The KUSP Land Use Report #27: The Monterey County General Plan: Get Good Policies, and Then Relax

"Listen Live"

Gary Patton, Executive Director of LandWatch Monterey County, presents the following Land Use Report. The opinions expressed by Mr. Patton are not necessarily those of KUSP Radio, nor of any of our sponsors.

A community General Plan is its "Constitution for land use." All decisions about specific projects must be consistent with the General Plan. If the General Plan in your community contains the policies you want, you won’t have to worry about every project. If the General Plan doesn’t have the policies you want, or if the policies are ambiguous, or vague, then you may need to follow each project individually. The lesson is clear. Get your local government to adopt the General Plan policies you want, and then relax a bit.

The draft Monterey County General Plan contains the following policies:

• A policy to require that public services be "developed, operational, and available to serve the new development concurrent with construction of new units and buildings."
  
  
• A policy to increase the "inclusionary" housing requirement from 15% to 20%.
  
  
• A policy to establish three new "wine corridors" in scenic areas, and to allow 40 new wineries to be constructed along these routes.

Several hundred policies are proposed in the draft General Plan Update. These policies (or more accurately, the policies ultimately adopted by the Board of Supervisors) will determine the future of Monterey County. Now is the time to read those proposed policies, and to work to get the Board to adopt the policies you support. Then, you can relax a bit.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

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