Pasadena’s General Plan revision process deserves attention

A story in today’s Pasadena Star-News illustrates why EVERYONE needs to be involved in the revision of Pasadena’s General Plan.

The story purports to explain that Pasadena’s citizenry are “fed up” with dense development. More accurate would be to say that a few citizens interviewed for the story, certainly not a representative group, want less development in downtown Pasadena.

I would be interested to hear Terry Tornek’s response to the notion that more and denser development could be targeted toward the Caltech and PCC neighborhoods. (I expect Juliana Delgado was speaking of residential development.)

I have been involved in many of those community meetings, and density does come up as an issue, but frequently the concerns end up focusing on design and how close buildings are to the sidewalks. People don’t appreciate cheap-looking buildings that meet the sidewalk directly without any landscaping or modulation to make them more friendly and appealing.

What is being left off the discussions at this point is the economic impacts of development. Not mentioned is the fact that the residential development at Del Mar and Pasadena Avenue is paying a substantial portion of the purchase price of the Annandale Canyon Estates property that will now be open space.  Or the (estimated by the Urban Land Institute) $9 per day each office employee in Pasadena spends near their place of employment.

Also absent are state mandates regarding greenhouse gas reductions and climate change which call for denser development of housing near employment centers.

It is also worth noting that the people quoted in the article did not attend any of the meetings with business groups and only sporadically attended community and council district meetings. A lot of information that has been gathered has yet to be compiled. Once that work is complete, there should be a more comprehensive picture of what the entire Pasadena community (or communities) are concerned about.

Here’s the article in its entirety, since the Star-News archives fairly quickly.

Planning process reveals Pasadena residents’ distaste for high-density building

By Dan Abendschein, Staff Writer

Posted: 11/27/2009 09:11:27 PM PST

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of periodic stories on Pasadena’s General Plan update.

PASADENA – In the midst of a city planning process that will determine what Pasadena’s future growth will look like, one thing certain has emerged: Residents are decidedly against high-density construction.

For the past 15 years, since the 1994 General Plan update, the city’s development policies have focused on encouraging new growth in central Pasadena, along Colorado Boulevard, while keeping it away from neighborhoods.

But at recent community meetings on the General Plan update, some concerns have surfaced over density in Central Pasadena.

“It was a good idea to develop that area, but the way it has turned out has been overkill,” said Berlinda Brown, a member of the city’s General Plan Update Advisory Committee, which is overseeing the planning process.

Every five years, the city updates its General Plan, the master guide for Pasadena’s future decisions on housing and commercial development, transportation, open space, and other planning issues.

The public input part of the process is now over – officials held several community meetings across the city – and now the advisory committee is working on a new draft of the General Plan update, to be completed sometime this spring.

While some residents want tougher rules to check the city’s population growth by discouraging new housing development, state laws make such restrictions very difficult to implement, said Stephanie DeWolf, deputy director of planning and development.

The state requires cities to plan ahead for a certain amount of population growth per year. Each city receives a state-recommended number of new homes and apartments it must build in the future in order to accommodate that growth, DeWolf said.

The state does not currently enforce those requirements, but some state legislators have proposed bills that would allow the state to withhold funding from cities that don’t follow the guidelines, she said.

As a result, DeWolf added, Pasadena’s General Plan update likely will not be a document that mandates slow- growth policies.

“The question becomes not whether you have density in the city, but where,” said Emily Stork, an advisory committee member.

Where within the city future developments are built is one of the things committee members agreed could change in the new update.

“I think people want the density to be more evenly distributed, instead of focused in one place,” Brown said.

Committee member Julianna Delgado,who is a professor of urban design at Cal Poly Pomona, said new areas to be targeted for growth will likely be along sections well covered by public transportation, or in locations that encourage walking.

Neighborhoods around Caltech and Pasadena City College, would be prime examples, said Delgado.

East Pasadena has not seen substantial growth over the years, she added. Neighborhoods just south of the Foothill (210) Freeway with close access to the Gold Line also could be candidates for new developments, she said.

Meanwhile, residents in certain neighborhoods have expressed concerns about being unfairly targeted for more apartments and other housing. For example, advisory committee members from the Northwest say they believe the city has focused mostly on their neighborhoods as sites for new affordable housing projects.

“I do see more housing in that area in the future,” said committee member Dante Hall, who also is assistant city manager in El Monte. “But there should also be market-rate housing that can help bring economic development to the area.”

Residents also have been generally against high-density commercial developments. For example, a proposal to bring a new Home Depot to Lincoln Avenue and Washington Boulevard continues to be strongly opposed by nearby residents.

Whatever the General Plan committee ultimately decides, few believe its recommendations will amount to a significant departure from Pasadena’s current development policies.

