Attend March 14 Planning Commission Hearing to oppose attack on CEQA!!

**TALKING POINTS FOR THURSDAY MARCH 14 PLANNING HEARING ON CEQA** (SF City Hall, Room 400, 12 noon)

ON ITEM 8, PROJECT TIMING:

These rule changes should not be considered until the proposed amendments to CEQA procedures are decided upon, -especially- where the rule changes would allow deadline extensions due to CEQA  appeals.

The rule changes themselves would give developers excessive leeway to delay, and leave important land and buildings idle much too long, with the selfish intention of increasing profits by waiting for property values to increase.

And they would give FAR too much power to the Zoning Administrator to extend such delays indefinitely.

ON ITEM 12, WIENER CEQA PROCEDURE AMENDMENTS (3 points):

1)      On November, 29, 2012, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended to Supervisor Wiener that he meet with the many community opponents to the first and second drafts of his CEQA legislation, and to then introduce an AMENDED text which reflects feedback from these community organizations.

1. Supervisor Wiener cherrypicked his outreach efforts, leaving community members scrambling to inform one another about meetings to which only  a select few were invited
2. Those meetings resulted in NO substantial changes in the legislation to address the many serious problems that were clearly documented both to the author and to the Planning Commission.

2)      We urge the Commission to recommend a ‘NO’ vote on Supervisor Wiener’s legislation to the Board of Supervisors.

3)      The legislation as amended continues to raise numerous red flats.  Community concerns continue to be

1. ‘First Approval’ trigger of the appeals clock . This is far too early in the process to enable sufficient examination and understanding of projects.   A reasonable trigger is the final approval of the project as a whole, from either the Planning Commission or the Board of Supervisors .
2. Codification of the practice of exempting projects from environmental review, often without public notice.
3. Allowing the Board of Supervisors to avoid a formal legal appeal hearing before the full Board.
4. Elimination of the “Fair Argument” standard. State law codifies that an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is warranted if there is “substantial evidence which supports a fair argument” that a project may significantly negatively impact the environment. Supervisor Wiener’s legislation cuts out the words “which supports a fair argument” setting a much tougher test for triggering Environmental Impact Reports. The coalition insists on retaining the current local wording, which simply states “fair argument” on its own.
5. The dramatically shortened deadlines in Supervisor Wiener’s legislation for filing an appeal, for noticing, hearings, etc. Shorter public review leads to more problems, not fewer
6. Reduced noticing to local residents of area plans, general plans, and plans covering “20 acres or more.”  Such large area plans should get more public notice and scrutiny, particularly from neighbors that will feel the impacts.
7. Allowing new projects to avoid environmental review when they are within a larger project that has already received environmental review.
8. Combining Mitigated Negative Declarations and simple Negative Declarations into one category.  All preliminary mitigated negative declarations which the ERO negotiates with developers must be fully noticed in writing to the public with all mitigations indicated. And where significant environmental impacts may exist, a Planning Commission hearing on a mitigated negative declaration must be required.
9. Proposed reductions in CEQA public noticing practices