Wow, talk about nitpicking! It's not as if many other communities haven't followed this formula: they have and it's working fine. 
The enemy of the good is the perfect. I prefer to think of this position as an adjunct position to city government: perhaps the most important one. I wonder if the writer knows how many millions this administration has squandered on the city hall design? How the city manager then, vowing openness, almost immediately set about to spend even more taken from the cable settlement--- behind the council's back. 
Ruiz and the planning department are OUT OF CONTROL. The council is impotent, blind, incompetent, weak-kneed, or a combination of such. 
We don't need to sit here debating how to put out the fire, we need to get a massive hose and train it on them.