Vol. 19 No. 04 Apr 2004

With fewer than five months remaining in the 2003-04 session of the state Legislature, it appears that state lawmakers will approve few, if any, major land use bills. Still, there are scores of land use bills alive that nibble or even take big bites on the edges.

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California voters approved $20 billion worth of bonds for school construction and rehabilitation in March. In addition to the $12.3 billion for schools contained in Proposition 55, voters in 52 school districts approved $7.9 billion worth of local school bonds.
Since 1998, state voters have approved three school bonds worth a combined $34 billion for everything from kindergarten classrooms to university research facilities.

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A framework intended to guide all local general plans in San Diego County could be adopted as soon as June by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). Advocates of the framework say it has the potential to be one of the most effective regional plans ever devised in California.

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A community college board’s decision to close and demolish a shooting range, clean up lead contamination at the site and transfer shooting range operations to a new location amounts to a "project" that requires review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

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A state appellate court ruling that the loss of farmland resulting from development of a prison could not be mitigated has been depublished by the sate Supreme Court.

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The philosopher Heraclitus once remarked that a wise man and a fool may look at the same tree and see different things. The observation also pertains to a reasonable person and a developer.

A reasonable person, for example, would look at the Union-Pacific rail yard in downtown Sacramento and see 240 acres of dirt laced with a century of poisonous industrial byproducts. A developer looks at the same thing and sees a pedestrian-oriented urban district.

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The search for sustainable building cannot be anything other than noble. A pair of master planned communities – one Tucson and one in Orange County – illustrate distinctions in the way developers have responded to the desire to build green.

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Earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service officially deemed the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment unworkable and unveiled a new version.

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The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released three reports of interest to planners in March. The reports address housing supply, the link between water and planning, and planned developments.
The housing supply study surprised many people because it reported a statewide shortage as of 2000 of only 138,000 units, when interest groups and other analysts have pegged the shortage at 500,000 to 1 million units.

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In a ruling directly at odds with a landmark 1995 decision, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled that local government may not regulate the location of timber harvests.

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