Oakland Planning Commission Discusses Right to Grow Food TONIGHT (9/17) Please attend!
Oakland City Hall One Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Hearing Room No. 1 Oakland, CA 94612.
Hi for those of you that can make today's Planning Commission meeting, I'll be there with stickers tags to help identify supporters and with talking points! The Planning Commission is mostly in support of these changes. OFPC and Councilmember Kaplan's office are recommending further changes. The overall tone of our organizing is supportive toward the proposal.
1. Thank you for this historic step in supporting the right to produce food within Oakland 2. Remove conditional use permit requirements from Open Space Zones, specifically Community Parks, Neighborhood Parks, Mini-Parks, and Linear Parks. We fully support the Edible Parks Program proposal and believe the program would benefit individual, civic and environmental health. We recommend eliminating the Planning Department process from Community Gardening in these open spaces and retaining the Parks & Recreation Advisory Commission process. 3. Remove conditional use permit requirements from Transit Oriented Zones for Limited Urban Agriculture. 4. Remove conditional use permit requirements from Central Business District Zones for Limited Urban Agriculture. 5. Conditional Use Permitting requires extensive research and cost for a permit that is in perpetuity with the land. OFPC does not believe we need to designate each project in perpetuity.
According to the Proposed Regulations, growing and selling on site in our backyards no longer requires a home occupation permit but is "by right." This would also apply to multiunit dwellings, high rise apartments etc. Also, keeping up to three hives an selling honey is also "by right."
I'm zoned RD-1 which means my homesteading activities including my livestock are permitted outright as long as I comply with the existing codes for noise, vector, etc and no sales of meat or dairy products.
If this is indeed the case, this is a HUGE victory for those of us in Oakland that choose to raise our own food. I also understand it to mean that This is all kind of AMAZING."
PLEASE plan on attending this critical meeting and showing your support for all the hard work by folks like Esperanza in ensuring our RIGHT to grow and raise our own food. It's been a long road to get to this point. I have been involved on and off over the past several years and have witnessed the pendulum swing between neutral and extremes in both directions. After scanning the large document and reviewing the three classifications linked to below, I am doing a happy dance!
According to Eseranza Pallana, the "Oakland Food Policy Council has submitted a letter with our comments/feedback and further recommendations to the planning dept, commissioners and Councilmembers Kalb, Kaplan and McElhaney." They have also issued a press release.
3. Attend the hearing and testify.