One of the largest housing developments ever proposed for the Central Valley received approval from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors in July. After about a decade of planning, environmental reviews and public hearings, supervisors backed the 2,600-acre, 10,000-unit Sunridge Specific Plan — a detailed subset of the 6,000-acre Sunrise-Douglas Community Plan, which supervisors also approved in July. The development is planned for pastureland south of Highway 50 in the eastern part of Sacramento County. The entire community plan area is within the borders of the proposed City of Rancho Cordova; voters will decide on incorporation in November. "We are basically bringing houses to where the jobs already are," said John Hodgson, a project manager for the 18 landowners in the specific plan area. The planning and environmental review process took many years not because of strong public opposition, but because pollution from the nearby Aerojet factory prevented developers from using on-site wells for water. "I think the greatest difficulty has been over the water supply issue," said Dave Pevney, Sacramento County senior planner. "Water will come from several miles away to get away from the Aerojet plume. There can be no on-site wells." Airplane noise from Mather Field, a closed Air Force base about three miles from the specific plan area that now serves as a cargo airport, was also a complicating factor. The area is also dotted with vernal pools, which provide habitat for endangered fairy shrimp and some rare plant species. Developers resolved the airport noise issue by agreeing to place a noise easement on land most affected by the airport. The wetlands could be a bigger obstacle. The largest landowner in the Sunridge Specific Plan area, Angelo Tsakopoulos's AKT Development, has the necessary federal permits for its 1,200 acres. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has halted further permitting until Sacramento County completes a habitat conservation plan (HCP) for a broad area that includes the community plan area. House the workers In recent years, the Highway 50 corridor — roughly 15 miles from the California State University, Sacramento campus to Folsom —has experienced rapid economic growth. New business parks and office buildings have transformed the corridor into the second largest job center in the region, behind only downtown Sacramento. In 1993, supervisors placed the Sunrise-Douglas area within the urban services boundary. In 1994, a citizens advisory committee recommended some guiding principles for the Sunrise-Douglas Community Plan and urged preparation of a specific plan for the entire 6,042 acres within the community plan area. The county abandoned the plan for one huge specific plan in 1995, mostly because the private landowners funding the planning effort were not willing to pay for the whole thing. So the county moved forward on a more general community plan for the whole area, and on a specific plan for the 2,632 acre Sunridge area, which property owners were willing to fund. The Sunrise-Douglas Community Plan is not a land use plan, Pevney explained. Instead it provides planning policies and outlines holding capacities. Ultimately, the 6,000-acre community plan area could accommodate 22,000 housing units. The Sunridge Specific Plan constitutes 43% of the community plan area. Planning and environmental review for Sunridge ground forward slowly. Hodgson half-joked that he was brought in for the final 18 months of the process — in 1996. "We lost 2 1/2 years on water, alone," he lamented. The lost time was the result of the state Department of Health Services blocking plans for on-site wells because the wells would too close to groundwater contamination at Aerojet, a major Defense Department contractor. Eventually, a well site was chosen about four miles south of Sunridge. Ultimately, a diversion Sacramento River water by the Sacramento County Water Agency and the East Bay Municipal Utility District will serve the community plan area (see CP&DR Environment Watch, December 2001). In fall of 2001, supervisors began public hearings on the community plan, the specific plan, related general plan and zoning amendments, an infrastructure financing plan and an EIR. Supervisors continued to review the project every week or two until voting final approval in July. The project received surprisingly little opposition from Sacramento's environmental community. A group called Vineyard Area Residents for Responsible Growth has threatened to sue the county over the EIR. The group's primary concern is that the development will harm existing groundwater wells. Some affordable housing advocates questioned the number of low-income units in the Sunridge plan area. Also, developers have had to work out an estimated $3 million agreement with a rendering company to retrofit a nearby plant with odor-control equipment. "We didn't have a lot of neighborhood opposition because there are almost no neighbors at all," Hodgson said. There is traffic, however, especially on the area's arterial roads and on Highway 50. The plans do not account for transit service, other than shuttles to a light rail station several miles away and possibly to large Rancho Cordova employment centers. The project does not have the housing density to justify light rail. Plus, light rail would have to pass through several miles of low-density commercial and industrial development to reach the specific plan area, Pevney said. Instead, the infrastructure plan focuses on roads and the timing for improvements. The county is requiring Sunridge developers to put in an estimated $50 million to $60 million worth of road improvements. "Over time, there will be a lot of road construction out there, although people recognize that traffic is already a major problem and will always be a major problem," Pevney said. While the density may not be adequate for rail service, it is greater than any other large specific plan in the region, Hodgson said. The residential areas will have densities ranging from 4 to 20 units per acre, with an average of 5.5 units an acre. "Any time we do a