The Sausalito City Council could be within weeks of adopting its 2040 general plan, capping four years of work on the blueprint.
The council is scheduled to take up the plan at its meeting on Feb. 9, the first time potential approval is on the agenda, Mayor Jill Hoffman said. She said plan is nearly finished, but there is no hard approval deadline.
“We will see what happens,” Hoffman said. “I think we will give it a very serious look but we have three new council members. Even the ones who were on the working group and advisory committee for the general plan have to get caught up to speed, too. There is no magic reason it has to be now.”
Councilwoman Susan Cleveland-Knowles said she expects the next meeting to be the last hearing on the plan because she and new council members Janelle Kellman and Melissa Blaustein were part of the planning process.
“We’re theoretically at the finish line,” she said. “We’ve spent the last four years on the broader general plan and now it is time to move on to the zoning and housing elements.”
The city has spent about $1 million since hiring the M-Group, an urban planning consulting firm, to undertake the planning in 2017.
Hoffman said if the decision gets pushed out by one extra meeting, the city would not incur extra costs.
The plan will guide the city’s development over the next 20 years. The vote could be postponed over a portion of the plan that might allow housing to be built in the Marinship area, a waterfront site zoned for light industrial, applied art and maritime uses.
Hoffman said there have been disagreements over language to consider zoning overlays citywide and over determining whether to include restrictions from the Marinship Specific Plan, a 1988 zoning ordinance that classifies buildings in Marinship as “legal non-conforming” or “conforming.”
Office spaces are not allowed to be built in the Marinship area, according to the specific plan. A “legal non-conforming” building in the Marinship is an office space that was built before the specific plan was ratified. Facilities that are within permitted uses are considered “conforming.”
At its meeting on Wednesday, the Planning Commission discussed the City Council’s recommendation to remove “legal non-conforming” from the “Marinship office uses” part of the plan, replacing it with “conforming.”
After deliberation, the commission approved a recommendation to the council to replace “conforming” with “permitted,” as long as it keeps the current intent of office space restrictions in the Marinship area.
Cleveland-Knowles said she still has to review the Planning Commission’s recommendations, but the change to add “conforming” to the plan was in the spirit of keeping in line with the 1988 specific plan.
“Staff thought the intent of the original Marinship Specific Plan was to have the existing office uses continue the same,” she said. “So that was the compromise that was recommended.”
Kristina Feller, chair of the Planning Commission, said another issue is the inclusion of a possible zoning overlay. She said the idea was rejected by the commission, the general plan working group and the general plan advisory committee, but it was approved by the former council.
“I don’t support an overlay in the Marinship and I don’t see the purpose of including it,” Feller said.
Geoff Bradley, president of the M-Group, assured the Planning Commission that the current language does not add a zoning overlay to the Marinship area. He said because the area is listed as industrial, a zoning overlay alone would not be able to change its designations.
“But if the city changes its mind, it could start the process to change the general plan,” Bradley said at the meeting.
Commission members Morgan Pierce and Richard Graef said they do not think an attempt to alter zoning in the general plan would succeed. Other commissioners did not want to leave it to chance. The commission unanimously recommended that the council restrict zoning overlays in the Marinship area.
“It’s just a recommendation to put that language in the plan. The City Council could just reject it,” commissioner Nastassya Saad said. “We are just looking for a bit of extra protection.”
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