Reflections on Being a Nincompoop

Early in the history of this blog, I wrote about three key steps on my path to becoming an urbanist.   One of those was being exposed to pioneering baseball statistical analyst Bill James when still at an impressionable age.  (I was probably in my mid-20s.)

Baseball number-crunching may seem a long way from urbanism.  And it truly is.  But there’s a connection in the way of thinking, particularly in the upsetting of entrenched paradigms, at which James excelled.  As I wrote about James over three years ago, “his work provided the life lesson that conventional wisdom can be wrong and that we should be open to those who offer new ways of viewing reality.”  For me, that was a key step on the path to becoming an urbanist.

James continues to put forth baseball work, although it seems less ground-breaking than it did forty years, with many good young writers tackling the subjects into which James opened the doors.  Sometimes revolutionaries are overtaken by the forces they set loose.

But James still has moments of eye-opening insight.  To me, the best of those moments come when he digresses from baseball and applies his incisive and paradigm-rejecting mind to other areas of life.  I’m currently reading a book by James in which my favorite section is his rumination on the fallacy of assigning infinite value to any element of a decision.

The immediate target of James’ attention is the air safety program in the aftermath of 9/11.  He argues that, by assigning an infinite value to preventing terrorist attacks on commercial airliners, we effectively waste many more lifetimes, in ten, twenty, and thirty minute chunks, than we save by preventing the occasional attack.

James notes that there are many areas of life in which assigning infinite value to any single element can lead to flawed decision-making.  He particularly cites the criminal justice system.

The point struck home with me.  My favorite personal example is a utility that proclaims “Customer safety is our only concern.”  My immediate mental response is always “Nonsense.  You also need to put a value on energy delivery to customers, on turning a reasonable profit for stockholders, on providing a secure living for employees, and on many other factors.  Customer safety belongs on the list, but it can’t be the only factor.  And you trying to tell me that it is only undermines everything else that you say.”

Having taken a scenic route through baseball and federal flight safety rules, I’ll now pull these thoughts back into land use and urbanism.

In my last post, I wrote about a congested intersection in Petaluma.  The corner of E. Washington Street and S. McDowell Boulevard is a frequent subject of attention, with City staff continually working to make the intersection function better and the public questioning why good solutions can’t be found.

Adding my unhelpful voice to the discussion, I noted in my last post that any new intersection capacity that might be created would be soon be absorbed by induced demand, returning congestion to current levels and leaving the public still dissatisfied and irritated.

Given such a troublesome intersection, the reasonable expectation is the City would try to manage growth such that new sources of traffic, especially traffic that has little option to defer trips to another time, are minimized.  To give an example, a new sports complex, to which parents must deliver children for fixed gametimes, would be an unfortunate land-use choice near the intersection.

So, of course, a complex of three soccer fields, to which more than half of participants will pass through the problem intersection, is due to open in the next few weeks.  Furthermore, the three soccer fields are only the start, with three baseball diamonds to follow as funding allows.

Outside observers may splutter over this state of affairs, wondering what nincompoops would have located a sports complex in that location.  And I might be tempted to join them, except for one problem.  I’m one of the nincompoops.

About the time the construction decisions were being finalized, I was appointed to the Petaluma Park and Rec Commission.  (It’s actually the Recreation, Music, and Park Commission, but not a single music issue has come before us during my tenure as a Commissioner, so I’ll defer to Amy Poehler and go with Park and Rec Commission for today.)

In my time on the commission, several decisions related to the new sports complex have come before us.  In each case, I joined the others in voting unanimously to move the complex ahead.

Okay, let me insert three disclaimers.

First, by the time I assumed a decision-making role in the sports complex process, the decisions were largely made and the funding secured.  Waving my hands about traffic would have been like trying to stop a locomotive with a flyswatter.  I had no realistic chance to change the direction.

