Healdsburg nixes plan to require "community impact reports" on projects

<p>A proposal to require “community impact reports” in Healdsburg to assess the economic and social effects of new development has failed to obtain the needed support from the City Council.</p><p>“It's pretty much dead in the water,” Councilman Gary Plass said Wednesday.</p><p>Plass was part of a City Council majority that declined to support forming a broad-based committee to further study the issue this week.</p><p>Proponents have urged the City Council to require such informational reports to better identify impacts that large projects have on schools, medical facilities and city services.</p><p>“In tough economic times, communities need to make a well-informed decision on future development within their boundaries. A community impact report is another tool in the tool belt,” said Councilman Mike McGuire, one of the supporters of the concept along with Mayor Jim Wood.</p><p>McGuire described it as a planning document that would help assess the impacts that something like a big-box store or large resort would bring.</p><p>But Plass and council members Eric Ziedrich and Tom Chambers were not convinced of the need.</p><p>Plass, in particular, said it would add another layer of bureaucracy to the approval process and could be a way for opponents to block a project before all the information is known.</p><p>The Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce also voiced its opposition and suggested other methods, such as a more general “Local Economic Assessment” that could analyze the city's economic competitiveness and help attract certain types of development that are under-represented.</p><p>Proponents of the community impact reports argue that the current city process is inadequate, particularly for identifying the wages and benefits new commercial projects would create for employees, as well as the impact on schools, demand for low-cost housing and health care.</p><p>Other cities such as San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego have implemented some form of the concept. Petaluma has something similar, called Fiscal and Economic Assessment reports, that scrutinize impacts on the retail market, types of employment, wages and benefits generated by proposed commercial developments.</p><p>Gail Jonas, the Healdsburg attorney who heads up Community First, said Healdsburg does a good job of identifying environmental impacts of new development, but not the socio-economic impacts.</p><p>Her group last year began promoting the idea of community impact reports following the City Council's approval for Saggio Hills, the controversial luxury housing and hotel resort which has yet to break ground.</p><p>McGuire and Wood have said a community impact report could have helped avoid the lengthy and fragmented process for Saggio Hills and provided an early picture of the project's impacts.</p><p>Skeptics suspect proponents have a hidden union agenda, but Jonas said she is not promoting a so-called “living wage” or other labor goals. Nor, she said, is she trying to stop growth.</p><p>“I have been accused of being anti-development,” she said Wednesday. “The last development I opposed in Healdsburg was 1971 or ‘72.”</p><p>City Council members still agreed this week to have planners look at how to address issues that large-scale developments bring.</p><p>“I think staff will look at ways to incorporate more social and economic issues into our planning,” Plass said. But “the idea of another layer of bureaucracy such as an ordinance directing a Community Impact Report has been laid to rest.”</p>