The Strategic Growth Council staff has proposed using $30 million in new money to provide additional funding for projects that didn't make the cut or weren't fully funded by the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program last year.
In its staff report for next Thursday's meeting, the SGC staff has also thrown out several additional ideas for working with the metropolitan planning organizations, including a geographical allocation of funds and MPO review and recommendation of projects. However, SGC staff isn't recommending any particular ideas. >>read more
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) has taken on the difficult task of bringing high-flown talk about renewable energy goals down, literally, to earth, in the form of land use planning. It's asking members of the energy, planning and environmental fields to cooperate in adding a new dimension to the meaning of property ownership in California's southeastern deserts.
But it's also running into resistance from local governments that don't want the plan to restrict their own land use power; Imperial County, for example, has banned new solar facilities. And some environmental groups are criticizing the plan because of the potential environmental impact of large-scale solar and other renewable energy facilities. It's an ironic clash between a governor who wants rapid progress on renewable energy and local and environmental groups who are concerned about the environmental impact of large-scale solar facilities.
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.
Over the past year, even the most irate objectors to Gov. Jerry Brown's dismantling of redevelopment held out hope that in agreeing to kill redevelopment, the legislature would invent a new, better system for stoking local economic growth. Last week, the governor dashed those hopes.
When voters in Orange County approved the creation of the 1,300-acre Orange County Great Park out of the shuttered Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, they had every reason to believe the estimated $1.2 billion cost would come, partially, from redevelopment monies. Such was the status quo in 2002.
Like so many a rider at the back of the peleton, California cities have long lagged behind their European counterparts in their embrace of bicycling. But they are now clipping in and gearing with the dramatic arrival of bike sharing. With zero major bike-sharing systems currently in the state, no fewer than five California cities will be adopting pilot projects by mid-2013.
When the upscale cafeteria-style restaurant Forage opened in Los Angeles's Silver Lake neighborhood in early 2010, it did so with a new take on the "farm to table'" movement that's slowly been gaining ground in California, as well as the rest of the country in recent years.
When redevelopment was first introduced in California, it included no provisions for affordable housing and instead focused solely on fighting blight. Introduced in 1976, the affordable housing set-aside � amounting to 20% of an agency's annual tax increment � was intended to mollify critics who contended that redevelopment amounting to nothing more than a boondoggle for developers. With the governor's successful dissolution of redevelopment, affordable housing now counts among the most lamented collateral damage.
