Vol. 19 No. 03 Mar 2004

An appellate court has ruled against homeowners who sought to prevent Santa Monica City Council members from making inquiries of staff members other than the city manager.

"An injunction to prevent such communication violates the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects everyone, even politicians," Justice Arthur Gilbert wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel of the Second District, Division Six.

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Javier Mariscal is director of urban regeneration for John Laing Homes, where he helps one of California’s largest developers implement urban infill and reuse projects.

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Anyone familiar with the operation of state and federal water projects in California recognizes that the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is the heart of the state’s elaborate plumbing system. A recent federal court decision also places the Delta squarely at the heart of an intensifying debate over one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, potentially throwing into question the protections afforded a host of threatened and endangered species throughout the water-short West.

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Three highly anticipated studies regarding the potential impact of Wal-Mart supercenters in California have been released in recent weeks. The studies have some common threads but reach dramatically different conclusions — and the studies drew predictable responses.

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An appellate court has upheld an injunction prohibiting the City of Garden Grove from requiring existing cybercafes to get conditional use permits. However, the appellate court removed an injunction against city-imposed operating requirements at the cybercafes.

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In a unanimous opinion, the state Supreme Court has ruled that a community service district’s water connection charge and fire suppression charge are exempt from the restrictions of Proposition 218.

The ruling was only the state high court’s second in a Proposition 218 case, and in both instances, the court ruled for local government.

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Land use in our society is generally an "either-or" proposition. Any given site is zoned for industry or housing or open space, but rarely more than one use at a time. And we compartmentalize one land use from another by drawing thick black lines on our land-use maps, often in a completely arbitrary way.

That thick black line has grown a little thinner on 471 acres of land, nearly half of which lie underwater, owned by Dow Chemical in the city of Pittsburg.

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The City of Wasco has been ordered to pay an attorney that represented the city in complicated bond finance dealings during the mid-1990s. The First District Court of Appeal rejected the city’s argument that the payments violated the state constitution’s ban on incurring general fund debt.

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In his definitive book, City Center to Regional Mall, urban historian Richard Longstreth points out that in 1960, Southern California had 14 regional malls, located mostly in the southern L.A. County and northern Orange County suburbs that were emerging at the time. Although similar at the time, those malls have evolved greatly.

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Three sweeping growth measures in three very different parts of the state — two measures seeking to tightly control development and one growth-friendly plan — all lost during the March 2 primary election.

Voters in San Diego and San Benito counties overwhelmingly rejected growth-control general plan amendments. In El Dorado County, voters said no to approving an entire general plan via initiative.

Elsewhere, Contra Costa County voters rejected a big-box law. San Marcos voters said no to Wal-Mart.

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