This fall, California's Strategic Growth Council will release a preliminary assessment about SB 375's implementation to date. So now is a good time to step back and deeply reflect on how we are running public participation processes in this state, especially legislatively mandated ones. We need to consider how legislative requirements like those for the SB 375 regional planning process may help or hinder meaningful public engagement.

Clearlake posts General Plan revision for review

The draft EIR to update Clearlake's 1983 General Plan is up for review. Prepared by a team at Cal Poly, the draft runs to almost 500 pages. A local news report at http://bit.ly/1kkSbRP describes the plan as preparing for population growth from the present through 2040. The plan also seeks to "Protect the City's rural character and maintain the small town atmosphere."

Below are a dozen picked results from June 3 local ballot measures affecting land use. Links are included here to more detailed county results pages. [Update 6/22/14: adding Measure AA on open space in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties and clarifying that the Lake County measure did not receive its required 2/3 vote.]

The Fitch Ratings service on May 1 announced it was ready to take a sunnier view of tax allocation bonds (TABs) administered by successor agencies in California's redevelopment dissolution. The changed view could affect both the sale prices of existing bonds and the interest rates available to successor agencies when they refinance their existing debt with refunding bonds.

Raw fish will not singlehandedly save urban California. But it can still help.

This week the Huffington Post ran a concerning piece about the recent shooting at Los Angeles International Airport.

A couple of weeks ago, the Cupertino City Council approved the long-awaited, 3.2-million-square-foot Apple Campus 2. Approval means that the building, notable for its purely circular footprint, is to arise on an open field north of Interstate 280, with completion expected in about two years. Designed by architectural luminary Sir Norman Foster, the main office building is notable for a purely circular footprint. Both Apple and the architect suggest that the horizontally oriented, four-story building will be gentler on Gaia than a tall building.

In the pantheon of developer complaints about the California Environmental Quality Act, perhaps the most common one is that it's too easy to use it to file crazy lawsuits purely for the purposes of gumming up the works.

Which is maybe why the building industry and property rights advocates have spent so much time lately filing CEQA lawsuits apparently designed to gum up the works.

In Alliance for the Protection of the Auburn Community En