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The Pleasanton City Council this month unanimously supported creating a new city policy that would allow for early staff evaluation of development-related rezoning and General Plan amendment applications.
According to staff, the new process will allow the council to weigh in on potential rezoning requests before they go through staff’s normal vetting process so that developers can have a better idea early on of whether their residential or commercial projects would be supported by the council in concept.
Once vetted, the application would then go back to the council for final review.
“I think it’s excellent to have a process so that we have some reliability, some ability for staff to be able to have clarity on it and process applications accordingly,” Mayor Jack Balch said during the meeting.
For years, the city of Pleasanton has mainly handled the rezoning of properties through its Housing Element cycles, which is a state-mandated effort to zone areas in the city for housing, or through other large-scale rezoning efforts — one example being the Johnson Drive Economic Development Zone that led to the opening of two new hotels and the Costco along that corridor.
Other ways that the city handled rezoning requests were through the city’s two-year work plan, which didn’t have any clear criteria about how projects would be assessed, and master planning for larger areas like East Pleasanton.
However, city staff still consistently receive calls from property owners and developers who were interested in rezoning for both residential and commercial uses. And while staff did process these requests, they didn’t have an official process or policy that gave them clear direction on how to address these inquiries which, according to community and economic development director Ellen Clark, created a lot of uncertainty around how the city should bring these rezoning projects forward for the council to eventually vote on approving them.
“As a recipient of many of these phone calls … it’s really tough for me to sit there and say, ‘Well you know, it seems like maybe a pretty good spot, but ultimately there’s five councilmembers who get to say yes or no to your proposal and until you get in front of those five councilmembers, staff can’t really give you a perspective on whether or not you’re likely to be successful,'” Clark said.
That’s why staff introduced the proposal on Feb. 3 to put in place a formal, structured process that would address that gap and create a more efficient workflow for the city’s planning department.
“The early review process is an attempt just to create a process that is structured and predictable and, I would hope, give the council the information that you would want to know about a project coming forward to decide if it’s something that the city should entertain or not,” she added.
How the process would work is once or twice a year, staff will ask these developers or property owners with rezoning requests to compile preliminary information — high-level project plans, initial technical studies and other early assessments — which would then be presented to the City Council during a workshop format.
During those workshops, the council will be able to provide feedback on those projects before either authorizing the application to move forward in the planning process, pushing the application to be submitted at a later date or flat out declining the application.
“What we’re trying to do is create some clarity and certainty for you because we don’t want it to get all the way through the public process and get to you and you not like it,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said in regards to these sorts of rezoning applications.
He also said the new policy gives clarity to developers and planners who will now have a better idea of whether the City Council would support future projects.
“We’re trying to understand whether or not the council would like to formalize a process to entertain and review these projects or if we want to just continue to tell them, ‘We’re not sure, go ahead and submit your application,'” Beaudin said.
Everyone on the council was supportive of the new policy being drafted, with Vice Mayor Matt Gaidos saying not having staff “do the best they can to not give an opinion about what five people might think in the future is a good thing”.
Following the Feb. 3 vote, staff will now work on drafting the official language for the new policy before returning to the council for final adoption.
