On February 22, 2021, Ms. Amy Rider was appointed to the City of Petaluma’s Planning Commission. She appeared to serve in this capacity through the summer of 2022 for a short stint.
She reported a single source of income on her statement of economic interest (Form 700) as the Principal Consultant for Archamy Consulting. If applicable, she failed to itemize the name of each reportable single source of income of $10,000 or more.
Archamy Consulting is a knowledge sharing and technical consulting firm focused on educating and empowering communities to embrace policies, procedures, codes and standards which support resilience within the built environment.
Consulting services offered are described as follows:
We work with developers, building owners, utilities, cities and residents to re-imagine communities and the built environment. We offer sustainability-focus services. See samples of our work.
Knowledge management services
Knowledge transfer coordination
Research
Curriculum development
Online and in-person presentations
Educational and technical writing
Technical consulting
Community Planning and Design
Resource Efficiency Programs
Program Research
Program Design
Troubleshooting
Municipal Policy
Building Codes, including CALGreen and Title 24
Reach Codes, including electrification ordinances
Green Building, including LEED and Living Building Challenge
Simultaneously, Ms. Rider was employed as the Local Government Policy Lead for Building Decarbonization Coalition (BDC) from November 2018 - April 2022, and Director of Policy Acceleration for BDC from April 2022 - present. She failed to disclose this source of income entirely on her Form 700.
On March 23, 2023, Ms. Rider was issued the following letter by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission:
As expressed within the letter, Ms. Rider was warned by the FPPC that she failed to file a leaving office SEI and therefore violated the Political Reform Act. Although she was required to file all outstanding SEI’s, they do not appear within the City’s current database.
While serving on the Planning Commission, Ms. Rider failed to recuse herself from participating in discussions regarding updates to the City’s General Plan. On October 26, 2021, the Planning Commission was tasked with receiving and discussing Existing Conditions Reports to guide policy development as part of the General Plan update.
The Existing Conditions Overview is a single, integrative report that provides a common level of understanding for the community and the planning team. It serves to summarize key considerations to understand the context of the General Plan Update, including past trends, current and future issues, and opportunities for positive change.
Per the City’s General Plan website:
“The City of Petaluma is updating its General Plan, the road map that will shape the future of the city for the next 20 - 30 years. The current General Plan is a comprehensive long-term plan for Petaluma that was adopted in 2008. Since 2021, we have been moving ahead in the General Plan Update process through extensive community outreach and deep technical analysis. This site provides up-to-date information about the General Plan, including ways to participate, reference documents and City contacts. We invite you to help shape the future of Petaluma!
The General Plan serves as the guiding vision document and provides policies and implementation programs to achieve the City’s goals. There are eight mandatory topical areas, referred to as Elements, that must be included in a General Plan including Land Use, Open Space, Conservation, Housing, Circulation, Noise, Safety, and Environmental Justice. One of the City’s most significant elements is the Housing Element, which is required by State regulations to be updated every eight years. The City’s Housing Element (Chapter 11 of the current General Plan) was adopted by the City Council in March 2023 and has been certified by the State of California Housing and Community Development Department.
The Process
The General Plan update process is designed to coordinate the renewal of Petaluma’s General Plan and Housing Element in order to adopt the Housing Element in early 2023 and ensure a comprehensive community conversation on the topics in the General Plan as a whole. The update process also includes ongoing long-range planning efforts, including updating planning documents that support the implementation of the General Plan. Following the adoption of the General Plan, updates to the City’s Zoning Ordinance, Station Area Master Plan, Central Petaluma Specific Plan, and Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) may move forward to implement the directions in the newly adopted General Plan. A schematic of the process is included below.
Climate action is an integral part of the General Plan update process. Petaluma adopted a Climate Emergency Resolution in May 2019, becoming the first city in Sonoma County to adopt such a resolution. Petaluma’s Climate Action Commission held its first meeting on November 14, 2019 and worked on the Climate Emergency Action Framework, which was adopted by City Council on January 11, 2021.
This hard work sets the stage for how climate change is addressed in the General Plan update, which will include a Climate Action Plan (CAP) as well as adaptation strategies in the General Plan– actions called for in the Climate Emergency Action Framework. This Climate Action and Adaptation Plan will be both a technical document used to guide city decision-making and a visionary document used by the public to understand the direction of the community. This plan will include a greenhouse gas inventory, a greenhouse gas reduction analysis, and a climate equity assessment that will serve as a foundation for the plan alongside community engagement and visioning. By incorporating both quantitative goals and policy language, the Climate Action Plan will work in connection with the broader General Plan to reach Petaluma’s climate vision.
On February 22, 2021, Councilman Brian Barnacle voted in favor of appointing Ms. Rider to the Planning Commission.
Mr. Barnacle’s candidate statement of economic interest (Form 700) submitted to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) in 2020 included Outthink LLC as a source of income. The entity appears to be a consulting firm focused on two primary clients: Prospect Silicon Valley (ProspectSV) & Building Decarbonization Coalition.
The City’s Form 700 portal indicates that Mr. Barnacle failed to complete an assuming office statement to disclose his personal financial interests upon joining Council.
On April 22, 2021, the Petaluma Argus-Courier published the following article:
Following last month’s headline-grabbing move to ban new gas stations, Petaluma is moving forward with another climate initiative meant to curb the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction.
