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Week of December 6, 2004 to December 10, 2004 |
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ogo.gif" width="108" height="109" border="0"> "Listen Live" |
KUSP provided a brief Land Use Report on KUSP Radio from January 2003 to May 2016. Archives of past transcripts are available here.
Week of December 6, 2004 to December 10, 2004
The following Land Use Reports have been presented on KUSP Radio by Gary Patton, Executive Director of LandWatch Monterey County. The opinions expressed by Mr. Patton are not necessarily those of KUSP Radio, nor of any of its sponsors.
| Monday, December 6, 2004 – Rancho San Juan at the Board Tomorrow |
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The “Rancho San Juan” development would construct 4,000 new homes north of the Salinas City limits. The vast majority would sell for more than $500,000 apiece. Entire hillsides would be bulldozed down, with over 4 million cubic yards of grading; water overdraft would be increased; the County’s fiscal problems would be increased; and 70,000 new automobile trips would be added to the already-congested Highway 101 corridor. Last Thursday, the Monterey County Planning Commission unanimously recommended that this development be denied. The problems with what the opponents call “Rancho San Wrong” don’t seem to be registering. Besides the Planning Commission, thousands of local residents, a local fire agency, CALTRANS, adjacent property owners, and the City of Salinas are all opposing an approval at this time. Nonetheless, the Board of Supervisors is moving as rapidly as they possibly can to approve the project. The Board held a special meeting on Friday, less than twenty four hours after the Planning Commission had ended their hearing (which is absolutely unprecedented as a “fast track” process). This is the biggest development proposal in the history of Monterey County, and your only remaining chance to make your views known may be at the Board’s second public hearing, scheduled for tomorrow, at 1:30 p.m. There’s lots more information at www.kusp.org. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Tuesday, December 7, 2004 – Felton FLOW |
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Tonight, at 7:00 p.m., the California Public Utilities Commission will be holding a public hearing about California-American Water Company’s proposal to consolidate its Felton system with its system on the Monterey Peninsula. The hearing will be at the Felton Community Hall, 6191 Highway 9, in Felton, beginning at 7:00 p.m. A local group, called “Felton FLOW” (meaning “Friends of Locally-Owned Water”), is arguing that the local water system in Felton should be owned and run by the community, instead of by a for-profit, multinational corporation. You can get their point of view by clicking on the Land Use Report link at www.kusp.org. I’ve also included a reference to the Cal-Am website. The “local control” issues do have something to do with future land uses. In Monterey County, Cal-Am is proposing a desalination plant that would provide significant new water for additional growth. If you’re in the business of selling water, you’d expect that expansion might on your mind. A locally-owned system would presumably focus on keeping service good, and rates low, and wouldn’t necessarily be looking to support new growth and development as an opportunity to sell more water. Tonight, service and cost issues are what the PUC will care about most. If you’re a customer of Cal-Am in Felton you might want to check out this public hearing. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Wednesday, December 8, 2004 – LAFCO on City Growth |
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On Monday, the Monterey County Local Agency Formation Commission received a “Progress Report on Review of LAFCO Policies, Criteria and Procedures for City Sphere of Influence Amendments and Annexations.” Here’s a rough translation of what that means. To grow, cities sometimes need to expand. Note that cities can also grow by “infill,” and by using their existing land more efficiently, and from a fiscal point of view, and from the point of view of good planning, “infill” strategies are in fact almost always preferable to expansion. However, cities will, sometimes, have to expand. The question is, where should they expand and how much should they expand? These questions are not decided by the cities themselves, but by the Local Agency Formation Commission. LAFCO establishes “Spheres of Influence” for each city, as a kind of an urban growth limit, and then says “yes” or “no” to specific expansion (or annexation) proposals. These are the issues that this LAFCO SubCommittee is talking about, and it’s not clear from the “Progress Report” what LAFCO will do. So far, LAFCO has approved virtually every annexation proposal submitted to it. Whether that will continue to be the case is just not clear, and the future of Monterey County’s agricultural economy actually hangs in the balance, as these decisions are made with respect to the fastgrowing cities of the Salinas Valley. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Thursday, December 9, 2004 – The Coastal Commission and Sunridge Views |
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By and large, cities get to decide what future land uses they’ll allow, and where they will allow them. They get to decide the conditions that will apply to development. Counties have exactly the same powers for lands located within the “unincorporated” area, which means those lands that are not within the boundaries of any city. There is one extremely important exception to this general rule. If a piece of land is in the area that the State Legislature has designated as the “Coastal Zone,” then the cities and counties that would ordinarily have full discretion to make land use decisions do not have such full discretion. Within the Coastal Zone, cities and counties must conform their decisions to a set of rather strong, state law policies designed to protect coastal resources. These requirements are set out in the Coastal Act, and in the regulations promulgated pursuant to the Coastal Act. The Coastal Commission is a state-level agency that supervises how well local governments are complying with the Coastal Act. Today, in San Francisco, the Commission will rule on an appeal by LandWatch Monterey County, and others, and decide whether or not to reverse a decision of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors that allowed a new subdivision, in the Coastal Zone, that would contribute to a continued overdraft of already-overdrafted coastal aquifers. You can get more information by clicking on the Land Use Report link at www.kusp.org. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Friday, December 10, 2004 – Marina Housing Element |
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On Wednesday, I talked about how “infill” strategies are often the best way for cities to accommodate new growth and development. The “easy answer” to city growth seems always to be to expand a city’s boundaries out onto the open lands surrounding the city. This not only puts the surrounding open space and agricultural lands at peril, but almost always increases public costs. The surrounding landowners usually like the idea of expansion, however, and they often advocate for it, since it can raise their land value by a factor of ten! At any rate, one city in Monterey County has taken action to contain urban sprawl by the creation of an Urban Growth Boundary. This is the City of Marina. Thanks to the passage of its Urban Growth Boundary initiative, new development in Marina is now directed to lands within the existing city limits. Last night, the Marina Planning Commission considered some comments about the City’s Housing Element made to the City by the State Department of Housing and Community Development. These comments highlight another good reason to pursue “infill.” Infill developments are almost always at higher densities than developments on the outskirts, and that means they use land more efficiently. More efficient use of land translates into lower and more affordable housing prices. The Housing Element issues are coming up again in a hearing before the City Council on Tuesday, December 14th. You might want to mark your calendars! For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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Archives of past transcripts are available here
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CONTACT 306 Capitol Street #101 PO Box 1876 Phone (831) 759-2824 Fax (831) 759-2825 |
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