The Board of Supes approved by a veto-proof majority today a bill that would require the Planning Department to notify tenants, businesses and property owners about the massive new zoning changes proposed for the West Side of town.
The 8-3 vote came after two supes, Matt Dorsey and Myrna Melgar, warned that notification would cause under alarm in the impacted neighborhoods.
Dorsey said the notices would be “incredibly alarming.” Melgar said the city would be “needlessly alarming” people.
Melgar said the city didn’t send those notification in past major zoning changes—but as Sup. Connie Chan, who sponosored the bill, noted, taht was not necessarily a good thing.
Chan noted that the proposed increases in height and density would impact 13,000 acres, about half of the land in the city excluding parks. When it comes to public notice, she said, “the solution should always be to do more, not less.”
The opposition—from SF Yimby, among others—is based on the idea that residents, property owners, and small businesses who are directly informed that their neighborhoods are about to face dramatic change may organize against it.
That, it seems to me, is not “alarm.” That’s basic democracy: Not everyone these days reads the Chronicle or the SF Standard or 48hills, which have all reported on this. Not everyone on the West Side is fluent in English. A lot of the maybe 300,000 people and small businesses that will face potentially serious impacts (including displacement) are fully informed on what’s happening.
If bulldozers start demolishing existing buildings (the city planners say there will be no demolition of buildings with residential tenants, but there are a lot of other buildings that could be torn down for bigger ones), there’s going to be a whole lot of anger in the neighborhoods. And it will be a lot worse if it comes as a surprise.
Melgar, Dorsey, and Sup. Bilal Mahmood voted no.
