Where have all the “planners” gone now that we need them most?
Over the past few years I’ve watched the “frog come to a boil”; you know the story, right? If you throw a frog into hot water it will jump out but if you put the frog in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, it will stay in the pot and boil to death. Somehow I feel like the planning “profession” is being boiled to death as a result of slow changes that are destroying what we have historically valued most as planners. Our capacity to Plan!
I guess what has brought all this into focus for me recently has been the “Valley Blueprint” planning process that has been underway in California’s central valley for the past few years. This was a well funded State program that has spent millions of dollars with Council’s of Government (COGs) to prepare a Valley-Wide Blueprint for Growth” for the Central Valley “Region”.
The program was billed as a “bottom up” effort to get the California Central Valley on track for a future of “growth” and “agricultural preservation”; historically, two mutually exclusive planning concepts. The program was anything but a “bottom up” effort. Consultant teams held countless “local” meetings and “workshops” in a vain effort to “engage” the public in “good planning practice”. Local city and county planners were “coordinated” with but had no real role in this planning consultant driven process. The new planning concept? “Increased Density”.
To get to this “solution” consultant planning teams, along with their COG “administrators” drafted up “Blueprints” that were to be adopted by local jurisdictions indirectly. Indirectly because a city council or board of supervisors never voted on any of this. They participated because THEY had a representative on a COG Board Director’s that had voted for it.
In reality, local City Councils, Planning Commissions and Boards of Supervisors were never really brought into the process in any meaningful way nor did they vote the “Blue Print” up or down. This was assumed to be “OK” because the individual cities and county agencies had “representatives” on each of the individual COGs. Remember, this is a “bottom up” process; the Blueprint consultants and COG staff met with “the people” in their workshops and public meetings. They were delivering the message to the “elected” folks about what the “people” want!
Millions have been spent, documents/plans have been published and now we are about to implement “the people’s plan” for the future of the Central San Joaquin Valley. The Blueprint Implementation Plan is now in circulation. This Implementation Plan has several key components but the most telling element, the place where the water comes to “boil” for the frog; 1) “regional” organization that will direct the implementation of this “plan” and the fact that the implantation plan will be financed with a combination of 2) local government “fee” revenue and “grant” funds from the bankrupt State of California.
This is where the fun begins. Presumably, local cities and counties would have to “vote” for these fee and tax increases! Would these increases have to go to a “vote” of the electorate? Could this be accomplished with a simple majority or require and super-majority (2/3 majority) vote?
The realization, by the Blueprint planners and consultants, that the implementation of the Blueprint was going to rest with local city and county governments was always there but the “light” never came on until we get to the point where the “rubber meets the road”; money? Who is going to pay for all this? Of course there was always the thought that state law could be changed transferring some of the local government “police” power to a “regional planning agency” along with some taxing or fee authority. There are several “regional” agencies already in existence (air and water) and, of course, there is the famous “Oregon” Regional Planning Model.
Throughout the process there has been another aspect of the Blueprint that was seldom talked about but was implied. There is a “hammer” in the process of “implementing” the Blueprint. Local funding for streets and roads. It is not by accident that the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is the key California State Agency directing the “blueprint” effort. Failure, by local governments to meet the “standards” of the Blueprint” can result in local cities and counties losing some, if not all, of their transportation improvement/maintenance funds.
This is a serious “hammer”. Local cities and counties have been “hammered” by the state “appropriating” locally originated funds (taxes) and “redistributing these funds with “conditions”. City and county governments took a major hit with the passage of Proposition 13 and the “hits” have just kept coming. Now the state is making a grab for local Redevelopment funds. As a result, cities and counties have struggled to improve and maintain infrastructure and must depend on the generosity of the State of California to provide services and infrastructure that residents demand.
As I read through this “Blueprint Implementation Plan” the idea began to sink in. The money to finance this “plan” would come from us in the “trenches” and go to a regional agency. That is the pattern that has characterized State-Local relationships for many years. Originally, “local county” governments were organized in California to raise revenue to support State Government. County governments were known as “creatures of the state”; ergo, we have “county” assessors’ offices that work under the general authority of the State Board of Equalization.
The responsibility to implement the Blueprint would go back down to us folks in the “trenches” of planning; the local city and county “planning” agencies. Local “planners”, after all, know all about implantation, it’s planning skills that they lack. This is the beginning feel like the end for local government “planning” as we’ve known it in the past, the “frog” water is boiling. Is that a good thing?