At its next meeting, the Petaluma City Council will consider an all-electric reach code, which would ban natural gas hookups in future residential and non-residential construction.
Petaluma would be the third Sonoma County city to enact such a ban, joining Windsor, which backed down in the wake of a legal challenge from developers, and Santa Rosa, which just this year prevailed in a similar showdown with builders.
The move is part of a slate of recent initiatives meant to ensure Petaluma is in line to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, an accelerated timeline the new city council endorsed this year.
“This is about recognizing that we’re in a hole, and to stop digging. If you’re trying to get to carbon neutral and you’re trying to get off of fossil fuels, then stop hooking up buildings to fossil fuels, stop building new gas stations,” said Vice Mayor Brian Barnacle, who has a background in clean energy and energy efficiency. “These are modest on the greenhouse gas emissions front, but important, so that we’re going in the right direction.”
Barnacle is one of two new members of a council that expressed near-unanimous support for a natural gas ban last year, indicating the measure enjoys broad backing among Petaluma’s current elected leaders.
The City Council will have the opportunity to decide on the all-electric code May 3, a vote that follows resoundingly supportive reviews of the ordinance by the city’s Climate Action Commission and Planning Commission this month. If passed, the ban would require a second vote before going into effect 30 days later, on June 16.
The proposed ordinance hit a few delays since city leaders last spring directed staff to pursue the measure, first pausing as Santa Rosa and Windsor tangled with legal challenges to their own bans, and then further slowed by the coronavirus pandemic’s disruption to city services.
City Attorney Eric Danly said he believes the City Council would have liked to have seen the ordinance sooner, but felt it necessary to both wait to see how the legal challenges played out, and to take extra time to buttress Petaluma’s own proposal to ensure it, too, isn’t ensnared in a protracted court battle.
“It’s certainly been my suggestion that we don’t repeat the same things as the other cities,” Danly said. “Nobody is helped by funding litigation.”
Windsor back-pedaled from its all-electric reach code earlier this year, repealing the first ordinance of its kind in the county after two developers - Bill Gallaher and the Windsor-Jensen Land Co. - sued the city over its natural gas ban.
Gallaher also sued Santa Rosa when the county’s largest city followed Windsor’s lead in late 2019. The city prevailed in that case, according to a preliminary ruling issued Jan. 27, and the natural gas ban remains in effect, said Jesse Oswald, Santa Rosa’s chief building officer.
Danly says he’s confident Petaluma’s reach code won’t face the same legal threat, describing it as a different type of amendment, latching on to the building code instead of the energy code.
The proposed ban, which will not apply to additions or alterations to existing structures, has been in the works since early 2020, but city planning staff have been steadily encouraging developers to consider all-electric hookups for a while.
Planning Manager Heather Hines said she’s seen an uptick in the number of proposed developments in town either voluntarily building all-electric or willing to switch their plans to either entice council approval or get out ahead of new rules before they’re passed.
Several recently approved projects without gas infrastructure include the MidPen affordable housing project on Petaluma Boulevard North, single-family projects on Madison Street and across from Casa Grande High School, a 264-unit apartment complex and two other affordable housing developments.
“It’s definitely been more common for developers to go electric in the past few years,” Hines said.
The move toward all-electric requirements is sweeping through the Bay Area and across the state, with dozens of cities enacting the requirements in recent years in an effort to combat a key source of greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.
Natural gas combustion, distribution, and usage in buildings accounted for 17% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the Bay Area, according to 2015 data from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
In Petaluma, building and construction accounts for 26% of such emissions, according to 2018 data maintained by the Regional Climate Protection Agency. Nearly 74% of emissions came from transportation, the report said, and less than 1% from water and wastewater.
Amy Rider, a Petaluma planning commissioner and the local government and policy lead for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, said her organization is tracking 42 California cities with electrification ordinances.
“Any governing body who says that climate change is important, but doesn’t want to adopt a reach code is gaslighting,” Barnacle said. “That’s the reality of what we’re dealing with here. There’s no way we can take climate change seriously and expand the natural gas system.”
On May 3, 2021, the City Council voted in favor of the following motion:
Motion to Approve the introduction (first reading) of Ordinance 2775 amending the Petaluma Municipal Code to create a new Chapter 17.09 entitled All-Electric Construction in Newly Constructed Buildings, adopting new local amendments to the California Building Standards Code, and deleting existing All-Electric Incentive in Petaluma Municipal Code Section 17.04.010(J) made by D'Lynda Fischer, seconded by Dave King
Councilmember Barnacle failed to abstain from the vote.
Petaluma Climate Action Commissioner Panama Bartholomy is the Founder and Executive Director for the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
He failed to publicly disclose his reportable financial interests on his Form 700. Therefore, the FPPC opened a case to further investigate potential conflicts.
Councilmember Brian Barnacle is currently employed as the Director of Strategy & Development for Building Decarbonization Coalition.
The Coalition’s Board includes folks such as Mr. Fong Wan, the Senior Vice President, Energy Policy and Procurement for PG&E through 2022.
Have Petaluma Planning Commissioners, Climate Action Commissioners and Councilmembers abused their roles in local agencies to push through climate agendas for profit?
“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
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