Moral Impact Reports

— Rollie Atkinson
Sebastopol’s city council wants to outlaw gas-powered leaf
blowers. Windsor’s town council is set to forbid tattoo shops,
massage parlors, fortune tellers and other businesses from its core
downtown district. And, Healdsburg is looking to add a new
Community Impact Report requirement that could ban or regulate all
kinds of “Big Box” and other land developments.
What’s going on here? Do we really need all these tighter rules
to protect ourselves from — well — ourselves? Apparently so.
The proposed leaf blower ban has caused a very noisy debate all
around Sebastopol since Councilman Guy Wilson first posed the
question at a public meeting two weeks ago. Final action was tabled
for further study. If Sebastopol does ban the shrill machines it
would not be the first city in the Bay Area to do so. Right now,
the council is considering a more general noise ordinance to
regulate decibel levels and hours of operation for all kinds of
equipment. Stay tuned.
Windsor’s town leaders are tackling a much more widespread moral
problem. They want to keep all kinds of illicit, shady and
unmentionable enterprises away from the “family friendly” Town
Green. A smoke shop selling drug paraphernalia tried to open last
year but was quickly banned with a temporary moratorium.
Cities absolutely need zoning codes and business permits to
manage such impacts as parking, traffic, signage, compatible uses
and hours of operation. Windsor wants to control “personal service
establishments” that may tend to have a “blighting or
deteriorating” effect on surrounding areas.
Such a proposal begs the question about how far any government
should go in trying to regulate morality.
Windsor’s proposed zoning updates would have banned tanning
parlors until several local residents supported their health
benefits at a recent council meeting.
“I’t’s a little subjective of what activities are nefarious or a
little nefarious or possibly aren’t,” Windsor Councilmember Sam
Salmon said during the recent debate. Legitimate check cashing and
bail bonds operations also may be banned in Windsor. What’s next,
high cholesterol eateries?
Healdsburg (and Sebastopol) are considering an experiment
recently deployed in a few other municipalities including Petaluma.
Community Impact Reports would require a developer to list the
impacts a project would have on such items as healthcare, schools,
small businesses, employment, parks and many more community
interests. It would be an advisory scorecard, similar to a
cost-benefit analysis. Only instead of just measuring environmental
or economic impacts, a CIR would include such subjective terms as
smart growth, pedestrian friendly, livable wages, affordable
housing and consensus building, all worthy but wiggly concepts.
CIRs offer many positive innovations that could replace the
current court-like adversarial approach that was used for
Healdsburg’s Saggio Hills and Sebastopol’s Northeast Area Specific
Plan. We’d all appreciate something better than those multi-year
exhaustive contests. Saggio Hills is being challenged in court and
the NEAP plan dominated the recent Sebastopol council election.
However, where some see a new model for building community
consensus, others see an extra layer of bureaucracy and a
“one-size-fits-all” approach to urban planning.
CIRs right now are very much defined by what lies in the “eye of
the beholder.” At present, CIRs look like a set of new tools with
all kinds on unexplored and unintended consequences.
Leaf blowers are too loud and everyone wants a quiet and
peaceful neighborhood. Nobody wants to do business next to a
massage parlor with an after hours back room, but lots of people
appreciate our many local spas and certified massage therapists.
And, what community wouldn’t want a crystal ball to foretell every
desirable and undesirable impact of all proposed projects before
they happen?
There may or may not be an ancient wisdom to solve our noisy
leaf blowing and other sinful taboos. But it has always been true
that “it is easier for any person to solve another person’s
problems than it is to solve his own.”
Maybe we all need our own MIRs — Moral Impact Reports.