Council tweaks policy to OK new planners

<p>A split City Council is moving ahead with efforts to reshape the Petaluma Planning Commission, amending the city’s municipal code to allow new commissioners to take their seats this fall.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>Faced with a lawsuit from three commissioners who were not named to a revamped Planning Commission in July, the council is in the midst of addressing alleged wrongdoing by going back and re-voting on steps to combine the commission and design-review boards this summer.</p><p>This time, the council is making changes to city codes in the manner the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit — commissioners Spence F. Burton, Kathleen Miller and Jack Rittenhouse — say should have been followed in the first place.</p><p>The city’s legal staff says the moves will “cure” the allegedly faulty steps taken by the council since the process of combining the commission and Site Plan and Architectural Review Committee began in June.</p><p>But what it means for the future of the lawsuit remains unclear. The commissioners allege that in addition to being removed improperly in the middle of their terms, they were dumped by a majority of the council for political reasons. A hearing on their claims is scheduled for December.</p><p>After the lawsuit was filed in August, the city halted the process of seating five council appointees to the new commission. In the interim, the “old” Planning Commission has been meeting, including the three plaintiffs in the suit.</p><p>Monday’s action by the council revised the city’s municipal code to state that when a commission is “reconstituted” and given new duties, the existing five-vote threshold for removal of sitting commissioners doesn’t apply.</p><p>The council would effectively be creating a brand-new board, so only a four-vote majority is needed, the amended code states.</p><p>Only one applicant for the new commission received more than four council votes during a July 6 meeting. Burton, Miller and Rittenhouse also sought seats, but none received more than three votes.</p><p>The process to combine the boards and name new faces has sparked controversy, with one council member who opposed the move, Mike Healy, calling it a power grab by the four-member majority.</p><p>On Monday, Healy and council members Mike Harris and David Rabbitt again expressed their opposition.</p><p>“I still feel that this whole process has been convoluted and that the people who have been serving in those positions shouldn’t have been fired mid-stream,” Harris said.</p><p>“Ultimately, it doesn’t pass the smell test, and it never has,” Rabbitt said.</p><p>Vice Mayor Teresa Barrett, the council liaison to the commission, said recent meetings have shown the need for changes.</p><p>“I don’t think it is operating at a very professional level,” she said. “There is so much personal feeling that it is getting in the way of making the kinds of decisions we need.”</p><p>The three council members who opposed the move expressed support for a “compromise” offered by Planning Commissioner Chris Arras, who was also in the middle of his term but was named unanimously to the new board.</p><p>Arras wrote a letter to the council Monday suggesting that the new commission be expanded to nine members instead of seven. A council member would continue to hold one of the seats as a liaison, but the eight remaining slots could be filled by the three plaintiffs and the five council appointees now in limbo.</p><p>Arras said he would volunteer to be the “odd man out” and would resign, noting that his term on the new commission was to last less than a year anyway, through June 2010.</p><p>“His ideas clearly have some merit and suggest a compromise that we should be exploring,” Harris said. “Unfortunately, we’re not doing that.”</p><p>Monday’s changes to the municipal code will take effect in late October, so if the council re-appoints its original choices for the new commission, those appointees could be in place for the first Planning Commission meeting in November.</p><p>In addition to Arras, the appointees are Melissa Abercrombie, Dennis Elias, Marianne Hurley, Curtis Johansen and Jennifer Pierre.</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier.com)</p>