Hype springs eternal in San Luis Obispo

May 9, 2023

OPINION by RICHARD SCHMIDT

The news e-blast from San Luis Obispo city‘s department of propaganda announced the “long-awaited” 396-space downtown parking garage at Nipomo and Palm streets is about to start taking shape.

“Starting this week, the City . . . will begin . . . a new 163,000-square-foot parking structure designed to contribute to the overall vibrancy, livability, and culture of downtown San Luis Obispo for generations to come.”

“’We know many in our community are excited that this project is officially beginning. The City is happy to build the first new parking structure in downtown SLO in 20 years,’ . . . said City Manager Derek Johnson. ‘By investing in important pieces of public infrastructure like this one, we are one step closer to realizing our community’s vision for this part of the downtown core.’”

“Known as the Cultural Arts District Parking Structure,” the e-blast went on, this garage “is the first step to paving the way for a bustling and pedestrian-friendly Cultural Arts District” and “will ensure that downtown continues to serve as the cultural hub of San Luis Obispo.”

I don’t know about you, but all that leaves me a bit breathless — vibrancy, livability, culture, community vision, a bustling and pedestrian-friendly Cultural Arts District, cultural hub of the city, for generations to come. All because of a new garage. That’s some amazing garage!

How have we lived without it all this time?

The actual purpose of the e-blast is, by comparison to its hype, quite modest – to inform the public there will be interruptions to the use of a little-used city parking lot on part of the site while “vacant” adjacent buildings are demolished. Garage construction is months away.

But SLO city never misses an opportunity to spin the most minor matter with voluminous official talking points. From SLO city, we can depend upon one thing above all: Hype springs eternal.

Communications

This e-blast, one of many the city sends out every week, is the work of a city “communications” operation that didn’t exist till recently. First there was one on-staff “communications specialist,” then there were two, plus a contracted out-of-town outfit. That’s a lot of “public relations” firepower for a small city. It’s very effective at getting city hall’s version of things out to the public. And also at influencing the city council, who if asked would totally deny they’re manipulated that way (or in any other way!).

The idea is simple: you develop a set of talking points, keep repeating them at every opportunity, exclude, drown out or ignore other points of view, and righteously steamroll ahead, what this city cleverly calls “moving in the right direction.”

I mention the city council’s being manipulated because of something funny that happened a few weeks ago. There was notice of a 10-minute special council meeting at noon on a weekday, which in itself seemed odd, and the sole subject of said meeting was “city communications channels.” No staff report was attached, nor was there any other information to enlighten the public.

Having just seen someone blabbing confidential police information on Nextdoor and citing a new council member as the source, I was concerned “communications channels” at a special meeting might be a dressing down of the council member. So I emailed the city clerk asking what “communications channels” meant and pointing out the obvious fact such a vague meeting notice probably violated the Brown Act. Per usual, I got zero reply.

So I decided to listen in on the city’s website. When I couldn’t access this meeting via web, I immediately called the city clerk’s office to find out why and was told special meetings aren’t broadcast. I asked if they could tell me the subject of the meeting, and they said “city communications channels.” I asked what that means. “I have no idea” was their response.

Turns out the meeting’s subject was nothing more than a presentation by “communications” staff about what they do. And for that the council was dragged to a special mid-day meeting on a workday. That by itself seems like manipulation.

The repetitive and exclusive use of official city talking points in all forms of city communication, especially in staff reports to decision-makers, creates a totalitarian bubble around every policy matter. Often this leads to bad decisions, as contrasting solutions aren’t acknowledged, let alone explored. Sometimes, though, the line of an argument becomes so insanely stupid as to be funny.

One example was the council’s decision to contract out street sweeping, which is more costly in the long run but cheaper the first year, rather than purchase another sweeping machine and hire another sweeper, which is the more cost-effective choice. Greg Hermann, a $222,000 per year administrative type, wrote an agenda report stating contracting out sweeping was necessary to sweep bike lanes separately from streets, and proclaimed this a DEI issue. DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) being one of this council’s “major goals,” it must be referenced in every staff report as an official talking point.

The dumbness of this comment is that no contractor will pay its sweepers what the city pays in salary and benefits, and that a new city hire would likely be a “DEI person” whose life could truly be uplifted by good pay, health insurance and retirement. The council bought Hermann’s deal. But, hey, when talking points rule what looks a lot like hypocrisy’s often the result.

Propaganda

The parking garage e-blast was one-dimensional propaganda. It omitted more facts than it included. Here’s a sampler of its omissions:

• Housing destruction. The “vacant” buildings to be demolished are perfectly good housing – three houses, including an historic adobe and two “contributing” buildings listed on the city’s historic survey, and a small apartment building. “We need housing” being a city mantra, and housing — like DEI – being a top council priority, why is the city itself playing the bad guy by destroying decent housing? After purchasing the housing years ago, the city shut it down and it’s sat vacant rather than being put to use by, say, the housing authority.

