Why shouldn’t we just let the City Council make these development decisions?

• I recently attended a meeting at Café 322 where there was a presentation made about the initiative sponsored by Sierra Madre Residents for Responsible Development. George Maurer got up and asked this question: Why don’t we just let the City Council do the job it was elected to do—make these land use decisions? This is another form of this question: Why do people feel that they should be voting directly on land use decisions?
  
  This is a hard question to answer. It is not intellectually difficult, but it is hard because it entails telling the City Council some facts that may seem harsh. They are.
  
  The main fact is that after several years of watching City Council make land use decisions, many – maybe even most—people do not trust the City Council to act in the City’s best interest. There are some notable exceptions to this, but there is also recent conduct that tells us that this view is still justified.
  
  Projects have been approved, ordinances passed, and subdivisions granted that inexorably have chewed away at the village quality Sierra Madre has enjoyed over the years.
  
  Supervision of approved development has been poor. Other than an outstanding building official, city conditions have been largely unfulfilled. [Jamison Estate tree plan]
  
  The general plan, though adopted, has never been implemented. There has never been a systematic adoption of zoning throughout the City to match the designation of the general plan. [Residential, Residential Entrepreneurial, Park, Canyon zone, etc.]
  
  The City Council in 2004 adopted the very downtown development standards that are now being held up as the basis for needing a downtown plan. We are now being called upon to adopt a plan to protect ourselves from what our 2004 City Council did!!
  
  The City Council in 2005 approved the One Carter housing development over public objections, based on the excuse that it was settling a lawsuit of disputed merit.
  
  The last council had a member that was elected as a preservationist candidate with an expressed preference for protecting the environment. Before long, this council member was voting against every preservation issue that came before the City Council. The member was resoundingly defeated. The replacement, also elected on a platform of public involvement in decision-making, and restrained and government, has already betrayed his campaign promises.
  
  George, no need to take this personally, but many voters feel that the City Council has failed its duty to act on behalf of the people. Instead, the people are demanding to take back their power and vote on these projects themselves.
  
  Once the development has been approved and built, there’s no going back.