It goes without saying that in land-use planning, as in most other aspects of governance, where you stand depends on where you sit. One person's sprawl is another person's prosperity; one jurisdiction's responsible stewardship of resources is another jurisdiction's lost opportunity for economic development.
When you get this kind of conflict in California land-use planning, usually you wind up in court — simply because there is no other forum for appeal. And so it is not surprising that the City of Brentwood has decided to sue Contra Costa County over the Board of Supervisors' July decision to "shrink" the county's urban limit line by 14,000 acres. A split San Ramon City Council has since voted to join Brentwood's lawsuit, and the City of Antioch and some of the affected landowners might jump aboard as well.
The ensuing battle is likely to be a typical one in many ways, with jurisdictions and landowners battling on many fronts at once — at the county, at the cities, in the courts, and probably also at the Contra Costa County Local Agency Formation Commission. Yet it certainly looks like it's going to shape the final urbanization pattern in one of the state's key growth counties, and it may clarify the roles — and the leverage — that cities and counties have in shaping growth.
A little background is in order here. Contra Costa is a large, demographically mixed county of 800,000 people in the East Bay. It includes many upper-middle-class suburbs, such as Walnut Creek and Orinda, but it also contains a long string of old working-class towns along the Bay and Delta, from Richmond to Pittsburg. Job growth along the I-680 corridor in the central part of the county has stimulated a huge demand for residential development. But resistance to growth is high in the areas where business is booming. As a result, a great deal of residential pressure is being bounced into open spaces to the east — into places such as Antioch, Brentwood, and Oakley.
A decade ago, voters in Contra Costa County ordered the county to limit urban growth so that only 35% of the county's land area is developed, while 65% is either set aside or used for rural purposes. Voters also told the county to create an urban limit line to implement this requirement. The county subsequently created the "ULL," but it had wiggle room in it — that is, it specified what areas could and could not be developed, but placed more than 35% of the land area inside the line. The idea was to give the supervisors some room to maneuver in determining which land should be developed.
Then, in the early 1990s, the politics of the Board of Supervisors changed. In particular, a pitched battle ensued over the proposed development of Tassajara Valley, an undeveloped area near San Ramon and Danville, in the vicinity of the I-680 corridor. A new supervisor, Diane Gerber, was elected based on her opposition to the Tassajara proposal and subsequently it was withdrawn. That led Gerber and her political allies to begin working to change the ULL so that Tassajara would lie outside the urban boundary. And it encouraged them to start lobbying the county's Local Agency Formation Commission to honor the ULL, even though the boundary was a policy of the county, not of the cities. The LAFCO eventually adopted a policy of adhering to the line whenever possible unless violating it "compellingly outweighs the public interest in limiting growth to areas within the line." (See CP&DR, April 1999.)
It's a ways from Tassajara Valley to Brentwood — approximately 40 miles — but it was not long before several critical pieces of property in the eastern part of the county came into play in the controversy over the proposed ULL change. It began when Supervisor Joe Canciamilla, a former Pittsburg city councilmember, convened meetings with city officials in the east county to discuss a mutual approach to growth. But in the end, they couldn't agree. In backing the ULL "shrinkage," Canciamilla proposed cutting out several key properties that had been targeted by Antioch and Brentwood for development. Especially in the case of Brentwood, these changes included properties that are currently inside the city's sphere of influence.
None of this has made Canciamilla a popular guy at Brentwood City Hall. Within a week, the Brentwood City Council voted to file a legal challenge to the environmental impact report for the new ULL. Mayor Quentin Kidd claimed that Canciamilla was simply pandering to the West County slow-growth crowd in his race to succeed Assemblyman Tom Torlakson. (Brentwood is not in Torlakson's district; most of Antioch is.) In response, Canciamilla took the high road. "There's a good deal of economic development competition between Brentwood and Antioch," he said. "I have a more regional perspective."