Today, instead of moving houses elsewhere, giving this economical form of “new” housing a boost, the city will bulldoze them, wasting tons of perfectly good building materials and putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere. While decarbonization of the atmosphere is another top council priority – witness its ban on gas stoves –, it regularly gets superseded by talking point actions.

How much atmospheric carbon release are we talking about from demolishing these little houses? More than you’d suppose. Translated into easy to understand energy equivalents, the trashed embodied energy in the buildings and the carbon cost of their demolition is equivalent to gasoline that could drive a 50 mpg hybrid vehicle to the moon and back three times, if only there were a way. With demolition, that carbon’s just up in the air.

• A “long awaited” garage. Awaited by whom is the question. Certainly not by the parking public. The parking lot on the site has been a dud from day one and is the city’s most under-utilized parking. It was turned into a mainly by-permit parking place, and even that was underutilized till the city banned public parking on surrounding streets and started selling parking permits to Mission High School parkers who’d been parking those streets. Based on use history, this is not a prime location for a new garage. The city knows that, but prefers to steamroll ahead behind its artillery barrage of positive talking points.

• Cost. In addition to the millions already spent on land acquisition, planning, design, and preparation of bid and construction documents, construction is expected to cost $52 million, or $131,000 per car storage space, up from $31 million at the end of 2019. Whether that’s a wise expenditure is a matter of opinion.

What’s a fact, however, is that parking rates throughout downtown are soaring to pay off loans to build the garage. Many fear this will be one more factor that discourages shoppers and others from going downtown; that’s a cost the city doesn’t include in its soundbite propaganda that this garage will be key to guaranteeing “the overall vibrancy, livability, and culture of downtown San Luis Obispo for generations to come.”

• Oppressive design. This is a massive mid-rise industrial type building in a low-rise finely-textured historic district. That’s a tough fit at best. But to make things worse, the chosen street-facing design is a busy one with oversized meaningless vertical elements, like a multi-story arch beneath a huge pediment pasted to the facade, signalizing “entry” where there’s no entry, just a wall with an arch and pediment stuck on it.

The actual entry is a blank hole in the wall elsewhere. From the city’s design drawings, this building looks like it will stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the surrounding part of town. Here’s a sketch from the city’s website:

• Climate Change. SLO would like us to think it’s a climate champion leading the way to a decarbonized sustainable world. To the contrary, its climate actions are an incoherent mess of contradictory gestures that ignore what experts tell us is most important in order to avoid climate catastrophe: a focus on reducing today’s carbon emissions because the climate future will be fixed irreparably within a decade.

This garage shines a spotlight on the city’s intellectual climate competence. On the one hand we’re told driving cars to downtown is not the future, and thus, for example, downtown streets are being reconfigured so bicycles, of which there are few, get a large percentage of street surface dedicated to their exclusive use, but on the other hand we’re told this new garage is essential to assure “the overall vibrancy, livability, and culture of downtown San Luis Obispo for generations to come.” Huh? It can’t be both.

The city’s own operations appear unexposed to smart climate analysis. Portland cement, the cementitious ingredient of concrete, is a particular climate villain, whose manufacture alone accounts for 6% to 8% of global carbon emissions. Carbon-conscious cities seek to avoid use of concrete when possible, and use it judiciously only where essential. With a carbon-mitigation timeline of at least a century, concrete would seem appropriate only for projects with at least a century-long life expectancy. Yet it appears to be our city’s material of choice for everything, including its “carbon reducing” bicycle constructions, and its use goes on as if we were still in the 1950s.

So this garage is made of concrete, its carbon emissions today’s emissions. And its life expectancy? I guess that depends on which SLO hype-line we believe – the one about vehicles not being the future of downtown, or the one suggesting “vibrancy” for generations because we’ll have one more place to park downtown.

In any event, parking garages seem unlikely to meet the century-plus life justifying concrete construction in the era of climate change. Because a substantial portion of their floor area is ramped instead of level, they’re notoriously difficult to retrofit for other uses, and so demolition, rather than adaptive reuse, defines their future. Demolition of this garage in, say, 60 years defines climate villainy not climate leadership.

A quick Google search shows the propaganda e-release about the garage got picked up and repeated by many minor news sources. It was also sent directly to an unknown number of residents who sign up to receive such stuff. So, in terms of spreading the city’s expansive view of its own wonderfulness, one might say it was successful.

But is it in the city’s long-term best interests? How long can a city hype, inflate, twist and mislead like the city’s propaganda machine has been doing before the citizenry realize they’re being BS fed and cease to trust the city? And then how long does it take for the city to regain the trust it squandered by using propaganda to daily massage the inflated egos of city council and top staff?

I don’t think our city’s “communications” behavior is good for quality governance or democracy. The question is, will that behavior continue to get worse, or will the city wake up in time to save what credibility is has left?

Richard Schmidt is an architect and teacher, and served for 19 years as a volunteer on various city committees and commissions, including eight years on the Planning Commission, terms on the Waterways Planning Board, Environmental Quality Task Force, Election Regulations Committee, and Housing Element Task Force, and is sick about what his city has become in the last decade and a half.