Sacramento's Development Oversight Commission is proceeding with its plan to merge the Planning Commission and Design Commission into a single body. Despite the overwhelmingly negative response from the current Planning and Design Commission members and the general public, the latest version of the DOC's proposal includes even less citizen input: instead of a seven-member board with two developer representatives and five members of the general public, the new proposal recommends five developer representatives and two members of the general public, in addition to the greatly reduced number of public meetings.

From a historian's perspective, the consolidation of these bodies into a single, smaller group has an interesting parallel with California history. In 1879, California lawmakers held a constituional convention to revise California's constitution and reflect the changes to the state since the original 1849 constitution's writing. One issue they hoped to address was the influence of the Central Pacific Railroad, whose power dominated state politics from the time of its completion a decade earlier.

The 1879 rewrite of the California Constitution included the creation of a three-member Railroad Commission, to deal with railroad issues. The original intent was to create an independent body to review railroad law, and remove it from the political influences of the State Senate, many of whose members were elected because of Central Pacific's money and influence. Central Pacific welcomed the creation of the new Railroad Commission: instead of having to bribe half of the state senate, they now only had to bribe two of the three members of the Railroad Commission to ensure decisions in their favor.

From Panama Bartholomy, Planning Commission member:

"The City Development Services Department and the Development Oversight Commission have posted a schedule (http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/customer-service/CommunityAnnouncements.cfm ) of the community meetings where they have and will be presenting the DOC’s proposal to eliminate the Design Review Commission, move most planning decisions to the staff level out of the public forum and reconstitute the Planning Commission with a 75% developer membership.

"Despite posting the schedule and location of the meetings there is no time given for any of the upcoming meetings so any resident or neighborhood group would not know when to attend the meeting, negating any benefit of having the schedule online.

"It also now appears that the DOC’s original January 6 proposal has changed to even more heavily favor developer interests over neighborhoods. In their original proposal (http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/meetings/commissions/planning/2008/documents/DOC_letter.PDF) the DOC proposed a new Planning Commission to be made up “of seven members, with at least two of the seven required to have professional experience in architecture, landscape architecture and/or urban planning.” The City handout presented by Bill Thomas, Director of Development Services, at the February 23 Neighborhood Alliance Group (NAG) meeting (http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/documents/SUMMARY-CHART.pdf) proposed a Planning Commission of seven members, with five-representatives from the development community and only two of the general public. Sometime between January 5 and February 23 the City and DOC decided that the original proposal did not limit the general public’s involvement enough and decided that all development decisions in the city should be made by either the development community themselves or by city staff with orders to “Get the customers to success”.

"The City has now set April 30 as the date that the City Council will have a workshop on this issue. There they will decide on whether or not to continue to pursue this proposal.

"Community leaders that value the two-year old Design Review Commission’s role in ensuring the protection of neighborhood identity need to contact their City Councilmember before this meeting to express their views on the DOC’s proposal.

"Those that value a citizen oversight Planning Commission over a developer dominated rubber stamp Planning Commission need to attend each of the public meetings in the newly posted schedule (http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/customer-service/CommunityAnnouncements.cfm) and ask the DOC and City why staff feel the public should no longer have a role in planning decisions that affect their neighborhoods.

"To keep up on these meetings and all activities related to this proposal feel free to join the Neighborhood Efficiency, Accountability and Transparency (NEAT) Coalition at its Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69072329545).

"Here is the schedule of the next meetings where the proposal will be shared with select community members:

Curtis Park Community Meeting
March 25, 2009

Oak Park Neighborhood Association (Oak Park Community Center)
April 02, 2009

South Area Community Outreach Meeting (Pannell Community Center)
April 06, 2009

North Area Community Outreach Meeting (South Natomas Community Center)
April 13, 2009

City Council Workshop
April 30, 2009"