El Dorado County
Voters rejected a measure that would restrict housing density levels and force public referendums on three proposed major residential developments.
Measure A: No, 54.5%
Marin County
City of Fairfax
Voters turned down a proposal to rezone the site of the Marin Town and Country Club to allow the construction of 45 homes and the creation of a 14.5 acre park site.
Measure C, No: 77.9 %.
San Diego County
City of San Diego
Voters overwhelmingly approved a plan to finance a $216 million expansion of the city's Convention Center.
Measure A: Yes, 62%.
City and County of San Francisco
Two ballot measures in San Francisco were seen as attempts to rein in Mayor Willie Brown's power. Measure F requires city employees to return to City Hall after it is refurbished; Measure K set rules on conflicts of interest and competitive bidding on the Treasure Island Development Authority, and would not allow casino or card gambling on the island.
Measure F: yes, 59.3%
Measure K: yes, 55.5%
Santa Clara County
City of Santa Clara
Voters approved plans for Sun Microsystems to enter into an agreement with the city to develop the former Agnews Developmental Center into a high-tech campus.
Measure D: Yes, 64%.
Sonoma County
City of Rohnert Park
A move to widen the city's urban growth boundary was handily defeated. The measure would have allowed the development of an additional 1,520 acres, and would have given the city council the power to annex land outside the boundary for residential uses without voter approval.
Measure A: No, 67.6 %
Sutter County
A 1/2 cent sales tax to finance additional levee repairs failed by a slim margin to garner a 2/3 majority vote.
Measure ii: No, 34.8%
In the latest in a long line of cases challenging the constitutionality of San Francisco's hotel conversion laws, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has sent one hotel owner back to state court.
The case involves the longstanding attempt by the owners of the San Remo Hotel to have the city officially recognize their hotel as a tourist hotel. San Francisco has had strict restrictions against the conversion of residential hotels to tourist use in place for almost twenty years. When the first "h...
An appellate court has overturned a significant ruling by a trial judge in San Bernardino County that sought to adjudicate conflicting claims on groundwater in the Mojave River Basin.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division 2, ruled in favor of farmers who will likely be forced to change their water usage as a result of the sweeping decision issued in 1995 by Superior Court Judge E. Michael Kaiser.
In the ruling, Kaiser consolidated a series of conflicting water claims and sought to make an "...
The federal Bureau of Reclamation violated the Endangered Species Act by renewing Friant Dam water contracts prior to completing required consultations with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The court has also overturned District Court Judge Lawrence Karlton's decision that environmentalists' challenges to the renewal of the water contracts under the California Fish & Game Code were moot.
The case involve...
Reiterating earlier court decisions stating that "neither the public nor a public service corporation could tolerate as many standards and policies as there were towns, cities, or boroughs through which they operated," the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the City of Carlsbad may not require San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to remove dredged sand from its beach.
San Diego Gas & Electric has dredged the Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad ever since the early '50s, when it first constructed the ...
When 5.7 million people say they want to shield local funding from grabbing hands – as they did in November -- that should be the end of the story. At least, that's what California's redevelopment agencies would hope after this annus horribilis in the redevelopment world.
In Year Three of the Great Recession, it's comforting to think that California has heard all the bad news it's going to hear. Or at least we're so accustomed to bad news, that we've stopped getting depressed by it. As a result, many of this year's top stories come with silver linings.
The no-growth vs. slow-growth vs. build-everything debate has become a faint murmur, since not much of anything is getting built anyway. What is getting built, though, is generally pleasing to the smart growth crowd.
Fans of infrastructure development have surely cheered the progress on projects like High Speed Rail and Los Angeles Metro's 30/10 Initiative. Then again, skeptics may be assuring themselves that these projects will never get built.
Relations between the City of Alameda and developer SunCal appear to have soured in the wake of voters' overwhelming defeat of SunCal's plan to redevelop Alameda Naval Air Station. Three days after 85% of voters rejected SunCal's plan during a February 2 special election, city officials sent SunCal a notice of default, the first step in ending SunCal's exclusive negotiating agreement to redevelop the base.
The nonprofit organization GreenInfo Network has released a newly revised database that attempts to identify every publicly protected parcel of open land in California, ranging from national forest to urban pocket park. The database inventories 49 million acres of protected land composed of 51,500 separate holdings owned by 860 governmental agencies or nonprofit organizations. Downloadable for free, the information should be of use to planners, academics, government agencies, nonprofit organization, businesses and others, said Larry Orman, GreenInfo Network executive director.
Opponents of the Gold Rush Ranch 1,600-unit housing development and golf resort in Sutter Creek submitted referendum petitions with 468 signatures in early February (see CP&DR Local Watch, January 15, 2010). If as few as one-third of those signatures is valid, the referendum of the Gold Rush Ranch specific plan and general plan amendment would qualify for the ballot, possibly as soon as June.
Characterized as "the last piece in the puzzle" for Chula Vista bayfront redevelopment, a land swap between the San Diego Unified Port District and developer Pacifica Holdings has been approved by the district and the City of Chula Vista.
San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dianne Jacob has asked the state Public Utilities Commission to reconsider its approval of the Sunrise Powerlink transmission corridor because of its potential to make the unincorporated community of Alpine into "a ghost town" due to years of construction.
A $400 million economic stimulus grant from the federal government for the proposed Transbay Terminal in San Francisco will provide the final piece of financing for construction of the first, $1.2 billion phase of the terminal project. However, federal transportation officials appear to have stepped into the middle of a dispute between local officials and the California High Speed Rail Authority over the precise terminus for high-speed rail in San Francisco by siding with the locals. In addition, one rail authority board member, former judge and state Sen.
