CP&DR - Articles

Orange County Wins Jail Lawsuit

Jan 1, 2001

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld Orange County's environmental impact report for expansion of the James A. Musick jail. In an unpublished opinion, the court overturned a trial judge's ruling in a lawsuit brought by the City of Lake Forest. (City of Lake Forest v. County of Orange, G023884.) The county wants to expand the existing jail, which is bordered by Lake Forest, Irvine and El Toro, from 1,250 beds to nearly 8,000 beds. However, the county has indicated it would pursue a smaller faci...

State Supreme Court Accepts Case Based on SF Housing Conversion Law

Jan 1, 2001

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

The California Supreme Court has accepted a takings case that threatens the viability of San Francisco's Hotel Conversion Ordinance. The court has decided to hear San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco, C.A. 1st Div. 5, No. A083530 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, September 2000, October 2000). In an opinion published in two portions, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that the "heightened scrutiny" test applied to the hotel conversion ordinance, meaning there must be a close relationship ...

City, County Continue Battle For Control Of Santa Clarita Valley

Jan 1, 2001

Local Watch, Los Angeles County, New cities, Paul Shigley, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

It's not every day that a city places a full-page newspaper advertisement demanding a larger sphere of influence. Yet that is just what the City of Santa Clarita did last fall — on the same day it placed another full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times complaining about a gravel quarry proposed outside the city limits. The splashy advertisements are just one part of the latest round in the City of Santa Clarita's long fight with Los Angeles County over control of one of the state's fastest growing areas.

Steve Nissen

Jan 1, 2001

Paul Shigley, Q&A, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

Steven Nissen became acting director of the Governor's Office of Planning and Research in April 2000 and the appointment has since become permanent. Besides advising the governor and carrying out his interests, OPR provides assistance to local government on land use planning issues. The office is responsible for preparing CEQA Guidelines and General Plan Guidelines, and it operates the state clearinghouse for environmental impact reports. Besides his role at OPR, Nissen serves as a governor's s...

Infrastructure Concerns Generate Reports and Studies Aplenty

Jan 1, 2001

Paul Shigley, Public Development, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

California's system for generating and distributing electricity — which has attracted little attention from the public and most policymakers in the past — became topic number one in December and January when extraordinary efforts by the state and federal governments were needed to keep the lights on. But the electricity concerns is only the latest in a series of recent efforts that focus on the state's infrastructure Transportation planners are wrestling with daunting growth projections for Southern C...

Land-Use Ballot Measure Results for November 2000

Dec 1, 2000

Ballot Measures , CP&DR Staff, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

Land-use ballot measures for November 2000. Alameda County Voters approved the Sierra Club's urban growth boundary initiative drawing draw a tight urban limit line around Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, Sunol and Castro Valley. Voters rejected the competing Tri-Valley Vision 2010 measure, a less-restrictive UGB placed on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors. Measure D (Sierra Club initiative): Yes, 56.5% Measure C (Vision 2010 plan): No, 56.9% County voters approved a 20-year extension of a hal...

Vallejo Scores a Housing Coup

Dec 1, 2000

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

Cognitive science has taught us that a human being cannot keep more than seven things in its mind at any given time. That figure, of course, does not apply to local governments in California, which appear unable to focus on more than one thing at a time. Perhaps we should set up a charitable organization for cities suffering from the condition known as Single-Purpose Agenda Syndrome (SPAS). I can see television ads right now featuring a bureaucrat, in short sleeves and pocket protector, looking b...

In Brief: Oregon, Colorado Voters Reject Growth Boundaries

Dec 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, In Brief, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

In Brief: Election results from Arizona, Colorado and Oregon; Stanford growth plan approved; Speaker appoints Commission on Regionalism; SCAG and HCD fight over housing allocations; Bolsa Chica development limited; Cisco announces Fremont building plans; Navy agrees to clean up Hunters Point; Kern County sludge ban upheld.

Critical-Habitat Designations Sweep Across California

Dec 1, 2000

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

When the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proposed in September that 5.4 million acres in 31 California counties be designated critical habitat for the threatened red-legged frog, howls of outrage came from nearly every corner of the state. Builders, water agencies, local government officials and farmers decried the designation as an impending disaster with dire implications for everything from construction of affordable housing to the integrity of Southern California's precarious water supply. The...

Voters No Longer SOARing; Density Could Be the Next Ballot Fight

Dec 1, 2000

Insight, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000, William Fulton

Election Day 1998 sure looked like a watershed for ballot-box zoning in California. That was the day that voters in Ventura County and five cities there passed the so-called SOAR (Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources) initiatives, which created an almost "air-tight" system of urban growth boundaries around the cities and agricultural preservation in unincorporated areas. In the months after that election, California began to look like "SOAR-land". Reporters from around the country troo...

Threat of New Initiative Arises in SD Conflict

Dec 1, 2000

Local Watch, Paul Shigley, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

Planning for a long stretch of rural lands on the fringe of suburban San Diego County continues to be a roiling controversy played out in the courts, the election booth and the Board of Supervisors chambers. The county lost the latest round in the courtroom recently when Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell ruled that the environmental impact report for the general plan amendment covering 191,000 acres was inadequate. The ruling pleased environmentalists and the state Attorney General's office, but the...

Green Party Grows in Local Government

Dec 1, 2000

Stephen Svete, Trends, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

Who says urban planning isn't partisan? It has certainly been many a planner's working assumption that local land use decisions in California are not affiliated with any political perspective, but are merely "good planning." In fact, since the days of 1910s reform Governor Hiram Johnson, local government has been legally devoid of party-affiliated elections. But with the assertive emergence of the Green Party in Election 2000, the fact can no longer be ignored: national political party platform...

Land Exchanges: Court Overturns Desert Land Swap to Accommodate Imperial Landfill

Dec 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

A federal appellate court has overturned a land exchange between the Bureau of Land Management and a private company that hoped to develop a regional landfill in Imperial County. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the BLM grossly underestimated the value of its land where the landfill was proposed. The BLM relied on an appraisal that said the "highest and best use" of the 1,745 acres in question was open space or mine waste storage. The appraisal did not...

Clean Water Act: Environmentalists Win Right to Sue Over Timber Company's Practices

Dec 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

Environmentalists were victorious in one of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' first interpretations of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Water Act. The Ninth Circuit held that two environmental organizations could sue a Northern California lumber company for alleged Clean Water Act violations because the supposed pollution harmed members' recreational use of a creek. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that South Carolina citizens could sue the operator of a hazardo...