If you happen to be in the vicinity of Greenfield this evening, please be advised that the City of Greenfield Planning Commission will be meeting at 6:00 p.m.

Greenfield is a relatively small city located in Southern Monterey County, and “greenfields” do, indeed, surround it. That may not be true in the future. Greenfield is quite ambitious, in terms of its desire to grow, and to pave over surrounding agricultural lands to provide places for suburban style residential development. Unfortunately, from a “smart growth” perspective, the Monterey County Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, has signed off on the City’s expansion plans in a very controversial decision in which Supervisor Lou Calcagno cast the deciding vote in favor of more expansion for Greenfield.

The topic tonight on the Planning Commission agenda is the pending update of the 2009 City of Greenfield Housing Element. The Commission will be specifically focusing on what sort of policy changes should be made to the current Housing Element text. The Housing Element is important for the future of the City, and you are definitely invited to attend. Just building more new homes, per se, doesn’t guarantee that they will be affordable, and current City demographics indicate that “affordable” housing, not just “more” housing, is what’s needed.

More Information:

City of Greenfield Website
http://www.ci.greenfield.ca.us/

Planning Commission meetings are held in the City Council Chambers in the Greenfield City Hall, located at 45 El Camino Real in Greenfield.

What are you doing this evening, at 6:00 p.m.? If you are a City of Santa Cruz resident, consider taking in a special City Council meeting focused on proposed Design Guidelines and Development Incentives for the River Street, Front Street, and Lower Pacific Avenue area. This part of the City could see some big changes in coming years. If you’d like to help formulate the plans, don’t miss the meeting tonight.

Monterey Peninsula residents can attend a Forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters that will provide detailed information about the proposed Regional Water Project desalination plant. That Project was recently approved, and would provide a way to meet the State’s demand that less water be taken out of the Carmel River. Solving that environmental/public service problem is critically important, but the solution chosen has stirred big controversy. This is largely because the agencies that agreed to the plan worked out the details in secret, because Peninsula residents won’t participate in the governance of the project, and because the cost of the project may fall disproportionately on Peninsula residents. Peninsula residents may have to pay something like $7,000 per acre-foot for new water coming from the Project, as opposed to residents and developers in the Marina area, where the water cost per acre-foot may only be $150.

The Forum is at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 490 Aguajito Road in Monterey.

More Information:

City of Santa Cruz Website
http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/

Council Agenda For Special Meeting
http://64.175.136.240/sirepub/meet.aspx

League of Women Voters Website
http://www.lwvmp.org/

Information On The May 4th Forum
http://www.lwvmp.org/forum2010-05-04.pdf

LandWatch Statement on the Regional Water Project - http://www.landwatch.org/pages/issuesactions/waterissues.html

The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, or AMBAG, operates as the Monterey Bay Area’s “regional government.” This is not to say that AMBAG has any direct governmental powers. It doesn’t. AMBAG’s role in the local decision-making processes related to housing and transportation, however, makes AMBAG one of the agencies that you need to know about, if you want to be “literate” where land use policy is concerned.

AMBAG is particularly active in public education efforts, and many of their events, focusing on local land use, environmental, and economic issues, are very worthwhile. In addition, an “educational” activity that specifically helps implement the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is AMBAG’s role as a “regional clearinghouse” for notices about environmental documents that have been filed in connection with significant projects. If you’d like to find out about big projects that are being proposed, so you can comment at an earlier rather than at a later date, you should try to get on the Clearinghouse mailing list.

The most recent Clearinghouse notification says that the City of Watsonville is going to be considering a Specific Plan for the Manabe-Ow property, currently agricultural land, and that San Benito County will consider a Specific Plan for the Santana Ranch, which would be a huge new residential development. Comments are due by June 1st and May 26th, respectively.

More Information:

AMBAG Website
http://www.ambag.org/

To join the AMBAG Clearinghouse Mailing List, Contact Steph Nelson - snelson@ambag.org

Most people don’t immediately think about how our State Parks system is so often directly related to the “land use” decisions that we make at a local level. In fact, though, decisions to acquire, and designate, and protect properties as part of our State Parks system is often the result of local (and sometimes state level) land use policy debates.

In Santa Cruz County, we now have the Wilder Ranch State Park, instead of a development (the Wilder Ranch Project), which would have doubled the size of the City of Santa Cruz. On a smaller scale, we have Lighthouse Field State Beach instead of the proposed Lighthouse Point Convention Center development, which would have included a lot more than a convention center. Similarly, New Brighton State Park, in mid-county, expanded to take in areas that were proposed for a massive hotel and arts complex, the so-called “Wingspread” development.

As listeners undoubtedly know, the State Parks system has been threatened by fiscal cutbacks at the state level, and the Governor’s current plan is to tie next year’s funding for State Parks to new offshore oil drilling off Santa Barbara. After what we’re seeing in the Gulf of Mexico, does anyone really think that’s a good idea?

Luckily, the proposed State Parks and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund Act will be on the ballot in November. This will allow California voters to establish a permanent funding source for State Parks. It’s the best “land use” proposal out there, from my perspective.

More Information:

Find Out About The Ballot Measure
http://www.yesforstateparks.com/get-the-facts/initiative-text

Next week, the California Coastal Commission will be meeting in Santa Cruz. The Commission’s May meeting begins on Wednesday, May 12th, and continues through Friday, May 14th. You can get a link to the Commission’s agenda below.

I consider the Coastal Commission to be the state’s premier land use policy agency. Even beset by terrible budget cuts, the Commission sets a very high standard in a number of areas:

• The “rules and regulations” that govern development in the Coastal Zone establish reliable and enforceable standards. That means that the public, property owners, and developers can know what the rules are in advance. This means that tough questions tend to get decided as a matter of “policy,” not “politics.”
  
  
• The staff reports and analysis that Commission members are provided are exemplary. Compared to the quality of staff reports produced by local planning agencies, which are of variable quality, Commission staff materials are almost always top flight.
  
  
• Commission public hearings are thorough. All sides get to have their say, and the deliberations following the public hearings tend to be extremely thoughtful.

I encourage you to see this land use policy body in action, in Santa Cruz, during this coming week. They will be holding their meeting in the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors’ Chambers, and you’re invited to attend.

More Information

Coastal Commission Website
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/

Commission Agenda
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/mtgcurr.html