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Arcata’s planning commission is meeting again tonight to discuss their proposals for the city’s land use code update, and some of them — getting rid of inclusionary zoning laws, eliminating neighborhood conservation areas and wood-burning stoves — are worth noting.

Several members of the planning commission added their ideas on what they’d like to see updated in the land use code ahead of tonight’s meeting. The commission will meet with the city council in a few weeks for a study session, when the commissioners will likely share their ideas for the updates. Any changes to the code likely won’t be adopted until early next year.

The commissioners’ opinions are important because they could become law, shaping the design and daily lives of Arcata’s residents for as long as they’re codified, which could be a long time; the last time Arcata’s land use code was updated was in 2008. 

Arcata’s Neighborhood Conservation Areas (NCAs) could be on the chopping block: commissioners Ashton Hamm, Peter Lehman, Matthew Simmons, and Abbie Strickland wrote in their comments that they’d like to talk about removing them from the code, or at least ensuring that updating housing within an NCA isn’t overly difficult. Buildings within an NCA are subject to additional review before owners or developers alter them, because they’re in a  “historically noteworthy” region in the city that need to have “harmonious” design, according to the city’s website. There are four of them, encompassing much of the neighborhoods around Cal Poly Humboldt and the land between K Street and Highway 101 from Samoa Boulevard up to 17th Street. A few of the commissioners have some gripes with them, criticizing the NCAs for slowing down and hindering the construction of badly-needed housing by allowing for too much public comment and for being too subjective.

“I feel that Neighborhood Conservation Areas should be eliminated,” Lehman wrote. “…This vague requirement—harmonious with existing character—is both not in keeping with our goal to have objective standards and is the kind statement that is often used to delay or prohibit needed housing—multifamily housing, for example. We could retain the Arcata Plaza Historic District, as it is core to the City’s character and is a small area. Otherwise, there’s no reason why the rest of Arcata should not have uniform permitting and design requirements.”

Wood-burning stoves could also be phased out. Arcata decided to prohibit the installation of new wood-burning stoves as part of the latest update to the General Plan in 2024, but replacing existing ones is allowed. Loya said city staff have been contacted by businesses interested in having a wood-fired pizza oven and saunas; it was one of the topics on a list of discussion topics he sent to the commission to review. None of the commissioners had anything to say on them, except for Lehman, who wrote that he didn’t think they should be allowed at all. 

“Wood burning has no place in Arcata,” he wrote. “The first sentence of Arcata’s Air Quality Element says, ‘The community values clean air.’ Air containing wood smoke is not clean…I recognize that wood burning has a long and storied history in this area and that wood-fired pizza ovens or saunas seem charming, but we must work to eliminate wood burning.”

Ditching inclusionary housing rules — laws that force developers to set aside a certain amount of housing in new developments for the impoverished — is also possible. Arcata passed an inclusionary zoning resolution last year that mandated that all new housing developments with 60 or more units have to rent 3% of their units to very low income households, 6% to low income households, and another 10% for moderate income households. (How much the rent actually costs can change annually, and is determined by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development or the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee.) David Loya, Arcata’s director of community development, noted in a memo to the commission that the rules faced “immediate backlash” from developers and housing advocates, and requested that the commissioners talk about the regulations. 

Lehman wrote that the idea was “laudable,” but said he didn’t think that inclusionary housing was the right idea, noting that he thought Arcata could use more higher-end housing befitting a wealthier, white-collar segment of the population. A consulting agency hired to help Arcata update the code wrote that inclusionary housing should only be continued if it’s been effective and offers incentives “beyond” what California can provide through its State Density Bonus program. 

The planning commission will meet in the city council chambers at 5:30 tonight.