Hank Sims / Tuesday, April 11, 2023 @ 2:58 p.m. / Agendizer

How’s Arcata Doing on Meeting its Housing Goals, And Should it Make K Street Traffic One-Way? Those Will be Some of the Questions Addressed at Tonight’s Planning Commission Meeting

Tonight in Arcata: A meeting of the Planning Commission that may be short on agenda items, but undoubtedly long when measured by hours and minutes.

That’s because there are two big, big-picture topics on the agenda, and each of them are bound to take up plenty of time, not only in questions from the commissioners but in comments from the public.

The first of these items: An update on the city’s efforts to meet the goals of its general plan. A lot of local jurisdictions are going through this process right now, probably because progress toward those jurisdictions’ housing goals must be reported to the state annually. The state mandates that all local jurisdictions must plan for housing growth across a variety of income levels — no no-growth NIMBY towns allowed in California, technically — and the state wants to hear how that growth is coming along.

Used to be the Sacramento bureaucrats let a lot of stuff slide, here. Lately, though, in the face of the current California housing crisis, it’s been taking those duties a lot more seriously. Just yesterday, for instance, the Newsom administration filed suit against the city of Huntington Beach for a Housing Element that was not up to snuff.

So how’s Arcata doing?

Pretty good, according to the staff report.  The city’s current planning period runs from 2019 to 2027, and it’s already exceeded its total goals for very-low income housing. It planned for 142 new units during that period, and it’s already brought 167 new ones online. That’s largely due to motel conversions brought about through Project Homekey, the staff report notes.

Moving up the income ladder, the news gets progressively less good. The city’s achieved 79 percent of its “low income” housing goals;  26 percent of its “moderate” income goals; and 20 percent of its “above moderate” goals. Overall, the city is about halfway to its total number of new units, which is good considering it’s halfway through the cycle, and especially good given that the mandates get stronger down on the lower-income level of the scale.

Moving on to the next agenda item: The Circulation Commission will be looking at proposed updates to the city’s general plan at large, and particularly updates to its Mobility Element, and most particularly to the controversial proposal to convert the much-trafficked K Street, along with its less popular sister L Street, each to one-way traffic. (The Outpost has written about this plan previously, here and here.) L Street would have to be built out in areas where it does not currently exists.

Some people do not like this at all. The city’s Transportation Safety Commission gave it the thumbs-down a few months ago. Fred Weis of the Gateway Area Plan-skeptical arcata1.com website maintains a page of stories devoted to the threat of the “K-L couplet” to the bike path in the vicinity, and a petition arguing for a “L Street Linear Parkway” in place of the proposed couplet has gathered many signatures. Still, city staff and the council are in favor of the couplet, and staff in particular maintains that it will pose no threat to the separate bike trail along the railroad lines. Read that staff report here. The couplet stuff starts on page 3.

The Arcata Planning Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at Arcata City Hall (736 F Street). Remote viewing/participating instructions at this link. Full robot-summarized agenda below.

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Arcata Planning Commission

April 11, 2023, 5:30 p.m.

1. CALL TO ORDER.

A. Roll Call.

2. PUBLIC COMMENT.

3. BUSINESS ITEMS.

1. Minutes of Mar 27, 2023 5:30 PM

2. 4129 : Recommend Approval of the 2022 General Plan Annual Progress Report

3. 4157 : Consider a Recommendation to the City Council on the General Plan Updates

4. CORRESPONDENCE / COMMUNICATIONS.

5. ADJOURNMENT.

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