Judy Arnold Appears Confused and Uninformed Regarding Novato's New Housing Element

Judy Arnold says Novato gave up CEQA environmental guidelines in our recent housing element. Novato Community Alliance begs to differ.

Watch the portion of the Board of Supervisors Meeting of 1-14-14 with Susan Adams introducing Judy Arnold's speech. Does Ms. Arnold's delivery inspire credibility? Can you understand what she is saying?

If not watch it again while reading the transcript below:

The link takes you to the Granicus where you can watch all or portions of the January 14, 2014 Supervisors meeting. To hear Supervisor Adams and Arnold speak start by moving your cursor to: "5. Open Time" and click once. Then move your cursor to the circle under the video which reads 46.08 and move it over to 57.16 to begin by listening to Supervisor Adams speak. Wait 30 to 60 seconds to let image load. You will see Supervisor Adams. After Adams you will hear Supervisor Arnold speak. The transcript is below.

http://marin.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=33&clip_id=6893

Partial transcript of Arnold's and Adam's comments, italics added to draw attention to statements.

Supervisor Susan Adams at 57 minutes and 16 seconds (57:16) into the meeting:

…metropolitan service areas of greater than two million people. There will be an allocation of suburban if they're counties within those service areas that have less that 400,000 population and the cities within those suburban counties have less than a 100,000 population, Uh, it would be very helpful once we have a bill, and, uh, I think Assembly Member Levine is considering carrying this bill for us so it's not finalized yet but I'm hoping to see this passed this year. 

I'm going to be in Sacramento this week to continue working on it and that'll address the density so that we can pass the straight face test and be more like our other suburban counties in the North Bay.

Supervisor Arnold and Supervisor Sears have both played a role in the development of this over the last two years. Things don't move quickly in Sacramento but the fix has to happen in Sacramento.  So,uhm, we're working diligently on that so that, hopefully, in a future housing element cycle we won't have to be dealing with the 30 unit per acre, uh, issue.

Supervisor Judy Arnold at 57:40

Yes, uh I had gotten a note that I was,wanted to bring this up during Supervisor Matters but I will do it now and it pertains to the discussion that, that we're having. Uh, first of all our board has been working to change the desig--, our designation for the last eight years. 

It began with Assembly Member Huffman who introduced a bill asking that we change our designation from metropolitan which means 30 units per acre to suburban to 20. That got a hearing but the director or the chair of the housing and development committee said if you want this bill to pass out you're going to take that part out changing Marin's designation because, they just all think, you know, that we're up there whining and we're rich and white, why don't we want to take, do our fair share. 

We then worked with uh, Senator, with Assembly member Levine, which we are doing right now to change it.  We know, that's the one thing, this board never voted to say that we wanted 30 units per acre.  This board has been working for eight years to change it because that's the right thing to do.  We are not a metropolitan county, we are a suburban county. 

We did in 1970 say we're going, we want to be the lungs of the Bay Area and we're going to initiate A-60 zoning and our congressman, our uh created federal, uh, two giant federal parks. The, the counterbalance to that is the development is going to be on the, on the city-centered corridor. If that's being changed, that's going to open up the whole thing of looking at West Marin. And the sad..and the scary thing is any day on a 3-2 vote this board could change the A-60 zoning.  I don't want to do that and I don't really think there are many people in this county that do.

In regard to Novato's housing element, we have worked and watched closely with them when they did this and we knew that they turned in 23 units per acre and are very happy they got that agreement. But they did one thing that we voted not to do in order to get a lower density, and that is we gave up any CEQA to, for any development that comes in under the by rights zoning. (background murmur) Oh, sorry. Yes, Novato.  (Someone said "the county".) The county did. The county gave up, the county gave up their… The county decided we were going to do a "by right" designation. (Adams: no, we didn't)

Adams on mic: The county did not. Novato is doing "by right".
Arnold: ..and we said we're not, …That's what I'm saying.  Our board said we're not going to do that.  Had we said yes, we would have given up all CEQA, all design guides, oh, no we would have done designs but all environmental guidelines, so that the difference.  Now the happy news is, Novato has 23 units.  Now the bar's been set for when we start our housing element which we're doing next we can go back with a lower density and see what happens.  There does seem to be a change in Sacramento which Supervisor Adams is taking advantage of so I just wanted to make that clarification. (Chair: Thank you.) Uh-huhm.
Ends 1:01:18