Second, I’m not suggesting that no one ever considered the traffic implications.  I suspect that sometime before my involvement, Planning and/or Public Works looked at the sports complex versus the traffic concern, sighed deeply, and agreed that the value to local athletics outweighed the traffic problems.

Third, I’m not arguing that the decision to proceed with the sports complex was wrong.  We should put a high value on local athletics and I’m willing to agree with Planning and/or Public Works in deciding that sports outweighs traffic in this situation.

No, my concern is that too many of us, including me for awhile, failed to understand that a balance had been made and that it was a balance that had significant implications to the community.  Since I’ve had my moment of enlightenment, I’ve spoken with numerous people, including fellow commissioners, about the siting decision and the resulting traffic issues.   To a person, all have dismissed my comments, noting that youth sports trumps all.

But we can’t think that way.  Because tomorrow, on some other issue, we’ll decide that traffic relief trumps all.  And maybe the next day, we’ll decide that affordable housing trumps all.  And eventually we work ourselves into a corner.  It’s a very suburban style of thinking, addressing each problem in a vacuum and ignoring the interrelationships that eventually govern the world.

Urbanism offers a couple of insights to our conundrum, one philosophical and one practical.

On the philosophical side, urbanism is all about compromises.  Do we want a wider sidewalk, do we want more parking, or do we want parklets?  Recognizing that cars remain an essential element of economic vitality, where do we put them so they serve us without governing us?  What is the right height for a building such that it houses enough people and economic activity that the street thrives without being overwhelmed?  Once we learn to make those careful balances, we’re better equipped to balance youth sports and traffic.

On the practical side, if we live in close enough proximity that we can be served by transit, then some of the traffic issues can be alleviated.  I’m intrigued by the idea of a city bus, in place of twenty cars, disgorging a passel of youth soccer players for a game.  (And as member of the Transit Advisory, I helped push, successfully, for a bus turnaround at the complex.)  Today, we’re nowhere near the ideal of transit serving youth sports, but urbanism can take us that direction.

In the real world, many problems are ultimately unsolvable.  Pretending they don’t exist, such as when we put infinite value on youth sports over traffic, isn’t a viable approach.  But urbanism gives us the tools to minimize the problems and to think about balancing competing objectives.

And so I’ve connected the dots, baseball to air safety to traffic to urbanism, using Bill James as a guide for most of the steps.  I think he’d be pleased.

Next time, I’ll write about a moment of clarity on urbanism and climate change.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

River Front: Sorting Through the Arguments

In a pair of recent posts, I introduced River Front, a proposed mixed-use project within the Central Petaluma Specific Plan, and wrote about the controversy that developed over whether the athletic field proposed by the applicant should be natural grass or artificial turf.

I closed the second post with the questions I was pondering as the climactic City Council session, reaffirming the decision in favor of grass, came to an end.  Did we identify all the reasons for turf versus grass?  Does the community have the right to require that a park be a community athletic field rather than a neighborhood park?  What should have been correct decision for the community?  And even if a turf athletic field is the right answer, is it fair to require the applicant to cover the cost?

In this post, I’ll provide my personal answers to those questions.

On the arguments for grass versus turf, I’ll add another pro-turf argument, traffic.  Turf fields are generally available for use twice as many hours per year as grass fields, so are the backbone of an athletic program.

And yet, when the under-construction East Washington Park is complete, all three turf athletic fields owned by the Petaluma Park and Recreation Department will be east of Highway 101, requiring ever more trips on E. Washington Street from west Petaluma.  (As a Parks Commissioner, I’m fully supportive of East Washington Park.  It was badly needed.  But I still regret the resulting geographic imbalance.)

Petaluma has an election approaching in which funds for street improvements and repair will be a major issue.  Against that backdrop, it seems odd to blithely accept the additional traffic generated by parks at the urban fringe without trying to reduce the impact.