Over the years I’ve watched my profession “devolve”. Local government planners have become a professional cadre of “permit processors” and “administrators” for the most part. While there are some notable exceptions, “Real” planning has been contracted out to planning consultants. Planning “leadership” has tended to gravitate to the professional “administrator” who had expertise in bidding and managing “planning” consultant contracts.
It is not by accident that we find “planning” administrators increasingly tapped to be City Managers or become Community Development Directors with broad responsibilities of planning, engineering, parks and recreation, etc. The role of the “planner” has been diluted, at least in some eyes, to the role of the “administrator” in the local government organization chart.
How did we get here? It was a slow process at first; the cold water part of boiling a frog. You contract for the services of scientist (historian, biologist, etc.) and engineer (traffic, water, sewer, etc.) they provide you with the “raw” information you need to formulate “your” plan. Then, we get so busy with the process of entitlement processing (CEQA, public hearings, staff reports, etc.) that there just is no time for “planning”. The next “devolutionary” step is the “planning consultant”. The “firm” that pulls the plan together, hires the technical staff and even “administers” and coordinates the public review process.
So, what is missing in this process? It is efficient, right? We get the plan we need and it always conforms to the requirements of state law. Perhaps “public” tends to be a “fluff” job that attempts to “educate” people to their “real” needs; the process seldom plays a significant part in the process because the “plans” tend to avoid issues of serious conflict. The “plans” are “general” abstract and typically fail to deal with the “hot button” issues that will energize a neighborhood in a public hearing. That comes later and is left to the local planners in the “trenches”.
So, what is missing in this system? Capacity!
Local city and county “planning” staff, the people who have the most knowledge about the planning-public interface are no longer engaged in the “real” process of “planning”.
How about “Uniqueness”? The unique quality of a community, the “something that makes OUR city “special” tends to get lost in this process. The “cost-effective” approach uses a formula that result, more often than not, in a “cookie cutter” or boiler plate document that “meets the requirement of state law. The out-of-town “planning team” has no identity with the local setting, it people and the political/economic and organizational history of the local planning agency.
The process does reduce the stress level for planning staff and even elected officials. Mistakes, miss-steps and bad calls can be blamed on the “out-of-town” guy/gal and we simply ask them to fix it. The overall result is that local planning staff don’t grow and learn from the process. Local public officials seldom “direct” this planning effort and the planning agency, itself, fails to develop the capacity to plan!
Another “devolving” aspect of this process is that as educated and dedicated “planners” we have a creative instinct and a need to actualize that instinct. We do it through implementation of the “planning” areas where we still do have some element of control; regulation!
As planners, we are constantly expanding and refining our “administrative” rules and codes to make the “permitting” process more effective and efficient. Of course, we have the legal system working closely with us to “force” us into new sets of rules and processes; this is what “local planning” has become or is becoming. We are “implementers” We write and administer the rules that implement the “plan”.
As a result, our local planning processes have become top-heavy, cumbersome and, in this economic climate, unsustainable. We can easily terminate “planning” staff because there are fewer permits to process and “planning” is done by those out-of-town guys anyway. The sad part of this “downward spiral” is that local government planners become less qualified for real planning jobs in an economically challenging time and gravitate to non-planning professions. Instead of building on our resource of local expertise, we have devalued it and diminished the value of the “profession” as a whole.
At the same time, the folks who are doing “planning” at the consultant or regional level, have lost contact with the context and constraints encountered by working in the “trenches”. This disconnect between the “planners” and the “implementers” has resulted in a Valley Blue Print document that comes lightly to the conclusion that a “regionally” focused agency can “coordinate” or direct the “local” planning effort and that “local” $$$s can be easily sent to the “agency” to pay for this program.
So here we are, ripe for the plucking! A Valley Blueprint that is regionally based and will direct how “local” planning will be “coordinated” in the future. It will be a “consultant” driven process that reflects the “regional” administrative organizational mindset of the COG’s and meet the “planning consultant” needs for a “market”. Planning and “local” will become an oxymoron. So, what is being lost in this process? I guess I will leave that question for the academics who promote this concept of “regionalism” as the BEST solution to our “planning problems”.
