The City of Burbank, which has vigorously fought a proposed Burbank Airport expansion, won a major victory when the Second District Court of Appeal ruled the Airport Authority must receive approval from the city before proceeding with a new terminal.
In a ruling delivered May 5 and ordered published on May 20, a unanimous three-judge panel said the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority must submit its land use plans for city approval, and must get the city's approval to condemn land for the project.
"The Authority apparently perceives itself so unrestricted in the manner of exercising its claimed implied power of land-use review that it need undergo no review at all," Presiding Justice Mildred Lillie wrote. "However, a city may not delegate discretionary powers in such a way that results in total abdication of those powers."
The appellate court decision overturns a February 1998 superior court ruling, which said the city delegated its land use power when it approved the 1977 agreement creating the Airport Authority.
The Airport Authority wants to build a 19-gate terminal on 130 acres owned by Lockheed Martin Corp. adjacent to the airport. The proposed terminal, which could be expanded to 27 gates, would replace the existing 14-gate terminal. The Airport Authority had hoped to complete the $250 million project by spring 2002. The city rejected the expansion plan in 1996. The Airport Authority has not yet decided whether to ask the California Supreme Court to review the decision, said Victor Gill, director of public affairs and communications.
Burbank Mayor Stacey Murphy said, "Although we have already rejected the Authority's expansion plan, we welcome them to come to the city and seek our reconsideration of a more modest project proposal that is sensitive to the needs of our community."
Late-night noise is the city's chief concern. The appellate court said the city retains its right to impose noise restrictions. But one week after the appellate court ruling, the Federal Aviation Administration said the city cannot impose a nighttime curfew on the airport. The FAA said only the owner of an airport may adopt a curfew, and then only after a noise study.
Contacts:
Stacey Murphy, Burbank Mayor, (818) 954-1845.
Victor Gill, Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, (818) 840-8840.
University of California, Santa Barbara, officials proposed building 200 dorm rooms a little too close to wetlands, the California Coastal Commission had decided. The commission approved the student housing but ordered the university to keep the planned construction at least 100 feet from a slough, coastal pools and other wetlands.
The decision requires a major redesign of the San Rafael housing addition and will delay the project by a year, according to Tye Simpson, UCSB director of physical and env...
The Fourth District Court of Appeal has overturned a trial judge's ruling that environmental review of the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill in Riverside County was inadequate. The additional review was conducted under a court order that found fault with the previous environmental work on the project.
The Eagle Mountain project would convert a former Kaiser Steel iron-ore mine into a landfill of 2,200 acres with the capacity of accepting up to 20,000 tons of waste per day for more than a century. Howe...
Alameda County transportation officials cannot change the route of a new highway to be funded by a county sales tax without returning to the county's voters for approval, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The ruling overturned a decision by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Henry E. Needham Jr. which granted summary judgment to the Alameda County Transportation Authority in the case. The First District remanded the case to Superior Court for a new decision on a citizen group's re...
A federal district court judge — not a Nevada state court — has jurisdiction in a water rights dispute even though the dispute involves decisions of the Nevada State Engineer, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The decision is the second Ninth Circuit ruling in the last six months stemming from disputes over water allocation between federal and local governments in Churchill County, Nevada, east of Reno. The ruling emerged after a series of "dueling injunctions" in federal and state co...
Business Improvement Districts created by cities under the Parking and Business Improvement Area Law of 1989 are not subject to the voting requirements of Proposition 218, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.
The unanimous three-judge panel said that Proposition 218 has no effect on cities' ability to levy assessments under the 1989 law (Streets & Highways Code §§ 36500-36551). The court concluded that San Diego's Pacific Beach Business Improvement District did not impose an "assessment" with...
A city has no obligation to provide new water service to development in unincorporated areas, and a city may use its utilities as growth-management tools, the First District Court of Appeals has ruled.
The unanimous three-judge panel said that Crescent City did not act unreasonably when the City Council decided to prohibit new water utility connections outside the city limits. The appellate panel overturned the ruling of Del Norte County Superior Court Judge George L. Nelson. He had charact...
Once the butt of many jokes, downtown San Jose has become an increasingly popular location. Among the latest to indicate interest in a downtown office tower is the city itself, which proposes building a $214 million Civic Center on the eastern edge of downtown. The city has completed an environmental impact report, and the City Council was expected on June 1 to approve the EIR, a new redevelopment area, a housing relocation plan, and a financing program. City officials hope the project will solve the ...
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.
Relations between the City of Alameda and developer SunCal appear to have soured in the wake of voters' overwhelming defeat of SunCal's plan to redevelop Alameda Naval Air Station. Three days after 85% of voters rejected SunCal's plan during a February 2 special election, city officials sent SunCal a notice of default, the first step in ending SunCal's exclusive negotiating agreement to redevelop the base.
The nonprofit organization GreenInfo Network has released a newly revised database that attempts to identify every publicly protected parcel of open land in California, ranging from national forest to urban pocket park. The database inventories 49 million acres of protected land composed of 51,500 separate holdings owned by 860 governmental agencies or nonprofit organizations. Downloadable for free, the information should be of use to planners, academics, government agencies, nonprofit organization, businesses and others, said Larry Orman, GreenInfo Network executive director.
Opponents of the Gold Rush Ranch 1,600-unit housing development and golf resort in Sutter Creek submitted referendum petitions with 468 signatures in early February (see CP&DR Local Watch, January 15, 2010). If as few as one-third of those signatures is valid, the referendum of the Gold Rush Ranch specific plan and general plan amendment would qualify for the ballot, possibly as soon as June.