It’s also indicative our approach to traffic and why we seem unable to manage traffic.  We put new uses where the land is available and/or the development costs are affordable, under the assumption that users can drive to the site.  But it’s expensive to build a road system to keep up with that increasing demand.  And the induced traffic phenomenon often makes it impossible to keep up.

Some may note that the improved high school fields, if they’re made accessible for community use, will help balance the traffic.  They’d be correct.  But none of the high schools are particularly close to the River Front area, so that part of town would remain under-served by athletic fields.  Assuming judicious league creation and scheduling, a turf athletic field at River Front could reduce traffic.

Adding the traffic argument to the other arguments that were made for turf, the increased hours of playability, safer surface, and reduced water requirements, I find that turf was the better option for the community.

I turn next to the question of whether the applicant, Basin Street, should have the right to choose their park surface.  Basin Street expressed a preference for a natural surface on which residents in the small-lot neighborhood could recreate.   (I suspect that the lower cost of grass also has a role in their decision.)

Unfortunately for the applicant, I may be the least favorable judge of that argument in Petaluma.  Having carefully monitored a handful of neighborhood that are in my purview as a Parks Commissioner, I despair of neighborhoods ever again making effective casual use of their parks and have suggested that we may wish to consider fundamental changes in how we configure neighborhood parks.

Barring those kinds of changes, I suggest that the image of fathers and sons throwing a frisbee in a neighborhood park on a sunny afternoon is another of those self-myths with which we delude ourselves and cause ourselves to make land use mistakes.  Instead, organized leagues with scheduled games is the predominant use of parks.

Besides, much as Basin Street was required to configure their proposed buildings to conform to the SmartCode that governs the Central Petaluma Specific Plan, I’d argue that they’re required to accept the park surface that is directed by the community, although with one large caveat that comes up next.

Even if turf is the correct choice, does that mean that Basin Street should pay the additional cost?  Looking at the other turf fields, existing, under construction, and proposed, all are either owned by the City (Lucchesi and East Washington), the school district (Petaluma and Casa Grande High Schools), or a church (St. Vincent High School).  Although developer impact fees played in a role in some of the turf field financing, River Front would be on the only field funded solely by a developer, which should be a red flag.

The argument was made that Basin Street should pay for the turf field because they would make millions of dollars with River Front.  But if making money in Petaluma is the criterion, why not bill Safeway, Clover-Stornetta, or a developer building homes at the urban fringe?

No, the implicit reason for asking Basin Street to foot the bill was that it was their project.  But there are already rules in place about how much developers should pay for the right to build new projects in Petaluma.  Those rules are called impact fees and require developers to pay fees for impacts such as traffic, schools, and parks.  And if developers build improvements that meet those needs, such as building a segment of a roadway that will serve the entire community, then they can deduct that cost from the impact fee that would otherwise be imposed.

Might it make sense to ask Basin Street to fund the turf field in exchange for a credit against impact fees?  Absolutely.  So, in the general mingling before the City Council meeting, I asked a Basin Street representative for his thoughts on this point.  He responded that the other park improvements required in the project has already exceeded the park impact fee.  Basin Street was already covering the cost of some park improvements in excess of the impact fees.  And any new exactions, such as the turf field, would be funded solely by Basin Street.

One of the themes voiced often during the City Council meeting was that Basin Street had “reneged” on an obligation.  Indeed, it was the only point to which Basin Street chose to respond, making the point that they had continually opposed the turf field and therefore hadn’t made a commitment from which they could renege.

But I would argue that there was reneging underway that evening.  And that was in the community’s demand that the agreement, implicit in the impact fee rules, about required park exactions be set aside with additional exactions required.  (Admitted, many of those making the reneging argument were insufficiently familiar with the impact fee mechanism to understand how their argument could boomerang back at them.)

As much as I would like the River Front field to be turf, I don’t agree with overturning the logic behind the impact fees.  If the benefit is to the public and the developer has already paid more than their fair share, then the additional cost should be borne by the public.

