CP&DR

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...

Court Rules Development Agreements Are Constitutional

Dec 1, 2000

CP&DR Staff, Legal Digest, San Luis Obispo County, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

A development agreement between San Luis Obispo County and the developer of a subdivision and resort did not amount to an unconstitutional contracting away of the county's police power, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The opinion validates development agreements as legitimate planning tools and appears to erase any lingering doubts about the constitutionality of the practice.

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