COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Condo conversions need to improve community, life

As elected representatives of our community, the City Council has a duty to work to ensure development projects meet standards and do not create quality-of-life problems. One of the basic issues involving development proposals is whether sufficient parking can be provided on-site.

Insufficient parking is an issue many areas of our community are familiar with. Who in the 1950s-60s, when most families had only one car, could have known families in the future would have multiple vehicles?

In a recent Sounding Off, (“Council, commission mistreating developers,” Aug. 31) Geoff West seems to believe that unless every project is approved without conditions, the Council is “mistreating developers.” As a proponent for improving our city, I could not disagree more. Our City Council has considered numerous development projects, all of which have been subject to conditions of approval.

The process of generating conditions of approval on a project allows: community members, staff, commission, council and the developer the opportunity to suggest and adopt provisions that will mitigate potential impacts of the proposed project. Some conditions are “boiler-plate,” and are applied to every project, and others vary depending on factors relating to the specific site and proposed use. The writer opined, “Although he asked for not a single variance on this project, the commission and council chose to saddle him with more than two dozen ‘conditions of approval’ before they would give their begrudging approval.”

Apparently, the writer does not understand the conditioning process, and missed City Attorney Barlow’s comment wherein she reminded the applicant that under the existing (pre-moratorium) apartment conversion rules, conversion projects may be held to the same standards a new development would be required to meet. As such, the Planning Commission and Council have full discretion to apply existing standards, as necessary, on apartment conversion projects. In this instance, parking was the main issue.