With a statewide speakers' list to offer local participants, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, or AMBAG, is hosting what is likely to be an extremely stimulating forum this Thursday, focusing on water and growth. Just click on the Land Use Report link and track down the transcript to today's Land Use Report. The forum is titled, "Closing the Gap of Water and Growth," and AMBAG's hope is to present "feasible" solutions, and to draw on experience from elsewhere in California.

Jonas Minton, a Senior Project Manager at the Planning and Conservation League, will be speaking on a panel that will also include presenters from Oxnard in Southern California, and Rohnert Park in the North. Former Assembly Member Richard Katz, who represented the Los Angeles area in the State Legislature for many years, is presenting the Keynote Address. Kicking off the conference will be Rita Schmidt Sudman, Executive Director of the California Water Education Foundation, who will be outlining a "California Overview." To top it all off, AMBAG will also be providing both a free lunch and a tour of the Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency's Regional Plant, and the Pebble Beach Community Service District's Forest Lake Reservoir. If you want to go, you need to sign up promptly!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Call for Information: 831-883-3755 Check the AMBAG Website
http://www.ambag.org/

Make a reservation by email at: info@ambag.org

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors is meeting today, and the first thing I noted, when I reviewed the agenda, is the lengthy list of litigation items that the Board of Supervisors will be discussing behind closed doors. The Brown Act, California's "open meeting law," does allow a Board of Supervisors to shut the public out of some of their deliberations, and particularly when the Board is consulting with their attorney about legal actions in which the County is involved. Every one of the six litigation items listed on the agenda comes out of the Board's decision to push through the mammoth Rancho San Juan development (the biggest development in the history of the County), despite overwhelming public opposition. Among those who have sued the County are LandWatch, the City of Salinas, and the California Department of Transportation, or CALTRANS.

Ironically, the County got itself into its legal problems with Rancho San Juan by employing the so-called "litigation exception" to the open meeting rule to shut out the public from the key decisions that the Board made (and which they now seem stuck with). The entire development was planned behind closed doors, with essentially no public input. It was a negotiation between the developer and the Board, on the "pretext" that the Board was "settling" litigation filed by the developer. The obvious lesson: do the public's business in public, and everyone will be a lot better off!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Board Agenda for May 16, 2006 Meeting
http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/cttb/agenda.htm

The AMBAG conference I announced on Monday, to be held tomorrow in Monterey County, focuses on the issue of water and growth. There's also another interesting conference tomorrow, but this one is in Sacramento. While the location is convenient for me, it's not too convenient for everyone else. Nonetheless, I do think the conference is worth mentioning, because the topic is so important to our region. The conference is sponsored by the Center for Creative Land Recycling, and is entitled, "Funding Vibrant Communities: Financial Tools for Redeveloping California's Brownfields."

"Brownfields" are parcels of land that are experiencing some sort of toxic contamination or similar problem that makes the "reuse" of the land difficult. We've got plenty of examples. The redevelopment of the former Fort Ord, for instance, is being overseen by an agency called the "Fort Ord Reuse Authority," and finding a way to finance the redevelopment of such currently underutilized or contaminated lands is indeed something of critical importance for the Monterey Bay Area.

There is information about the conference on the KUSP website. Local government officials, nonprofit and private developers, and others involved with brownfield redevelopment could find this an extremely important meeting. And if you do show up in Sacramento tomorrow, drop by PCL and say hello!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Get information on the conference and register online at:
www.cclr.org/special_trainings.htm

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors has now released what is being called "GPU-4." "GPU" means "General Plan Update." The "4" means that this is the fourth version of the General Plan Update that has been produced since the update process began in 1999. It's been seven years (and seven million dollars), and we're still counting.

The existing General Plan for Monterey County was adopted in 1982, which makes that plan about 24 years old. State guidelines call for a regular review of the local General Plan about every five years, to make sure that this "Constitution for land use" stays current, and provides appropriate guidance for the growth and development of the community.

Things have changed in Monterey County since 1982, but so far, the General Plan hasn't. Or I should say, the "basic" General Plan hasn't. In fact, the Board of Supervisors very commonly approves "amendments" to the General Plan at the same time they approve big development projects. Rancho San Juan is a good example. I believe that sixteen different General Plan amendments were approved by the Board, to facilitate that mammoth development.

Obviously, a General Plan that isn't being followed, and that is twenty years out of date, does a disservice to the public. That's why citizens in Monterey County want to vote directly on a "Community General Plan Initiative."

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

County Information on GPU-4
http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/pbi/gpu/

The land use future of Monterey County may well depend on an upcoming decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case entitled, "Padilla v. Lever." That case is not from Monterey County. It involves the attempted recall of a school board official in Orange County. The recall petition was properly qualified for the ballot under state law, but then recall opponents filed a federal court case, and a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the petition should have been printed in both Spanish and English, and threw the recall off the ballot.

In Monterey County, the Community General Plan Initiative was also properly qualified under state law. Initiative opponents, though, also filed a federal lawsuit, and the court, relying on the Padilla case, threw the initiative off the ballot. Note that in each instance a court made the decision.

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors, acting on their own, and without the benefit of a court decision, just decided that they would throw the Rancho San Juan referendum off the ballot; so they did. The upshot is that the voters of Monterey County aren't able to vote on either the initiative or the referendum at the June election.

Will this be a permanent or only a temporary result? The entire Ninth Circuit (not just a panel) is now going to address that question, by "rehearing" the Padilla case. The hearing is scheduled for June 22nd, in San Francisco. Stand by for a report.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Los Angeles Time article outlining the problems with Padilla
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/
la-oe-hasen12dec12,0,17567.story?
coll=la-news-comment-opinions