Vol. 19 No. 01 Jan 2004

Riverside's University Village — where city officials permitted a 25% reduction of required parking spaces — is evidence that when merchants, developers and a municipality are willing to flex, new retail development can thrive in existing urban areas.

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A proposed 5,800-unit housing development in the rugged hills between the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita is generating controversy, intergovernmental friction and litigation even before an environmental impact report has been produced.

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An appellate court has found the state liable for costly damages to property in Yuba County as the result of a 1986 Yuba River levee failure. The decision arrived within days of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s reduction of $105 million from local flood control project budgets, and the decision comes as construction of thousands of homes in the same floodplain proceeds.

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The Sixth District Court of Appeal has allowed a Santa Clara County landowner to exclude his property from a subdivision approved in 1970. The exclusion was permitted by a rarely used provision of the Subdivision Map Act.

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Calveras County supervisors approved a 3,250-acre residential and golf course resort project near the lower foothills community of Copperopolis in mid-December. The following day, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors voted to sue its northern neighbor because of traffic concerns about the project.

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Long criticized as a regulatory laggard, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District appears to be only one year away from becoming the first air district in the state to levy air quality impact fees on all new developments. The proposed fee would be based on the size and type of project, and development proponents whose projects meet certain criteria could minimize or avoid the fee all together.

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The Bush administration announced it has dropped a plan to relax federal regulation of wetlands.

For most of 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers worked on a proposal to redefine which streams, ponds, wetlands and other seasonal and permanent bodies of water would be protected under the Clean Water Act.

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An appellate court has rejected the argument that a project leading to the loss of farmland should have been mitigated with the establishment of agricultural easements on other farmland.

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An initiative passed by Burbank voters that sought to restrict the expansion of Burbank Airport has been struck down by the Second District Court of Appeal.
The unanimous three-judge appellate panel ruled that the State Aeronautics Act gives legislative authority for airport expansions and relocations exclusively to City Councils and Boards of Supervisors, thereby prohibiting initiatives and referenda.

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The booklet titled "Accessory Dwelling Unit Manual" may not hit The New York Times bestseller list any time soon. But this unprepossessing little booklet is dynamite because it promotes the least popular type of housing in California.

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