San Ramon's decision to join the lawsuit was led by Mayor Curt Kinney, who happens to be running against Gerber in November. Whatever, the motivations, the ensuing litigation may be pretty sprightly. For example, one of Brentwood's major moves is likely to be an attack on the EIR's analysis of whether future housing will be displaced. While acknowledging possible displacement, the EIR minimized it as a problem; Mayor Kidd responded by saying that the removal of development potential from Brentwood's expansion area imperils the city's ability to meet the affordable housing goals in its housing element. Meanwhile, of course, there remains the question of whether the county's LAFCO will shrink the sphere to conform to the ULL — or deny annexations that violate the ULL even though they are in the sphere.
All of which suggests that it will be a while before the eventual urban form of Contra Costa County is resolved. And, along the way, some interesting legal and political battles may help clarify — or further muddle — the interplay among some of California's most important land-use policy tools.
Everybody always loves to complain about the California Environmental Quality Act, but despite all the complaining we don't now much about how effective it really is and what all the CEQA activity adds up to. >>read more
Since Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement a few weeks ago, he has been hailed - and reviled - as the Court's "great liberal voice" of the past couple of decades. But especially in land use, Stevens' legacy rests with not only his ardent support of government regulatory power, but also his skill in mustering five votes, on a pretty conservative court, in favor of aggressive use of land use regulation.
The old saying in government is that in order to understand what's going on, you've got to follow the money. In local planning throughout California, that's becoming increasingly easy to do. Local government revenues - property tax, sales tax, development fees, redevelopment funds - are in steep decline.
The distance between California's growing budget problems and California's ambitious environmental protection agenda continues to increase.
The consequences of the state's chronic budget deficit – currently $20 billion per year or more with no end in sight – continue to chew up everything and everybody in its path: local governments, transit agencies, the prison system, welfare recipients, school districts.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has always been a Republican with a twist. As the governor enters his final year – attempting to deal both with economic woes and an ambitious environmental agenda – it appears that nothing has changed. He is going after the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in his own way. It's legacy time for the governor. For better or worse, the Schwarzenegger approach to skinning CEQA may be part of his legacy.
If predictions about the impact of global warming are even half right, a lot of us are going to be quite literally swimming – or at least wading – through our daily lives in 30 or 40 years. Yet in the current debate about how the state should approach "adaptation" strategies, all parties are crouched in their typically unhelpful postures.
Sometime this year or next year, Congress will probably pass a climate change bill that tries to mimic SB 375's link between transportation patterns and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And the bill will probably generate billions of dollars by capping emissions and placing a market value on them. But it is doubtful Congress use the money to invest in the transportation improvements and land use changes required to reduce automobile travel.
California government never fails to amuse. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appears poised to eliminate his own Office of Planning and Research (OPR) and nobody – not even the state's planners – is rushing to the beleaguered office's defense. Yet throughout Sacramento, vultures are hovering, because while OPR itself may not be worth saving, the carcass appears to have value.
The conventional wisdom is that Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't make a whole lot of difference, because there's not much meaningful ideological distance between her and her predecessor, Justice David Souter. So, the party line goes, the court will still be stuck in the familiar 5-4 or 4-5 split, depending on how Justice Anthony Kennedy is feeling that day. But there's a debate brewing as to whether that's really the case in land use and property rights law.
Now that the age of greenhouse gas emissions reduction is upon us, I think there's an important point worth making: Government agencies in California can try to comply with SB 375 – or they can focus on reducing driving. There is a lot of overlap between the two, but they are not exactly the same thing.
There's never been a weirder time to try to do planning in California.
On the one hand, the state has made climate change a major priority – and it's driving local government efforts in a hundred different ways, ranging from greenhouse gas analyses in environmental documents to switching out light bulbs in city corporation yards.
On the other hand, the state is cutting back all over the place because of the ever-more-dismal budget crisis. And this is going to make it hard for local governments to meet the requirements the state is laying out.
SB 375 is now law, but another year and a half will pass before the California Air Resources Board adopts the follow-up numerical regional targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions. This puts California's cities and counties in a pretty big bind: How can they adopt plans for the future that will conform with the climate change law if they don't know what standard they are going to have to comply with?