I just love living here in Nevada City. You wake up in the morning and look out on all those board-feet of unharvested timber. If there's no smog alert you breathe in the mountain air. You zip over to Starbuck's to offer your tithe to the global economy. And then there's our local newspaper, nearly blinding us with life's sunny side.

Some time ago that paper shared its editorial feelings around Affordable Housing Development Corporation's defeated 80-unit housing project, saying that the citizens who opposed it are largely "negative" people who would probably speak ill of any kind of affordable housing proposal. You know the type--the "glass is half-empty" sort of people with nothing better to do than gripe about how many public documents that once were on file at City Hall are now missing. Upbeat, positive people would see those file cabinets not as half empty, but half full!

Some months back a number of Nevada City residents began examining public records at City Hall pertaining to building projects taking place throughout the city. At the time, research focused on a number of houses which had recently received variances to building codes--sites for which the planning commission had in some way "bent the rules." While it is entirely
appropriate to grant a variance in certain cases, a large increase in the number granted in the last few years has raised a significant protest within the city. There is, after all, such a thing as an unbuildable site. Steepness of slope, lack of accessibility by fire apparatus, proximity to streams, and historical considerations, among many other factors, can render a piece of land
legally unbuildable, and the city is simply running out of buildable sites.

As the price of real estate has soared in the last few years, a shift has taken place in evaluating these sites and the planning commission's discretionary judgment has increasingly favored building over all other considerations. Many variances have been granted to developers who did not remotely meet the hardship requirement but merely wanted to maximize their profits, as has been stated at meetings. In some cases building or lot splits were permitted against the advice of the city's own advisory staff such as our attorney, fire marshal and city engineer. It was also discovered, as the open, months-long examination of documents
continued, that some of the most significant paperwork pertaining to these decisions was beginning to disappear from the files. Thick files have become thin. The entire file for 323 Monroe Street has simply been "missing" for five months. This address is the site of Filipponi Enterprise's controversial lot split and the subsequent attempts to construct a second, highly contested 5,000+ square foot luxury home. Around the time this discovery was made, in April of this year, the city attempted to limit citizen access to public records by initiating a new fee, or fine, as it were, of $35.00 per hour and $25.00 per hour for the city clerk's and clerk's assistant's time, respectively, in processing requests to view documents, in addition to the regular copying fees. The California Public Records Act protects our rights to view and copy public records without charge beyond actual copying costs, and the matter was eventually resolved in favor of upholding the law. All's well that ends well on that score. But darn it if those files don't keep disappearing! 

By far the biggest mysterious disappearance to date has been the loss of the entire Gold Flat Annexation file. This file pertains, naturally, to the Gold Flat area annexed by the city from the county. Part of this file pertains to the lawsuit by Friends of Nevada City over a proposed 70 room hotel. There's no shortage of other things it may pertain to in the Gold Flat area, most notably at the moment the proposed 91 acre development of apartments and tract homes, "St. Francis Wood," off Gracie Road.

Now, when I say "file," you may be picturing one of those manila folders full of papers that might easily be mislaid here or there, or used to prop up an unstable table leg, something like that. It's not that way. The Gold Flat Annexation file comprised enough documents to fill half a file cabinet drawer. It is no longer there, and you and I who might wish to look at it, and who have the right to, cannot. Tough luck for anyone who wants to learn more about the Gold Flat Annexation! No explanation has been offered and no routing slip, no chain of custody document, exists to indicate its legitimate removal to some other site. It is simply gone.

But wait. I'm starting to sound like one of those pesky "negative" types. There is good news as well. For one thing, five Nevada City residents have formed the Citizen's Housing Study Group, to offer researched recommendations to the city to assist in finding affordable housing solutions. Paul Matson, Sally Harris, Gene Fox, Lee Pemberton and Gary Johnson have come
together as a group in a natural outgrowth of the many appeals to the City Council which protested the 80-unit AHDC housing project proposal earlier this year. Clearly Nevada City residents are eager to address the issue of affordable housing, and our elected officials are not the only ones willing to contribute significant personal time to arrive at realistic solutions. 

We also have a new planning commissioner. Victor Prussack replaced Jim Rose, who was dismissed on July 10, and the Twilight Zone music wafting through city hall begins to fade a bit. Mr. Prussack brings an unjaded enthusiasm to the task, and his educational background includes city planning, particularly affordable housing solutions. And he does his homework! At the
July 26 meeting, when the age of a particular building came into discussion, Mr. Prussack had already researched the matter by actually crawling under the house in question and examining it for tell-tale architectural details. A further reorganization of the commission resulted in Conley Weaver's election as Chairman. Mr. Weaver, an architect with much experience handling large-scale urban projects, seems unafraid to assess the commission's past actions. His first order of business as Chairman was to initiate a lengthy and candid discussion about the planning commission's handling of the 80-unit housing project proposal. The night of that meeting was a warm one, and the doors of the meeting hall were wide open. You could see the sky out there and the fresh air felt good.