Extracted text

January 8, 2000

3.

Hearing Set for
Q@RCPC Challenge

To Dreyer’s

Permit Approval

Alice's adventures through the
looking glass, continued

by Chad Thompson, RCPC Chair

CPC's appes! of the Planning
Commission decision to grant a
two-year extension to approval of Dreyer’s
expansion project is scheduled for the
January 25° City Council meeting. We
are pursuing this appeal in the face of a
challenging political environment because
we believe the issues are too important
to be ignored. A strong showing of sup-
port from the comme: is essential if
we're to have any hope of success
Since the expansion was first proposed,
RCPC has tried to work with Dreyer's
and the City to obtain a project that fits
““the character of our neighborhood. The
CPC Board still feels strongly that the

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project as designed flies in the face of
the zoning intended to preserve the pe-
destrian-friendly, small-scaled, bustling,
mixed-use neighborhood we have worked
so hard to create, The project was ap-
proved anyway in carly 1996, then shelved
due to Dreyer’s financial difficulties,
Dreyer's admittedly has no current plans
to go forward with the project, but claims
it will in another year or $0.

Based on the history of the project and
our understanding of the political envi-
ronment, we don't have much hope of
winning the appeal. The astounding abuse
of public trust in the actions of the Plan-
ning Commission is another matter; this
case stands out, The following is not fic-
tion, but is a narrative of the actual events:

rior to the Planning Commission

hearing on October 6 last year, city
staff prepared a report analyzing Dreyer's
application. The report described the ben-
efits to Dreyer's of granting the extension.
(One might think that staff should inves-
ligate the benefits (or lack thereof) to the
eitizens and City of Oakland, but that didn’t
seem to enter into the decision.) The re-
port recommended that the extension
trigger an environmental review to be per-
formed before the project was constructed.
During the public comment period, RCPC
questioned how this review would occur.

Now things really get interesting.

After the public hearing was closed,
the Assistant City Attorney advised com-
mission members that before they could
grant a new permit extension, the origi-
nal 1996 EIR had to be reviewed, an
important legal requirement RCPC had
repeatedly stressed during hearings. The

review is necessary because environmental
changes over the years may have rendered
the original report obsolete and requir-
ing modification. It would have been a
simple matter to perform the review and
have another extension.

What actually happened was that
commission staff claimed the wording in
the staff report

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was “confusing”
a strong and that a “review
showing of had alrcady been
community — Performed” when,

in fact, there
support is was no review.
essential... The commission

then granted the
extension and spe-
cifically “recertified” the Environmental
Impact Report based on the non-existent
review. Abuse of public trust like this
hardly inspires confidence in City
governance,

Here is the actual wording of the rec-

ommendation:

“Approve a two year extension to Apnil

23, 2001, but make as a condition that
this is the last one to be granted, and that
the development proposal would require
that the EIR be reviewed to ensure that it
is still applicable.”
Ce staff maintains that although the
recommendation is confusingly
worded, anyone reading it should under-
stand it to mean that all of the following
is exactly true:
|. This is absolutely positively the last
extension ever to be granted;
2. A review of the four-year-old EIR
has been performed and nothing
whatsoever has changed and the EIR
is completely valid;
3. Unlike with this extension, before
any more extensions are granted, it
will be necessary to perform a
review of the EIR.
Councilmember Jane Brunner has
stated that she opposes the granting of
the permit extension, but she does not
believe she can persuade her fellow
Councilmembers to agree with her.

Please write or call all of the mem-
bers and let them know how you think
the laws and English language should be
applied in Oakland.