CP&DR - Articles

Inter-County JPA Will Deal with Tracy HIlls Transportation

Feb 1, 1999

Larry Sokoloff, Local Watch, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

No sooner had the fast-growing San Joaquin County city of Tracy settled a lawsuit and agreed to set up a joint powers authority on traffic issues than it was hit with a second lawsuit challenging its water supply and other facets of another huge development. In December, Tracy, Alameda County, the nearby city of Livermore, and the Sierra Club announced a settlement to a lawsuit brought over traffic issues raised by the city's approval of the 5,000-unit Tracy Hills project. Under the settlement, the J...

Placer County Undertakes Habitat Conservation PLan

Feb 1, 1999

Environment Watch, Larry Sokoloff, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

A pro-active approach to preserving open space and create a Natural Communities Conservation Plan is taking shape in Placer County in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Members of the county's planning staff are working with the Sierra Business Council to design a countywide program that may serve as a model for other urbanizing counties in the Sierra. The program, known as the Placer Legacy, seeks to set up an NCCP before the county is forced to do so by a legal challenge or a government agency, and also...

New Courthouses for Downtown Riverside

Feb 1, 1999

Public Development, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999, William Fulton

Downtown Riverside appears to be using the legal system as a revitalization tool - not by suing anybody, but by recruiting new courthouses. Last year, Riverside County agreed to finance construction of a $21 million federal courthouse in the same neighborhood as the county's Hall of Administration and County Courthouse. And in January, the Fourth District Court of Appeal moved from its longtime headquarters in downtown San Bernardino to a new courthouse adjacent to the federal site. The Court of App...

No Taking in Rent Control: Deeply Split, Cal Supremes Uphold Santa Monica Law

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

In a case with potentially widespread significance, a sharply divided California Supreme Court has upheld the Santa Monica rent control law against an inverse condemnation claim. In concluding that rent control cases are subject to a different level of judicial scrutiny than cases involving exactions and other economic aspects of land-use regulation, the Supreme Court has created the possibility that different types of inverse condemnation cases will be treated differently in court. Espec...

Adult Business Regulation: Newport Beach Revocation of Permit is Upheld

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

Ruling on wide-ranging issues in three separate cases filed by the same business, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld a Newport Beach adult business ordinance as constitutional and concluded that the city did not violate the business's constitutional rights by denying some permits and revoking others. As the court stated in its decision, the case is about "appropriate ways in which to distinguish a theater from a restaurant - something with which the general public seems to have ...

Initiatives: Defect Means City Can't Simply Adopt Initiative

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

The First District Court of Appeal has overturned the Hayward City Council's decision to adopt a proposed ballot initiative reaffirming open-space designations within the city and subjecting future open-space zone changes to a vote. The court concluded that because the signature-gathering effort was legally flawed, the council did not have the right to adopt the initiative as a city ordinance. The decision - a reversal of the trial judge's ruling - is a victory for Mervyn's, the retail chain, which ha...

Davis Administration May Deal with Growth Issues; Appointments, Budgets Suggest Direction

Feb 1, 1999

Featured Articles, Larry Sokoloff, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

Despite the heavy emphasis on education issues, newly elected governor Gray Davis has sent some early signals that planning and development will also be important to his administration. The strongest signal yet has been his appointment of strong environmentalists to his Cabinet, as well as comments in his State of the State speech and the budget request he submitted to the Legislature during his first week in office. In his speech, the governor said: "After education and public safety, the most voc...

Sisters of Notre Dame Meet HUD

Feb 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

The late James Michener once wrote a novel called THE SOURCE, which told the story of a single piece of land in Israel. The metaphor of the story was an archeological dig: the reader went back in time, as if removing layer after layer of soil, uncovering a different story with each stratum. I could never finish the book, to tell the truth: The writing was dry, and the book was a bit of a doorstop. Still, I admired the conceit that any given piece of ground had a good story to tell, or indeed many storie...

New Comission Tackles Cortese-Knox Act; Proposal Likely at End of Year

Feb 1, 1999

Featured Articles, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999, William Fulton

A new state commission is examining local govern issues and is expected to produce a proposed legislative overhaul of the Cortese-Knox by December. The 15-member Commission on Local Governance for the 21st Century was created last year as a by-product of legislation making it easier for the San Fernando Valley to pursue secession from the City of Los Angeles. The commission is officially charged with reviewing the Cortese-Knox Act, proposing methods to increase public participation in l...

Costal Act: ‘Calvo EXckusion' Doesn't Apply in Malibu Coastal Dispute

Feb 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

A Malibu property owner can't rely on the so-called "Calvo exclusion" - which exempts single-family homes from Coastal Commission jurisdiction - because the property owner had previously agreed to submit to the commission's control, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. "Appellant has taken inconsistent positions in this litigation, first waiving the right to further litigate the Calvo exclusion and agreeing to obey any Commission order regarding restoration of the property, and later asserti...

Reatiling and the Web

Feb 1, 1999

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 14 No. 02 Feb 1999

One of the more interesting outcomes of the explosion of the Internet on our culture is the wave of anxiety it has produced at City Halls and in Sacramento. And it's not because the powerful new interactive media isn't already being used in hundreds of ways by state and local government to connect and its constituents - or otherwise benefiting our technology-strong economy. It is because the Web's success threatens to siphon off the lifeblood of the public agency revenue stream: sales tax. The threat...

SFO Offers 15:1 Wetlands Swap for New Runway

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Economic Development, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

San Francisco Airport officials have proposed an airport runway expansion that has a novel tradeoff for environmentalists. In exchange for filling up to 1,400 acres of San Francisco Bay for new runways, the airport proposes to restore 29,000 acres of bay wetlands that are located east and south of the airport. The proposal, which is to be formally presented at the end of January, is already proving controversial in the environmental community, and is strongly opposed by Cargill Salt, whose land could...

Anaheim Still Moving Forward with Sportstown

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Economic Development, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

Despite a developers' decision to drop out of a 40-acre sports-themed project in Anaheim, city officials are keeping the project on track. Known as Sportstown, the entertainment project is taking shape in the parking lot of the Big A, home of the Anaheim Angels baseball team, and close to the Arrowhead Pond, home to the major league hockey team, the Mighty Ducks. In November, Cleveland-based developer Forest City Enterprises Inc. dropped plans to develop Sportstown, which is to include sports-theme...

Landowner Loses Again: No Taking in Coastal Dispute, Apppellate Court Rules

Jan 1, 1999

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 14 No. 01 Jan 1999

The Second District Court of Appeal has reaffirmed its decision to overturn a $2 million takings judgment against the Coastal Commission - even after reconsidering the case in light of a California Supreme Court ruling in another coastal case. However, the property owners' lawyers appear determined to fight on to the California Supreme Court on the very issue that caused the remand in the first place. Lawyer Thomas Banks said his client, Peggy Ann Buckley, plans to appeal the case to the Calif...