Opinion

BY John Fricke

Watch What the City Council DOES, Not What They SAY
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City Council Majority Overides Recommendations of General Plan Committee, Paves the Way for More Development, Higher Buildings, and Lots and Lots of Traffic

The city council majority talks the talk of improving pedestrian and bicycle access, improving public transit, and improving the quality of life in Emeryville. But the actions of the city council majority are quite another thing.

At the Oct. 14 meeting, the city council voted 4-1 (I voted against) to approve a new city General Plan that increases the maximum allowed scope of future buildings (height, density, intensity of use, etc.), thereby ushering in ever larger development projects with more parking spaces and more traffic congestion.

As part of creating a new General Plan, the city had to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR). The EIR identifies a number of significant impacts that are unavoidable. The EIR states that the new development allowed under the General Plan will:

(1) Exacerbate traffic congestion (traffic at 9 intersections would significantly deteriorate)

(2) Increase the amount of noise in the city (this unavoidable impact highlights the effect of increased noise to residential neighborhoods)

(3) Exacerbate air quality (the General Plan allows for more growth and thus more emissions than what is contemplated by the Bay Area Ozone Strategy)

(4) Likely result in the demolition of historic structures

Most troubling is that, according to the EIR, the increased development allowed by the new General Plan will increase vehicle traffic and exacerbate traffic congestion to such an extent that the public transit routes in Emeryville will be significantly disrupted.

The law requires that if an EIR identifies significant impacts that are unavoidable, the project (in this case, the new General Plan) can still go forward if the city council decides to go forward — regardless of the unavoidable impacts. And that’s exactly what the city council majority did tonight. I voted “no.”

The increased maximums (height, density, intensity of use, etc.) recommended by the committee working on the General Plan were already so great that the EIR warned of unavoidable impacts.

The city’s developers were well represented at the city council meeting. The city council granted practically every specific request that each developer made. On several occasions, the city council majority unabashedly increased the maximums in specific parts of the city so that a particular developer’s development could reap more profits.

What was the city council’s justification for deciding to approve these maximums regardless of the unavoidable impacts? Three ‘positive’ outcomes were identified to justify the unavoidable impacts:

(1) The new General Plan will accommodate 3,837 new housing units in the next 20 years

(2) The General Plan will provide 10,000 new employment opportunities in the next 20 years

(3) The General Plan “will support revenue-generating uses to strengthen the local economy.”

In other words, Emeryville needs more development, more housing units, more office buildings, and more retail outlets — because development is inherently good for its own sake, regardless of the impacts that more development will have on our quality of life.

The EIR states that maintaining the limits provided in the existing General Plan (called the “No Project Alternative”) would be better:

“… the No Project Alternative, because of the lower amount of growth and the resulting lessening of adverse impacts, would be environmentally superior.” EIR, p. 4-25.

What is being ushered in with this new General Plan is a far cry from the community-oriented development that is so sorely lacking in Emeryville. Some of the general principles in the new General Plan embrace these types of policies. But the specific rules regarding maximum height, density, etc., will lead to a different outcome.

Once again, I am reminded of the quote from Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell:
“Watch what we do, not what we say.”
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John Fricke is an Emeryville City Council Member. He is not seeking re-election.