"L" was a young, slightly naive city of 122,000 people in the high desert. She loved her biggest retailer, Costco, very much and "L" vowed she would always be faithful to Costco, no matter the cost, no matter how much it hurt.
Population projections beget households, households beget units and units beget Regional Housing Needs Assessments (RHNA) and those infamous housing elements.
Development pressure in the Martis Valley, just north of Lake Tahoe, is as great as anywhere in the high Sierra. Straddling the Placer and Nevada county line about 20 miles southwest of Reno, the area appears to be evolving into a high-end resort destination. Several thousand homes and vacation units are proposed in unincorporated Placer County and the Town of Truckee, as are at least half a dozen golf courses.
Perhaps no legislative proposal in recent memory has cut closer to the bone of California's state-local governance problems than AB 680, Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg's proposal to create a tax-sharing system for metropolitan Sacramento.
A county can require an applicant for a development permit to indemnify the county in any attempt brought by a third party to void the permit, according to an opinion from the Attorney General's office.
During a recession, government efforts to boost the economy often gain higher profiles. Three recent studies of state economic development activities paint a mixed picture of the effectiveness of existing programs.
A sanitation district has exclusive jurisdiction to provide sewer service to an area annexed by Corona, and the city cannot interfere with that right, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The lawsuit was forced by the Riverside County Local Agency Formation Commission's decision 16 years ago not to decide who would provide sewer service to the area.
County officials are questioning the state's housing allocation process, which often requires counties to plan for thousands of housing units even as they are also planning to protect agricultural land and open space.
Although they cannot be false and misleading, ballot arguments need not be relevant, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The panel issued its opinion in a lawsuit challenging the title of, and ballot arguments for, a City of Huntington Beach measure on the March ballot that would impose a tax on a power plant.
An Orange County ballot initiative that sought to block the development of a civilian airport at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station has been thrown out by a state appellate court. The court ruled that Measure F from March 2000 interfered with essential governmental functions, crossed the line into administrative activities, and was vague.
The state Supreme Court will review an appellate court ruling that subdivision maps recorded prior to the first version of the Subdivision Map Act in 1893 do not create legal parcels. In January, all seven of the state's high court justices voted to review the decision in Gardner v. County of Sonoma (see CP&DR Legal Digest, November).
Despite a recession, $12 billion state budget deficit and already large debt obligations, numerous bond proposals will appear on the state ballot this year.
City leaders in Azusa believe they have their community on a more prosperous track after years of political fighting and questionable land use decisions. Downtown redevelopment is finally taking hold, builders are constructing upscale houses, and an exhaustive planning process for a prized 400-acre parcel appears to be settling old disputes.
The Third District Court of Appeal has allowed a California Environmental Quality Act suit to proceed even though the plaintiffs did not name every entity involved in the proposed project.
