The following was originally posted as a comment in response to the Davisite article Comments to the Open Space & Habitat Commission concerning DiSC 2022 and has been reposted here as an article with permission of the author.
By Ron O
In regard to the Open Space and Habitat Commission meeting last [Monday] night, here are some highlights:
The recommendation (from the article linked above) to request that the northern (approximately) 100 acres be established as agricultural mitigation was not discussed or considered by the commission. Two commenters reiterated this request. (The 100 acres was part of prior proposals.)
The commissioners proceeded to review and edit the recommendations made when the proposal included the northern portion of the site. The developer representative claimed that many of them no longer applied, since the northern site is not part of the current iteration. As a result, the commissioners edited and deleted large sections of the prior recommendations, on-the-spot.
As the meeting approached 9:00 p.m., the chair suggested that a second meeting be held, given the amount of work left to be done. However, several commission members were not able to attend an additional meeting prior to the October 18th deadline set by the council. The chairperson stated that the council put the commission in a "bad place", and stated that she was "very unhappy" about it. The chair stated that they had received the packet for review on the previous Friday afternoon (for this Monday meeting).
At the suggestion of the developer representative (and Sherri Metzger, the city's principal planner), the commission entirely skipped-over the previous recommendation to reject the proposal. The chair expressed "relief" at this suggestion. One commissioner seemed to mistakenly believe that commissions were not permitted to weigh-in regarding recommendations to approve or reject, despite the fact that they were reviewing the document in which that recommendation was made. (It was noted that five of the eight commission members were "new" to the commission.)
Ms. Metzger stated that recommending approval or rejection of a proposal is not the role of commissioners, though she did acknowledge that they can do so. There was some pushback at Ms. Metzger's description of the commission members' efforts during the meeting as "wordsmithing". (Not sure if she originated the use of that term during the meeting, but the commission members clearly had a different view of their efforts than Ms. Metzger did.) Ms. Metzger also stated/claimed that much of the commission's recommendations can be made after it's approved. (Assuming it's approved.) Ms. Metzger stated that the proposal is "not residential", and that open space requirements are therefore not the same. (It should be noted that the proposal includes residential.)
Due to the unavailability of commission members to attend further meetings and the October 18th deadline, the chair and the remainder of the commission agreed to push-through the recommendations last night, ultimately whittling-them down to seven (as I recall). I did not check the time, but I believe this occurred sometime after 10:00 p.m.
There was also some discussion regarding the inclusion of the concrete plaza as "open space", but no action became of it. There was also some discussion of building on prime farmland, but it was ultimately acknowledged that there's no viable way around that, if the proposal is approved.
Davisite 
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