Calveras County supervisors approved a 3,250-acre residential and golf course resort project near the lower foothills community of Copperopolis in mid-December. The following day, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors voted to sue its northern neighbor because of traffic concerns about the project.
Oak Canyon Ranch is the largest project approved by Calaveras County is many years, said Interim Planning Director Robert Sellman. The specific plan calls for 2,275 single-family houses, and another 1,200 housing units, up to 400 of which may be for permanent residents. The other 800-plus units are designated for visitor housing, such as hotel rooms or time-share condominiums. The project also calls for 300,000 square feet of resort and commercial development, and a golf course.
The primary access to the development would be on Calaveras County roads off of Highway 4. However, the Oak Canyon Ranch EIR found that the project would nearly triple traffic to more than 13,000 trips per day on O'Byrnes Ferry Road, which crosses the Tuolumne County line before intersecting Highways 108 and 120.
That intersection, which features only a stop sign on O'Byrnes Ferry Road and a short left-hand turn lane on the highway, is the most dangerous in the county, said Tuolumne County Community Development Director Bev Shane. Tuolumne County's lawsuit will seek a mutually acceptable plan for improving the roads, she said.
Calaveras County approved Oak Canyon Ranch without requiring improvements to O'Byrnes Ferry Road or the intersection. In fact, supervisors adopted a finding of overriding considerations. Caltrans officials also raised concerns about the project.
Sellman said his county is willing to work with Caltrans but he contended that the county could not require developers to improve roads in another jurisdiction.
On the day after approving the Oak Canyon Ranch project, Calaveras County supervisors voted 3-2 against implementing the county's first road mitigation fee program. The proposed fees were $3,347 per single-family house and $2,418 per multi-family unit. Two supervisors opposed the fees outright because of fears that the fees would slow development, and one supervisor voted no because commercial projects would have been exempt.
When 5.7 million people say they want to shield local funding from grabbing hands – as they did in November -- that should be the end of the story. At least, that's what California's redevelopment agencies would hope after this annus horribilis in the redevelopment world.
In Year Three of the Great Recession, it's comforting to think that California has heard all the bad news it's going to hear. Or at least we're so accustomed to bad news, that we've stopped getting depressed by it. As a result, many of this year's top stories come with silver linings.
The no-growth vs. slow-growth vs. build-everything debate has become a faint murmur, since not much of anything is getting built anyway. What is getting built, though, is generally pleasing to the smart growth crowd.
Fans of infrastructure development have surely cheered the progress on projects like High Speed Rail and Los Angeles Metro's 30/10 Initiative. Then again, skeptics may be assuring themselves that these projects will never get built.
A major residential and resort development on the Tejon Ranch has won unanimous approval from the Kern County Board of Supervisors. The project, known as Tejon Mountain Village, is proposed to have 3,450 housing units, two golf courses, 750 hotel rooms, a resort and extensive highway commercial development on about 5,000 acres east of Frazier Park.
Forced into negotiations by the state Legislature, the City of Walnut has dropped its lawsuit contesting the adequacy of an environmental impact report for a proposed professional football stadium and 3 million-square-foot entertainment complex in the neighboring City of Industry.
A project that had become a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lightning rod has apparently died. Nestlé Waters North America notified the McCloud Community Services District that it is dropping plans to convert a closed lumber mill in Siskiyou County into a water-bottling plant because it is building the facility in Sacramento instead.
A draft "California Climate Adaptation Strategy" recommends that development projects and locations be reconsidered in light of rising sea levels, greater potential flooding and higher temperatures.
California's farm and grazing lands decreased by 275 square miles from mid-2004 through mid-2006, according to the state Department of Conservation. A total of 81,000 acres of prime farmland were lost to urban development or other changes, the greatest decrease in prime farmland since the state started the farmland mapping and monitoring program in 1984.
A former San Joaquin County political operative who was convicted of corruption in 2005 has had five of 17 guilty counts thrown out by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate panel overturned counts of attempted extortion against Monte McFall but upheld conviction on 12 counts of extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering.
The future of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service in the South Bay became less clear in March, as a projected revenue shortball and litigation struck planned BART extensions.
The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has released a new report in which it urges less reliance on state general obligation (GO) bonds to fund infrastructure improvements. The report, "Paying For Infrastructure: California's Choices," recommends reducing the voter requirement for local bonds from two-thirds to 55%, more user fees and expanded experimentation with public-private partnerships.
The state's system for regulating water quality is failing, according to the Little Hoover Commission. In a recent report, the investigative panel concluded the current system managed by the State Water Resources Control Board and nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards lacks transparency, consistency and accountability, and that the system does not demonstrably improve water quality.
