Letters

Giving council power to call up planning decisions is a bad idea

With respect to the article in the Dec. 1 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times concerning Town Council calling up Planning Commission decisions not otherwise being appealed: BAD IDEA!

With all due respect to my good friend Laura Nachison, who came up with the idea, and my other friends on Town Council and Planning Commission who support it, they are overlooking some really important principles here.

One is that there is very good reason the Planning Commission is a final decision-making body (subject to proper appeal, of course). And that is to keep land-use and other zoning decisions out of the political theater and in more of an analytical and judicial realm. That's why commissioners are not supposed to talk to applicants or others about a project outside the confines of the public hearing, and, if they do, they are supposed to report the substance of such contacts at the hearing for the public record. Just so everything is on the up and up, out in public and not "smarmy" (to use Councilman Jan Hutchins' word).

Council, on the other hand, to do its job well, is expressly supposed to talk one-on-one with constituents. That is why I fear the opposite of what Nachison and other supporters expect. This new process would invite more abuse than the occasional (or rare--the article said "on at least one occasion." Only once in the 110-or-so-year history of Los Gatos, or the 80-year history of the Planning Commission?) end run of a council member asking someone to appeal a decision.

Au contraire! There would/could be more abuse the other way. I can foresee a big developer or business or property owner (read: campaign contributor, political mover/shaker) asking a council member to call up a Planning Commission decision rather than facing the embarrassment of appealing it himself or herself.

Actually, considering the Planning Commission as a quasi-judicial body and the Council as an appellate body, this procedure seems to me analogous to an appellate court calling up a lower court's decision on its own initiative without an interested party appealing that decision. I'm not a lawyer, but are such actions possible?

Finally, I don't see a need for this change. If there is a legitimate policy issue raised by a Planning Commission decision, and no one cares to appeal it, the council can always discuss and rectify the policy issue in general for purposes of guiding or restricting future decisions without overturning or calling into question the current decision.

I strongly urge the Council to reconsider this decision.

Mike Abkin
Los Gatos

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