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KUSP LandWatch
News
Week of March 26, 2007 to March 30, 2007
Week of March 26, 2007 to March 30, 2007
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 March 26, 2007 to March 30, 2007
- Monday, March 26, 2007
Neighborhood Compatibility is a Big Issue
- Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Santa Cruz County General Plan Report
- Wednesday, March 28, 2007
TAMC and Money
- Thursday, March 29, 2007
New Developments in Monterey County
- Friday, March 30, 2007
Agriculture at the Urban Edge
The following Land Use Reports have been presented on KUSP Radio by Gary A. Patton. The Wittwer & Parkin law firm is located in Santa Cruz, California, and practices environmental and governmental law. As part of its practice, the law firm files litigation and takes other action on behalf of its clients, which are typically private individuals, governmental agencies, environmental organizations, or community groups. Whenever the Land Use Report comments on an issue with which the Wittwer & Parkin law firm is involved on behalf of a client, Mr. Patton will make this relationship clear, as part of his commentary. Mr. Patton’s comments do not represent the views of Wittwer & Parkin, LLP, KUSP Radio, nor of any of its sponsors.
| Monday, March 26, 2007 Neighborhood Compatibility is a Big Issue |
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Land use policy concerns range from the general to the particular. On a "larger scale view, it's a matter of local land use policy whether agricultural lands can be converted to non-agricultural uses, or whether there will be any affordability requirements, to mandate that a certain percentage of new houses will actually be affordable to average and below average income families. I talk a lot about these larger-scale land use policies here on the Land Use Report, because in the long run, a community's decisions about these larger-scale issues will determine its future. There are, though, "finer grained land use policy issues that are also important. These might be called "neighborhood compatibility issues. In fact, that is exactly what they're being called by Santa Cruz County government. Tomorrow, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will be considering a set of guidelines for "neighborhood compatibility. Concerns include:
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors makes it easy to send in comments by email on specific agenda items in which you have an interest, so if you are interested in the future of your "neighborhood, in terms of these issues, it would behoove you to review the proposed guidelines before tomorrow's meeting, and to get your comments in. There is more information on the KUSP website. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Tuesday, March 27, 2007 Santa Cruz County General Plan Report |
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Today, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will be discussing a set of "neighborhood compatibility guidelines, to address rather fine-grained concerns about development in specific neighborhoods. There's still time for you to review the guidelines, and to email in your comments, or even to deliver them in person. The Board meeting starts at 9:00 o'clock this morning. The Board of Supervisors is also reviewing some "larger scale policy matters at today's meeting, in connection with their consideration of the 2006 Annual General Plan Report. That's item #71 on today's agenda. The General Plan is the community's most important land use policy document, since all land use related actions must be "consistent with General Plan policies. The report being considered by the Board today is easy to understand, and shows exactly how a local government can use land use policy to help accomplish community goals. Even if you're not a Santa Cruz County resident, you might want to download and review this General Plan Report, and then see how your own County is doing on the issues that Santa Cruz County is addressing. These issues include an identification of General Plan amendments (i.e., is the County actually following its General Plan, or does the County simply amend that General Plan as developers request exemptions). That's a pretty important thing to know, and is one of the issues highlighted in the General Plan Report. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Wednesday, March 28, 2007 TAMC and Money |
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TAMC, the "Transportation Agency for Monterey County, is meeting today. Of particular interest is agenda item #8, a study session to review and comment on the public outreach associated with developing a transportation sales tax expenditure plan for the November 2008 ballot. TAMC is planning, once again, to ask Monterey County voters to increase the local sales tax, to fund various transportation improvements. Earlier requests have been turned down. One reason may be that the voters don't want to tax themselves to provide what they regard as public subsidies to sprawl developers. Tomorrow, I'm going to be talking about future development proposals in Monterey County, and have included a link to a compelling map of upcoming developments, pretty well dramatizing just how much development is being proposed. All that development, if actually built, would make existing traffic congestion even worse, and it's understandable that the voters might be leery of what's in store. Orange County recently passed a sales tax for transportation, and this tax measure was strongly supported by environmental organizations, including PCL, the group I work for. That's because it was a measure that linked transportation funding to good land use policies. That's something for TAMC to consider, as it plans for its next request to the voters. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Thursday, March 29, 2007 New Developments in Monterey County |
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If you are driving a car, and can't stop the car within the range of what you can see, then you are driving quite dangerously. Similarly, if growth and development are occurring at such a speed that you won't really know the result of the growth until after it has been constructed, then you are planning quite dangerously. Developments are routinely approved, on a current basis, but aren't actually built until many years later. This means, when we look around, we see one set of conditions (i.e., the territory we can see through our windshield), but there are other "realities out there, invisible now, because not yet constructed. If we don't want to run into a very hard reality, later on, we need to slow down our development approvals to a rate that allows us actually to know what the results of our current decisions will be. It's also helpful to "map out developments that have already been approved, but not yet built, and developments that are proposed, to see what is actually "out there, but that we don't yet see on the ground. A map documenting exactly that, for Monterey County, has recently been released by the Community General Plan Initiative group. You have to see this map to understand it, so follow the link found in the transcript of today's Land Use Report. Based on this map, we're driving rather dangerously in Monterey County! Developments have already been approved, or are approvable, to add over 190,000 persons to Monterey County's population. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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| Friday, March 30, 2007 Agriculture at the Urban Edge |
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On April 5th and 6th, the University of California at Berkeley will be hosting a public symposium on "Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge. The symposium is intended to focus attention on the importance of agricultural lands within the regional metropolitan framework, and to discuss socio-economic issues at the urban edge. For the Central Coast, these issues are critically important. We need to figure out how we can build a sustainable agricultural economy in the face of the tremendous growth pressures we're experiencing. Land use policy can play an important role in helping our local communities (and our state and nation) solve this problem. One of the most important things to do, in my mind, is to take some advice from the musical group, the Lovin' Spoonful. They said, in one of my favorite songs:
We should not underrate the importance of simply making a firm decision about what agricultural lands we intend to protect for their continued use for agriculture. Our dilemma, oftentimes, is that we want contradictory things. We do want to protect and preserve agricultural land, but we want to accommodate other kinds of growth and development, too. My thought is that we do, indeed, need to "make up our mind. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.
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Archives of past transcripts are available here
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