project, we get pushed by some supervisors for more density, and by some of the supervisors for less density," Hodgson said. The specific plan designates 120 acres for commercial mixed uses, 54 acres for community commercial, 100 acres for parks, 44 acres for schools and 34 acres for stormwater detention. An additional 482 acres is set aside as a wetlands preserve. Making a federal case The wetlands preserve is a condition of AKT Development building on the remainder of its 1,200 acres. A previous property owner, Sares-Regis, accepted the condition in arranging Clean Water Act permits. That puts AKT well ahead of other property owners, who are going to have to deal with frustrated federal regulators. "Because of the growth of that area, we envision a more comprehensive planning effort," said Karen Schwinn, EPA Region IX Water Division deputy director. Since the 1980s, the EPA has provided about $750,000 toward preparation of an HCP that covers 300,000 acres, Schwinn said. The county has prepared some maps and species risk studies, but it has not drafted a habitat plan. In comments provided to the county in May, the EPA said, "If the Board of Supervisors approves the Community and Specific Plans before they approve the South Sacramento Habitat Conservation Plan, the County risks undercutting the HCP and devaluing its potential effectiveness for integrating permitting and guiding development and conservation across the region." Without an HCP in place, EPA officials note, federal and state agencies are going to have final say over particular development projects. Interestingly, the Sunridge developer's point man, Hodgson, has chaired the HCP Steering Committee for five years. He conceded that an HCP could help the project. "But they take so long to do and they get litigated so much," Hodgson said. "We're creating many of the major parts of what the HCP would create anyway." Still, developers other than AKT will need Clean Water Act permits. Whatever the EPA decides could require the county to reopen the specific plan, Pevney warned. Developers hope to begin work on infrastructure in spring 2003, with the first home construction to follow later in the year. Those homes would be built within the City of Rancho Cordova if voters approve incorporation in November. Leaders of the incorporation effort have backed the county's community and specific plans, saying the area's growing employment centers need the housing. Contacts: John Hodgson, The Hodgson Company, (916) 383-6091 Dave Pevney, Sacramento County Planning Department, (916) 874-6141. Karen Schwinn, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (415) 972-3472.

In September, the San Diego City Council is scheduled to vote on "City of Villages," the new "strategic framework element" of the city's general plan. Designed to provide a foundation for revising the city's 1970s general plan, City of Villages makes all the usual politically correct statements about promoting smart-growth ideas. Like most vision-style planning efforts, this one contains a lot of platitudes about environmental protection, affordable housing, equity and prosperity, and public transit. The document acknowledges that San Diego is mostly built out — only 12% of its 331 square miles remains undeveloped — and proposes that most new growth be teased out of existing neighborhoods by turning them into "villages" with higher density housing and a greater variety of public facilities. Also, not surprisingly, San Diego's planners are trumpeting the effort as a triumph of public participation — a process that used workshops and focus groups to bring residents around to the conclusion that growth is inevitable, so it's a question of rather than . But the most impressive — and challenging — part of the City of Villages effort is the way the city is attempting to face the implementation question head-on. On the one hand, the city is arguing that a New Urbanist-style vision is probably the only way to accommodate an estimated population increase of 200,000 people between now and 2020. On the other hand, the city has recognized that this approach will not be successful without some big changes in the way development and public investment occurs in San Diego. Changing those longstanding practices will not be easy. San Diego has been at the forefront of growth management since the 1970s, when Mayor Pete Wilson -- then regarded as a national leader in the field -- promoted a set of policies seeking to re-direct growth from rural areas to existing urban areas. He also called for a set of strategies to permit conventional suburban development in certain areas, especially in the 12,000-acre North County Future Urbanizing Area. He also insisted that development bear the full cost of infrastructure there. This strategy, embodied in the 1979 "Progress Guide and General Plan," worked in some ways and backfired in others. First, the whole strategy drove more growth than expected into existing areas, which put a burden on existing infrastructure and cut into support for the idea of redeveloping existing neighborhoods. Second, as development proposals came through the pipeline, densities in the North County Future Urbanizing Area dropped below expected levels — down to 2 to 3 units per acre. On top of that, other considerations reduced the amount of housing to less than the levels specified by the 1979 General Plan. The environmental impact report on City of Villages does not provide a specific estimate of units lost due to downzoning, but suggests that the number is in the thousands. Implementation of the Multi-Species Conservation Plan (required by the Endangered Species Act) converted 3,700 acres from urban to open space use in the plans, resulting in a loss of more than 6,500 units from the plan. In addition, new school construction appears likely to cost between 600 and 1,000 additional units, either by removing existing units or by using up land that would otherwise go for housing. The end result is that San Diego's planners estimate that, if the 1979 General Plan is built out, it will fall 17,000 units short of the total number required to accommodate growth