potrero view

February 2009

Community Oversight of Area Plans Yet to Emerge

By Lisa Tehrani

Under the recently adopted Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan, which rezoned large swaths of Dogpatch, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, and Showplace Square, a Citizens Advisory Committee, or CAC, will be established to ensure citizen involvement in plan implementation.  Regulations adopted last month state that the CAC is to be the “….central community advisory body charged with providing input to City agencies and decision makers with regard to all activities related to implementation of the Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plans.”  The thirteen member committee will be primarily charged with reviewing and overseeing development-related community improvement projects and commenting on Area Plan monitoring efforts.

CAC members will be appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Supervisors within the next six months. According to Ken Rich, Planning Department Program Manager for the Eastern Neighborhoods, procedures for applying for CAC positions have not yet been established.  “We are going as quickly as we can to get the CAC in place,”  he stated.

The regulations specify that committee members must live, work, own property or a business in one of the four neighborhoods that fall within the Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan. The Mayor will appoint five members, District 10 Supervisor Sophie Maxwell is responsible for four appointments, District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly has two appointments, and Districts 8 and 9 Supervisors Bevan Dufty and David Campos are responsible for one appointment each.  

CAC members will be assigned either two or four year terms.  The committee will sunset in 2020. Subcommittees can be formed to enable members to focus on neighborhood-specific issues if needed.  The Planning Department will staff the CAC, though it’s yet to be determined what level of support will be provided.

Neither Maxwell’s nor Newsom’s office responded to View requests for a list of possible candidates.  Potrero Boosters President Tony Kelly would like to see representation from Potrero Hill.  “So many people would be good as appointments. We have a lot of architects and people involved in the [planning] workshops who would be great,” said Kelly.

During the planning process that led to adoption of the Plan some community activists argued that there should be separate CACs for each neighborhood, given the abundance of community-specific issues.  But the Planning Department’s view that there should be a single CAC because there are several neighborhood-wide issues that need to be considered prevailed. “The CAC will have to help us prioritize the use of funding. We need to make inter-neighborhood decisions so there is no way there can be four separate groups,” Rich explained.  “We were very honest during the hearing process that the [Planning] Department is strapped for resources and there is no way we can manage four CACs.”

According to Rich, few significant decisions will be made during the period in which the CAC is being created.  “In terms of major decisions that might occur before the CAC is established, I don’t foresee having to make any. In terms of project review, there are a few projects going forward,” Rich stated.  

Kelly would like the CAC to have a significant role in project review. “The quality of the feedback is going to be really important and needs to be considered seriously. It is definitely an important part and it is the only thing that could give accountability to the Planning Department’s decisions,” he said.  However, according to Rich, “The CAC will not review individual development projects. They will be up to date on the projects being reviewed and will understand what is in the pipeline, but the CAC will not review them officially.”

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