“I can’t imagine the plan ending up being at all extreme in the changes that will be made,” said Delgado. “I think most people view it as just an update.”

dan.abendschein@sgvn.com

(626) 962-8811 ext. 4451

Happy Thanksgiving from the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce

Enjoy the day with family and friends. We have a lot to be thankful for.

We live in a great city. We are safe and secure.You can’t buy better weather. Even our economy, though stressed, remains relatively strong.

If you want to help improve our economy, please spend your Black Friday (and more) holiday dollars with shops, stores, services and restaurants here in Pasadena.

From high end jewelry and fashionable clothes, to appliances, to a plumber to unclog your drain in an emergency, Chamber members can provide for all your holiday needs. Go to www.pasadena-chamber.org/directory to find everything you need for the holidays.

Thank you all for your support of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Resource watch: As Pasadena considers its future water supplies the LA Times gives us something to think about, and the state wrestles with imposing a cap-and-trade program to turn greenhouse gasses into a commodity

We have few opportunities to really impact the adequacy of our water supply. We can find more water from our existing sources, which seems less and less likely as both MWD and Pasadena grapple with our current drought conditions.  New sources really are not viable. Even if we spend multiple millions to import reclaimed water from Glendale, it may not add enough water to significantly enhance our supply.

That leaves conservation.

From the LA Times:

Conservation is seen as key to dealing with state’s water woes

Hal Hannula waters his stripped-down backyard in San Luis Obispo. The civil engineer and his family have reduced their water consumption through landscaping, use of efficient appliances and other steps. “You don’t want to waste that resource,” he said. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times / August 27, 2009)

By Bettina Boxall

November 24, 2009

Reporting from San Luis Obispo, Calif. - Katie Martin grew up with a set of water commandments. No lingering in the shower. Turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth. Don’t flood the yard.

Until she left for college this fall, the 19-year-old lived with her family in a typical California stucco house with a lawn. But when it comes to water, neither the Martins nor their town, San Luis Obispo, is typical.

Katie, her parents and little brother use roughly half the water on a per-person basis as the average single-family household in Los Angeles used last year.

“The community is just like that,” Martin said.

Perhaps most interesting is that, even with the population surge of the past twenty years, water use in the Los Angeles area has remained flat. Mostly, the Times says, as a result of giveaways of water saving gadgets and requirements that developments use less water.

Meanwhile, California continues to try to find a way to reduce greenhouse gasses, the latest scheme would put a price on pollutants and create a market for greenhouse gases.

State proposes trading program to cut emissions

Companies could buy and sell allowances under plan to reduce pollutants 15%.

By Margot Roosevelt

November 24, 2009 | 8:45 p.m.

California officials on Tuesday issued the nation’s first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade plan, an innovative and controversial effort to use market forces to control global warming.

The ambitious program would cap most of the state’s greenhouse gases, including those from more than 600 power plants, refineries, cement plants and other big factories. It would allow companies to buy and sell emission allowances among themselves to reach an overall goal of cutting planet-warming pollutants 15% below today’s levels by 2020.

The state’s action comes as Congress wrestles with a cap-and-trade bill for planet-heating emissions: Legislation passed by the House is stalled in the Senate.

“California is first out of the box,” California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said.

Regulators estimated that California’s program could cost industry as much as $8 billion a year by 2020 if carbon trades at its current price on the European market of $20 per ton. European nations have operated a cap-and-trade program for the last five years.

But industry groups warned that the state’s push to control greenhouse gases could cost more than twice as much, and burden consumers with more expensive electricity, gas, housing and consumer goods.

We do need to grapple with and ultimately control greenhouse gas emissions. Is putting a price on the ability to pollute going to help, or simply create a new market for trading in a commodity that exists only on paper?

This will cost everyone who uses electricity in Southern California more money. Let’s hope it is not just a wealth transfer from the southern part of our state to the north.

We also need to watch Congress to see what federal efforts to create a nationwide cap-and-trade program end up with. And we need to watch that federal rules, prices and methods are not piled on top of California’s program so that our residents and businesses so that here, in the state that has led the nation in environmental stewardship, is not penalized for that leadership. California should not accept more stringent rules and regulations that any other state or region in the nation.

Paul

300 Pasadena hosts Chamber members for fun reception

Pasadena’s best bowling establishment, 300 Pasadena, hosted Chamber members to food, drinks, bowling and pool. Terrific evening. Lots of fun. What a great place for a party!

 

City, Chamber sponsor campaign to encourage local shopping

For the second year, the Pasadena Chamber and the City of Pasadena are teaming up to promote shopping in Pasadena. This holiday season, Grow Your Community by keeping your shopping dollars here in the city where you live, work or do business. Your sales generate tax dollars that maintain the quality of life and vibrant business climate in Pasadena.

