Vol. 20 No. 10 Oct 2005

General Plan Showdown Ends In El Dorado, Garbage Dump Controversy Near Joshua Tree, EIR Traffic Impacts In El Cajon, Salamander Wars, And Skyscrapers in Sacramento.

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Developer Jeff Dritley acknowledges he did not set out to run a municipal airport when he first started talking to the City of Hawthorne two years ago.
Dritley, who is managing director of Kearny Real Estate Company, is a developer with industrial and office projects on his resume, not necessarily the bona fides for running a general aviation airport for profit. Yet Dritley had a very good reason for agreeing to assume management responsibilities for the airport late last year.

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A state appellate court has thrown out a “general plan” for a beach park in Santa Cruz because the initial study of environmental impacts did not address the effects of unleashed dogs at the park. However, the court also ruled that there was not enough evidence to force preparation of an environmental impact report for the park plan.

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Forty years ago, the Watts riots shattered the postwar illusion of California as a middle-class paradise. Combined with other events, the Watts riots led to the political demise of Gov. Pat Brown, the rise of Ronald Reagan, and – sometimes overlooked – the end of California’s investment in massive public works projects designed to benefit the middle class.

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The state Legislature wrapped up its business for the year without passing substantial land use legislation. A bill addressing Central Valley flooding threats failed to even get a vote in the state Senate, despite the attention focused on the flood catastrophe Louisiana. Bills seeking to alter eminent domain or redevelopment authority also failed to pass.

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A controversial decision that cast doubt on many mobile home rent control ordinances in California has been thrown out.

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By the time I actually met Ed Bacon in person, the legendary urban planner who died last week at the age of 95, he was already in his late 80s, cranky and quirky. He had just read my book The Reluctant Metropolis, which reminded him that I had written a magazine article many years before that he had liked (see "Visionaries, Deal Makers, Incrementalists: The Divided World of Urban Planning" below). He called me up out of the blue one day to discuss whether I should write his biography.

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Three local government organizations and three conservation groups have asked Gov. Schwarzenegger to work with them and other stakeholders on developing a comprehensive statewide growth strategy.

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The following bills are the major land use measures that state lawmakers introduced during 2005. Bills that did not pass this year may be revived when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

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The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a plan that gives the San Joaquin Valley until 2010 to achieve permissible amounts of soot and dust in the air. Environmentalists and public health advocates had argued for a 2006 deadline.

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