Indeed, there is a U.S. Supreme Court decision that is on point.  In Dolan vs. the City of Tigard, the Court ruled that cities can’t arbitrarily impose developer exactions.  Instead, there must be a reasonable “nexus” between the development impact and the exactions.  I’d argue that Dolan wouldn’t allow a condition that the River Front athletic field be changed to turf for the community good at Basin Street’s expense, especially when Basin Street had already exceeded the park costs required under the adopted impact fees.

If I’d been on the City Council, how would I have voted?  I would have voted to reopen the issue.  Clearly the public had strong emotions on the subject and deserved another chance to make their case.

I would then have used the weeks before the reconsideration to look for a way to fund the field without imposing the burden on Basin Street.  Failing that, I would have regretfully voted to leave the park as grass.

But I would have offered one final gambit.  I would have proposed a condition of approval that would have required Basin Street to convert the field to turf if, at any time prior to approval of construction documents, the community could assemble a plan to fund the incremental cost.

I consider it highly unlikely that the incremental funds could have been gathered.  At present, the community is working hard to raise funds for a restroom at East Washington Park, a goal that is only a fraction of the River Front turf expense.  But I would have left the door open.  And I would have happy to write a check toward the effort.

Completing the loop back to urbanism, I’ll ask one more question.  Should a land-use conundrum like this matter to urbanists?  I’ll respond with an emphatic “Yes!”

Although I believe that River Front will only slowly transform into a truly urban project, it is nonetheless configured like an urban project.  And urbanism means that the public space receives a higher priority than in drivable suburban projects, which is a fine thing.  But if we try to expand those public components, demanding improvements in excess of the impact fees, then we create a market disincentive to urbanism.

In a world where we should be encouraging urbanism to address our multitude of environmental and financial issues, demanding additional park improvements from urbanist developers would become one more impediment to urbanism.  And we can’t let that happen.

Before closing, I have one last point to make.  In the weeks since the final City Council decision on turf versus grass, I’ve heard many negative comments about Basin Street.  Those comments pain me.  I’ve previously written about how the public is often eager to condemn a developer for not being local, while also being unwilling to support local developers.

Basin Street is a local developer.  I don’t fully support every project they’ve done.  There are many elements that I wish they’d done differently, while also acknowledging that I don’t have full information about the regulatory, funding, and market demand issues that forced the design decisions.

(As much as many of us would like perceive developers as omnipotent monoliths that can do whatever they wish, they are more like small boats on a turbulent sea of capitalism, pushed about by forces beyond their control and trying to turn enough of a profit to remain afloat.  After all, we’ll only a handful of years removed from an economic crisis in which many developers perished.)

But, setting my quibbles about their design decisions aside, Basin Street has done good things for Petaluma.  It’d be hard to conceive of downtown Petaluma without Theatre Square.  Basin Street made downtown Petaluma relevant again.  They deserve our respect and appreciation.  And to withhold that appreciation because they refused to accede to an unfair demand for a turf athletic field makes me sad.

(Acknowledgment: I’ve never done any work for Basin Street.  However, as a member of the community, I know several of the principals.  Indeed, it would be odd if I didn’t.  Also, I’m currently engaged in a negotiation with Basin Street on behalf of a client.  Lastly, I’ve often eaten in Theatre Square restaurants.)

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

P.S. The article mentioned in the comments below can be found here.

River Front: Neighborhood Park or Community Sports Field?

In my last post, I introduced the proposed River Front mixed-use project in Petaluma.  My initial intention was to describe the project, to introduce the element of the project that became controversial, and to provide my perspective on the controversy.

It was a subject that I found fascinating.  So I kept writing and writing and writing.  And then writing a little more.  By the time I had finished my first draft, I’d written about three times the words of an average post.

My readers seem a tolerant lot.  From readership numbers, it appears that many are willing to follow me when I wander afield.  I greatly appreciate that tolerance.  But a 3,000 word post seemed an excessive demand to put on even the most tolerant readers.  So I edited the monster post into three posts.