Of course, California’s leadership has yet to face our biggest challenge

LA Times reports:

California faces a projected deficit of $21 billion

The legislative budget analyst’s projection, to be released Wednesday, threatens to send Sacramento back into gridlock and force across-the-board cuts to state programs

By Shane Goldmacher  November 17, 2009 | 6:45 p.m.

Reporting from Sacramento - Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the state’s chief budget analyst.

The new figure — the nonpartisan analyst’s first projection for the coming budget year — threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs.

Here’s a revolutionary idea for our legislature and governor: cut everything that is not essential. Get rid of 9/10 of the state commissions. Renegotiate all state employee contracts to reduce salary and benefits costs. Close offices. Get rid of pet projects. No legislation of any kind is contemplated before a balanced budget is passed.

Legislators and governor: we are in an emergency. Behave as if we are and do something significant and permanent to fix the problem.

Paul

Sometimes I need reminding why we subscribe to so many magazines

From Time:

A Stimulus Success: Build America Bonds Are Working

By STEPHEN GANDEL Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009

Guy Greenly picks up traffic cones at a road-construction site on Feb. 17 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

When Congress wrote the Build America Bond program into February’s $787 billion economic-stimulus bill, many predicted a flop. Nine months later, the municipal-bond program, which provides a federal subsidy to help states and other local governments raise funds, looks to be one of the economic recovery effort’s biggest successes. Earlier this month, the volume of BABs, as they have come to be called, crossed the $50 billion mark.

As the Rose Bowl project contemplates financing options, Build America Bonds are a very attractive means to access capital.

Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China

On the evening of Nov. 15, President Barack Obama, the youthful leader of one of the world’s youngest countries, begins his first visit to China, among the world’s most ancient societies. Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, have much to discuss. Nukes in Iran and North Korea. China’s surging military spending. Trade imbalances. Climate change.

But the visit comes at an awkward moment for the U.S. China, despite its 5,000-year burden of history, has emerged as a dynamo of optimism, experimentation and growth. It has defied the global economic slump, and the sense that it’s the world’s ascendant power has never been stronger. The U.S., by contrast, seems suddenly older and frailer. America’s national mood is still in a funk, its economy foundering, its red-vs.-blue politics as rancorous as ever. The U.S. may be one of the world’s oldest capitalist countries and China one of the youngest, but you couldn’t blame Obama if he leaned over to Hu at some point and asked, “What are you guys doing right?”

So what are they doing right?

Not being restricted by the practical: China is building huge projects along the way creating jobs and providing the foundation for a prosperous future.  China is ambitious.

Educating kids: Chinese kids are in school six days each week studying math, reading, English and more. Every kid, everywhere.

Looking after the elderly: Generations support each other. Parents raise children who in turn care for elderly parents who care for grandchildren. The system builds strong families.

Save more: Current recession… enough said.

Look over the horizon: Build for the future. China is upwardly mobile, and the Chinese people know it and take advantage. Chinese people work hard to get ahead and educate their children so they can build on the current successes.

Something to think about, or perhaps remember as we struggle to right ourselves.

Paul

This week’s leading indicators

Should we be surprised when someone states the obvious:

From the LA Times:

Market volatility is expected to continue

The wide swings are fueled by competing visions of the recovery and how the latest economic reports boost one or the other.

There’s a tug of war in the financial markets between investors who believe the economy is on its way to a strong recovery and those who believe a rebound will be slow and bumpy.

The result: a spate of volatility in stock trading that will probably continue this week.

“That wide divergence in opinion can lead to wide swings in market prices,” said Greg Walker, an investment strategist in JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s private banking division.

Perhaps our solution is to not alter our behavior at the whims of the markets.

And from the New York Times:

G.M. Is Said to Soon Begin Paying U.S. Debt

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: November 15, 2009

General Motors, which emerged from a government-ordered bankruptcy restructuring earlier this year, will begin paying back its debt to the United States and Canadian governments earlier than expected, a person with direct knowledge of G.M.’s plans said Sunday night.

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Fritz Henderson, the chief of General Motors, expects to make its first payment in late December.

The company, which received $50 billion in government financing to avoid collapse, will make its first payment of $1.2 billion toward $6.7 billion of senior debt at the end of December, this person said on the condition of anonymity. About 85 percent of that will be paid to the United States government, and 15 percent to Canada.

Of the $1.2 billion, $1 billion will go to the American government and $200 million to Canada. G.M. will continue the payments in each quarter thereafter, until that debt is repaid.

Considering that so many American jobs are dependent on the auto industry, GM’s apparently improving financial health is more than welcome.

Stimulus and Exports Help to Ease Japan’s Recession

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Published: November 15, 2009

TOKYO — Japan’s economy grew at a robust annual rate of 4.8 percent in the third quarter as stimulus spending and a rebound in exports appeared to bring the country firmly out of its worst recession in the postwar era.

