I’ve come to believe it’s
the wrong tool for Healdsburg. Recently, as I studied CIRs and
tried to understand their origins, I divided communities into
small, medium, large, and what I call “from scratch.” Let’s examine
them in reverse order.
The “from scratch” communities are exemplified by El Dorado
Hills, where the community grew from 6,935 residents in 1990 to
35,276 in 2006. It was built on cheap land, cheap water, and a
thirst for sales tax revenue at all costs. Rohnert Park and Windsor
have been guilty of this style of growth, on a smaller scale. (If
we’re honest with ourselves, we have to be thankful for the
historic “come on down” attitude of Rohnert Park and Windsor, which
decreased growth pressures in Healdsburg and allowed us to grapple
with our destiny at a measured pace.)
In large communities development is highly politicized, and
project approval is based on who you hire, who you know, and in the
most extreme circumstances, who you pay off. An instrument like a
CIR wouldn’t work in a place like Oakland or San Francisco, where
lawsuits and politically motivated deals would negate or ignore
it.
It’s in medium-sized communities where CIRs play an important
role, and they arrive on the scene in direct response to poor
planning decisions. Funding for public agencies in California is
often based on political decisions made far from home, and local
governments are desperate to identify sources of revenue that are
protected from state government piracy.
This results in “zoning for dollars” planning decisions, where
communities like Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park and Petaluma fight over
big box stores and auto dealers, creating a chaotic transfer of tax
revenues from one community to another. CIRs are citizens’ way of
telling City Hall to “settle down, you’re acting crazy going after
every source of tax revenue, with little thought for the
consequences.”
In my research, I haven’t found a small town that uses CIRs, and
I would argue that they aren’t necessary in Healdsburg, especially
given the lack of big box developments. The same active citizens
who want a CIR ordinance are acting as a sort of “Living CIR” every
week, staying educated, attending public meetings, talking to their
elected officials and watching the media.
What small towns are doing (which would be very useful in
Healdsburg) is to assess and monitor themselves. We would be
better-served if the city undertakes a community-wide study that
would encompass everything that the pro-CIR folks are asking for,
but not tie it to a specific project.
These studies are often called LEAs (Local Economic
Assessments). LEAs are done a lot in the UK and are gaining ground
here in the US. The city could refresh the data at whatever
interval seems best, probably every 3-5 years.
The CIR process would politicize projects. With all due respect
to the many fine consultants out there, I can’t imagine a CIR that
would not carry some hidden bias, based on the consultants’
relationships with the developers and/or the city. That’s what I
like about an LEA. It’s done without the distraction of a project.
It’s pure data, and it’s community-wide. We all agree that
knowledge is good and helps us make better decisions – let’s be
open to altering when and how we collect that data.
Commissioning an LEA would give us a lot of leverage with
developers, maybe more than a CIR, because it would represent the
will and intent of the entire community.
In addition, the data in an LEA would be tremendously useful to
the entities that the pro-CIR group wants to protect, our locally
owned businesses, our schools, and our public health providers. The
city’s economic development folks could use the data to assist
local businesses. Schools, public health organizations and other
community groups can use it in grant applications and in planning
how to serve the community.
I support and believe in the concept of collecting data and
using that data to evaluate potential projects, and I believe it
will be accomplished most effectively outside the constraints and
political pressures of individual projects.
u
This is an important week for the new shop program at Healdsburg
High – it’s the week that HHS students fill out surveys about their
interests. That data is used to create next year’s class schedule.
If you know a Healdsburg High student who is interested in
construction, sustainability, green building, environmental
science, engineering, architecture, etc. please ask them or their
parents to find out more about CASA, the Construction And
Sustainability Academy at Healdsburg High.
u
Arnold Santucci, who was the owner and publisher of this
newspaper a few decades back, turned 90 this week. Arnold is a
gracious and humble guy, but he’s enjoying the attention of family
and friends on this milestone. When I first met Arnold, it was back
in the day when I was the editor of this paper, and he offered a
classic publisher’s greeting. “Are you having fun?”
Ray Holley hasn’t been an editor for four years, but he’s still
having fun. He can be reached at [email protected].