Call to Action - 2040 Comprehensive Plan

While there are many good things in the current draft of the proposed 2040 Comprehensive Plan, we believe that there is significantly more work that must be done to make this worthy of your support. We would like to ask you to not support the Proposed 2040 Comprehensive Plan as currently drafted. We believe that the document currently does not adequately implement strategies to achieve the stated goal of mitigating the racial/income disparities in our Neighborhoods (Goal #2 Achieving Neighborhood Diversity & Inclusion).

The proposed 2040 Comprehensive Plan is 320 pages long with a lot of information, 10 specified goals and numerous proposals. As has already been noted by a large portion of the community there is currently opposition to the proposed changes to the Single-Family Neighborhood Zoning to allow more duplexes/triplexes in all Neighborhoods. We believe that the proposed zoning changes will not help with the community affordable housing crisis as implied by the current draft. This is one key example of areas that need further debate, education and alternatives analyzed to achieve a policy goal. In its current form, there is not a stated policy goal that the changes would significantly alter.

Please consider sending the following message to your elected officials:

Please defer the planned approval process for the 2040 Comprehensive Plan in April.

(March 22nd Public Hearing and City Council vote on April 22nd)

While we believe in the stated goals of the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, we do not believe that the current draft of implementation approaches will accomplish the stated goals. We believe that the community needs further debate, education and alternatives analyzed to achieve the stated policy goals. We acknowledge that the COVID pandemic has limited the amount of community participation and therefore understanding due to competing priorities. We believe that this document is too significant to the future of our City to ‘rush’ an approval without more education, debate, and collaboration for improvements.

· We would recommend that the City publish the next draft version as soon as possible to that includes the feedback that has been received thus far to demonstrate the impact of feedback on the Plan.

· City staff produce additional educational documents to align proposed strategies to expected outcomes. There is much confusion over the positive & negative impacts of the proposed new implementation strategies.

Sincerely,