Gross domestic product grew 1.2 percent in the July-to-September period from the previous three months, or at an annual pace of 4.8 percent, the government said on Monday. It was the second consecutive quarter of growth for Japan and offered more evidence of a widespread recovery from the global economic crisis.

Last week, the 16-country euro zone said its economy grew 0.4 percent in the three months to September, the first uptick in six quarters. The G.D.P. in the United States expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the quarter that ended in September, also partly propelled by stimulus programs.

Indicators our economy is getting a little more robust, too.

Of course, homegrown problems may persist.

The Recession’s Over, but Not the Layoffs

By PETER S. GOODMAN

The Great Recession is over — not officially, but by popular acclaim — and in this accepted fact we are invited to take comfort, even as the unemployment rate last week rose into double digits for the first time in a quarter-century.

Harry Campbell

Experts have long assured us that economic life is governed by the business cycle, a repeating loop of downturn followed by expansion, as reliable as the seasons. In this context, worsening joblessness is like a punishing blizzard in April: Misery notwithstanding, the calendar promises spring.

But just as climate change has altered how we contemplate the seasons, some economists argue that the business cycle no longer operates as it once did, failing to replenish the jobs it destroys, and leaving our economy vulnerable to a potentially long-term shortage of work.

One of the reasons our GDP seems to be growing and some companies are seeing profitability again is simply because the costs have been dramatically reduced with the reduction in workforce. Fewer people doing the same job or providing the same level of service will translate into an improved bottom line. Perhaps we will not see the employment situation improve at all if we rely on existing companies to reinvigorate the workplace.

New employers are needed. So, when can we expect that green economy to kick in?

So you want a green career?

By Tiffany Hsu

The giant push for eco-friendly practices has created job opportunities for those with little or no experience.

Victor Zapata of SolarCity installs solar panels at an L.A. home. Many positions at green firms involve skills that are used in other lines of work. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / October 19, 2009)

Although the recession has emptied shopping malls and filled jobless centers, the call has only gotten louder for renewable energy, environmentally gentle products and eco-friendly practices — and for people to make all of that happen.

President Obama has said that he hopes to create 5 million green jobs within a decade. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimates that the “green economy” could account for as much as 10% of job growth over the next 30 years.

The job description casts a wide net. The green ranks can include autoworkers making hybrid cars, building consultants, home energy auditors, environmental studies professors, wind turbine engineers, lawyers for biofuel companies and many more.

Pasadena Chamber member SolarCity uses a different business model to make solar installations more affordable. They also indicated they may be hiring thousands of installers in 2010.

Paul

Interesting California footnote to healthcare reform

Something I would not have thought about:

From the LA Times:

HEALTHCARE: ROADS TO REFORM

Healthcare bills could jeopardize states’ consumer protection laws

 

By Lisa Girion

Opening the door for insurers to sell policies across state lines could allow health plans to avoid tougher requirements in places like California.

Healthcare overhaul bills working their way through Congress could jeopardize laws in California and other states that require insurers to pay for treatments such as AIDS testing, second surgical opinions and reconstructive surgery for breast cancer patients.

What’s more, the federal legislation could make it virtually impossible for states to enforce other consumer protection laws, such as the right to appeal if an insurer denies coverage for a particular treatment.

If this is the case, then I suppose the question is whether the ability to shop across state lines is worth the lower consumer protection thresholds.

Paul

There is a problem, but Californians don’t think it’s the Constitution

The Los Angeles Times reports that a poll of Californians shows voters firmly opposed to Constitutional fixes. Apparently, voters see the problem as lying in those they elected, not the constraints placed upon those elected officials by initiatives, including Proposition 13. Interestingly, voters polled showed very strong opposition to the split roll plan that would tax residential property under Prop 13 limits but re-assess commercial property values.

Seems as if all those calls for a Constitutional Convention are falling on deaf voter ears.

Poll: Voters skeptical of state reform proposals

Of those surveyed, 54% want to keep the two-thirds majority required to pass a budget, 65% reject a new sales tax for service providers and 62% oppose changing Prop. 13’s property-tax restrictions.

By Evan Halper

November 9, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento – Backers of an overhaul of California’s government, who hope to leverage disgust with Sacramento into support for changing how the state raises taxes and spends money, have a difficult path ahead, according to a new poll of California voters.Major segments of the electorate see the state’s problems as the product of unrestrained lawmakers driven by special interests to waste taxpayer money, and reject arguments that structural issues with the state’s Constitution and government institutions are to blame.

Voters don’t want the tax code overhauled in the ways that many fiscal experts promise would tamp down the wild revenue swings that have led to a constant state of budget crisis in California. They don’t want the Constitution changed to allow a simple majority of lawmakers to push a budget onto the governor’s desk, as most other large states allow. And they don’t want the state to touch Proposition 13 property tax restrictions, even if residential property taxes would remain strictly limited.

Graphic: Changes they don’t believe in