In my last post, I limited myself to an overall perspective on River Front, including how it fits into the urbanist universe.  Today, I’ll cover the issue that improbably became the core controversy during the entitlement process.  And when I next return to the topic, which will be the post after next, I’ll offer my thoughts on the controversy.  Sitting in the City Council meeting that became the climax of the story, I found myself wandering through some intriguing byways of land-use philosophy.

The River Front developer, Petaluma-developer Basin Street, is proposing a number of parks within the project.  There will be the central green, a park along the Petaluma River, a bicycle path around a portion of the site, the set aside of a parcel on which others will build a boat house for racing shells, and an athletic field a short block from the central green.

Citing a desire for a more natural setting to serve their buyers, but probably also with an eye on the bottom line, Basin Street proposed that the athletic field have natural grass.  But when the project reached the City of Petaluma Recreation, Music, and Park Commission (RMPC), that body saw the situation differently.  (In my last post, I mentioned that I barely missed having a role in the controversy.  This is where that happened.  I sit on the RMPC, but was out of town for this meeting.)

The RMPC, noting the chronic lack of sports fields in Petaluma and with the knowledge that sport turf provides a more consistently playable surface for the local climate and soil conditions, raised the possibility of changing the field to turf.  Basin Street objected, probably with the additional $500,000 cost in mind, but the proposal passed.

When the project reached the Planning Commission, Basin Street again objected, but the Planning Commission concurred with the RMPC and again required the field to be turf.

It was only when the project reached the City Council that Basin Street found more sympathetic ears.  After an extended hearing on multiple issues regarding the entire project, the City Council voted, sometime between midnight and 1am, to approve the project without the turf, returning the field to grass.

Recreational supporters were outraged, both with the elimination of the turf and with the decision being made after midnight when few folks were in the Council chambers.  Under the onslaught, a Councilmember moved at a subsequent meeting that the decision be reopened.

To keep the project moving ahead, it was decided to hold a special meeting of the City Council solely to consider the motion to reopen the issue.  An affirmative vote would mean that turf versus grass could be debated yet again at a future Council meeting.

The legal context of the question made for an awkward public meeting.  In theory, the public who spoke and the Councilmembers who tried to explain their reasoning should have been limited to the question of whether the issue should be revisited, not the merits of grass versus turf.  But most did well at hewing to the subtle line.  Some argued that issue had sufficient public interest that the decision should have been made at a more reasonable hour.  Others argued that sometimes the Council process requires late night decisions, which the Council is capable of making with competence.

Nonetheless, the question of grass versus turf hearing kept leaking into the discussion.  The chronic shortage of athletic fields.  The difficulty of maintaining grass fields in a continually playable condition.  The soccer field at Lucchesi Park being the only current field with turf.  The two turf fields under construction at East Washington Park.  The high school fields that have been or will soon be converted to turf and may be made available for community use.

The increased water demand for grass over turf.  The installation of pipes for reclaimed water to irrigate the new field.   The fact that those pipes, although installed, won’t have water in them for a number of years.  The argument that Basin Street owed it to the community to put some of their anticipated profits back into a turf field.

Eventually, on a 5-2 vote, the Council voted not to reopen the issue, effectively reaffirming the earlier decision to allow the field to be grass.

But as I sat in the Council Chambers, watching the debate and the vote, I had multiple questions running around in my head.  Did we identify all of the reasons for turf versus grass?  Does the community have the right to tell a developer that a park should be primarily a community athletic field rather than a large neighborhood park?  And even if a turf athletic field is the right answer, is it fair to ask Basin Street to pick up the tab?

In my next post, I’ll provide updates on several issues in Petaluma, including the fairgrounds and block parties.  But in the post after that, I’ll return with my conclusions on the question of grass or turf at River Front.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)