Odd how the fast food joint has become emblematic of what's wrong with the modern world. The recent bombing of a McDonalds in Brittany was widely interpreted as nothing less than a shot across the bow of cultural globalization. Here on our golden shores, discussions about the merits of quick service restaurants are more measured, but the burger and burrito huts can cause high anxiety. Particularly loathed by many are drive-through facilities. These car-friendly land uses have been scoffed at ...

The City of Livermore and Alameda County are close to completing a specific plan that provides for the development of 3,200 acres and the conservation of 10,300 acres of farmland and open space. However, a Sierra Club-backed urban growth boundary initiative that appears headed for the Alameda County ballot in November could throw the project into question. The city and county are in the midst of conducting approximately 17 workshops and public hearings on the North Livermore Specific Plan. Cit...

After a delay of almost a decade, the battle over how localities in California divvy up their responsibility for low- and moderate-income housing has been joined once again. The first battlefield is metropolitan Los Angeles, where the Southern California Association of Governments is engaged in a struggle with its own members over the "Regional Housing Needs Assessment" (RHNA) process � and is lobbying the state to reduce L.A.'s overall obligation to provide low/mod housing. The SCAG battle is ...

A Subdivision Map Act provision that gives local government a maximum of 120 days to acquire an interest in land upon which a subdivider is obligated to build improvements applies only in cases where the improvements are a condition of final map approval, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled. A developer in the City of Clovis contended that such a narrow reading of Government Code §66462.5 would place an undue burden on the subdivider because a city could wait decades before acquiring of...

Making clear that the Community Redevelopment Law "is not simply a vehicle for cash-strapped municipalities to finance community improvements," an appellate court has thrown out the City of Diamond Bar's redevelopment plan. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Diamond Bar did not prove that its 1,300-acre redevelopment project area suffered from "blight," as defined by the Community Redevelopment Law (Health and Safety Code §§33000 et seq., 33030). The...

A county's mobilehome rent control ordinance applies for people who live in recreational vehicles for at least nine continuous months, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court said that Santa Cruz County's Mobilehome Rent Adjustment Ordinance applies to about 20 sites in a travel trailer and resort facility because residents of those sites have lived there continuously for nine months or more. The controversy began when Willows Resort owner Harold Griffith eliminated central g...

Available land is a rare and, therefore, valuable commodity in Santa Monica. So city officials are pleased with the opportunities they now have after purchasing about 11 acres, owned for decades by a prominent think tank, that lie adjacent to Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, City Hall and Palisades Park. "It's an incredibly strategic area," said Andy Agle, Santa Monica's deputy director of planning and community development. The city could eventually develop parks, affordable housing and office ...

A citizens group and an environmental organization do have a right to attorneys' fees in successful litigation regarding El Dorado County's handling of a large subdivision, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled. However, the court tempered that right by saying that the aesthetic protections won by the groups and their members should be a factor in the awarding of fees. In other words, because they gained aesthetic protections, the groups might not get as much in attorneys' fees as they wou...

Mobilehome park owners in the City of Montclair can proceed with a federal lawsuit alleging that the city's rent control law is a regulatory taking, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. A federal district court had dismissed the lawsuit filed by mobilehome park owners because a similar suit was making its way through the state court system (see CP&DR Legal Digest January, 2000). However, the litigation ended early this year when the state Supreme Court refused to review an appell...

Portions of Santa Monica's rent control law have been thrown out by an appellate court because the provisions conflicted with state law. The Second District Court of Appeal said Santa Monica could not modify conditions established by state law under which landlords can increase rents for voluntarily vacated units, and the city cannot demand more information than state law requires when registering rent-controlled units. In reviewing the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995 (Civ. Code §1954.50), th...

Los Angeles is the second-biggest city in the United States, but nobody who lives there has ever seemed especially proud of this fact. For many community activists the city's size has always seemed like an annoyance. L.A.'s neighborhood groups — especially homeowner associations in the San Fernando Valley — have complained for decades that the downtown City Hall bureaucracy is too remote and unresponsive to meet the needs of the city's varied neighborhoods, especially when it comes to pla...

When two companies contribute to groundwater pollution, one company cannot avoid cleanup costs by arguing that the other company would have spent money on the cleanup anyway, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The decision came in an Oregon case interpreting the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), better known as the Superfund law. To let one company avoid cleanup costs "would encourage parties to avoid investigating and cleaning up con...

A four-year-old pilot project intended to improve the quality of water flowing into the southern end of San Francisco Bay continues to move forward. Interests ranging from builders to environmentalists to regulators are participating in the Santa Clara Basin Watershed Management Initiative (WMI), and a detailed watersheds characteristics report — an important baseline document — is due out this month. Although the broad-based approach to dealing with entire watersheds is happening in an urban a...

Parcels delineated in pre-1893 subdivisions do not exist as separate lots unless there has been a transfer of title at some point, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. In addressing the status of antiquated subdivisions, the court ruled squarely in favor of local governments that have fought to prevent legal recognition of "paper subdivisions" created prior to laws regulating the subdivision of land. In answering an unresolved issue of state subdivision law, the court said that the ti...