in the city by 2020. City of Villages is designed to figure out how to make up that gap, and do so in the context of improving neighborhoods. The plan also piggybacks on an already good public transit system that is likely to get better. City of Villages calls for a strengthening of neighborhoods, especially those that accommodate higher-density housing, by creatively deploying public infrastructure. For example, the plan encourages joint use of public facilities by schools, libraries, and other public institutions in order to consume less land. At the same time, however, the document bluntly acknowledges that this strategy will require an investment of no less than $2.5 billion in new public facilities, and an institutional rearrangement that stretches California's current planning and governance system to the limit. City officials are already talking about a "quality of life" bond to finance the needed infrastructure upgrades. But not right away. The first item on the list is to move forward on a series of pilot projects designed to prove that the City of Villages idea can work in neighborhoods outside of downtown. These pilot villages will get a whole variety of development incentives. Furthermore, City of Villages calls for another pilot effort to create a "Model Urban School," that takes advantage of joint use to conserve land and work a school into the urban fabric of the transitional, but well-organized, City Heights neighborhood. The proposal calls for the demolition of 245 hours and then the construction of a school, a park, and 350 units of replacement housing. This might sound good to the smart growth crowd, but implementation will be difficult. To move the Model Urban School program forward, the city and other government agencies in San Diego are asking the Legislature for a bill allowing them to create a new kind of joint powers authority. In so doing, these entities are running up against well-established rules of governance in California, and they are not likely to change those rules without a fight. To support the Model Urban School idea, Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has introduced AB 2867. The bill would create a special joint powers authority in City Heights that would include the city, the school district, the redevelopment agency, the housing authority, and the housing commission. The bill passed the Assembly and made it out of the Senate Local Government Committee on August 7. But virtually all the things San Diego asked for ran into criticism from the legislative staff because they conflict with existing laws and practices. For example, the bill called for the new entity to inherit the eminent domain powers of the redevelopment agency, which are more expansive than the eminent domain powers of the other agencies. Typically, JPAs can hold only that authority that all of its members hold. In this case, the legislative staff's conclusion was that this would give the school district more eminent domain power. Similarly, the bill would have relieved the JPA of the typical redevelopment agency obligations for low and moderate income housing set-aside and replacement. Apparently, the idea is that the entity should have greater flexibility to introduce a variety of housing types into the City Heights neighborhood, which is mostly poor. Again, this ran into concern on the part of the legislative staff. The bill was also amended after it passed the Assembly to exempt the JPA from state school siting rules, raising process concerns on the part of the legislative counsel. Kehoe accepted the most recent amendments the legislative staff recommended. But it is difficult to say whether the Model Urban School project — or, indeed, City of Villages generally — can advance quickly without a major effort to change or evade most existing rules regarding planning and governance in California. Therein lies the rub: Smart growth may be a good idea. It may even be the only way to accommodate future growth in coastal California. But it is still a long way from being smoothly implemented — not just because of skeptical NIMBYs or reluctant financiers, but also because it is swimming upstream against 80 years of California planning and development law.

To get some idea of how much San Francisco Bay has changed during the past two centuries, unfold a map and trace the estuary's amoeboid outline as it squeezes through Carquinez Strait into the Delta's confusion of sloughs and marshes. There, 33 miles inland from the Golden Gate but still bathed in tidewater, lie a pair of features named Grizzly Bay and Grizzly Island. Once common on California's coastal hills and plains, grizzly bears vanished from the Bay Area during the 1800s. The absence of Ursus arctos is by no means the most remarkable difference between the Bay Area of the Gold Rush era and that of today. Filled, diked, drained and paved, the largest estuary on the West Coast has been reduced to half its pre-statehood size. Once a lonely outpost of European empire, San Francisco Bay lies now at the heart of a metropolitan area of 7 million people. The disappearance of grizzlies is a reminder, though, that not all the changes wrought by human activity are immediately obvious or restricted to the physical landscape. They reach deep into the complex web of life that depends on the bay and its surrounding wetlands, dunes, beaches and grasslands. And it is that biological web that stands to benefit most from a landmark deal announced in late May, through which several public and private entities agreed to pay $100 million to buy 16,500 acres in the South Bay and near Napa from Cargill Salt. If the sale goes through as planned, the agri-business giant's property — former wetlands that were diked and flooded more than a century ago for commercial salt production — will be protected from urban development and restored as wildlife habitat. In both cost and scale, it will be the biggest wetlands restoration effort ever undertaken on the West Coast. Nationally, only the Everglades restoration — a $7.8 billion project to be carried out over the next 30 to 40 years on 18,000 square miles in Florida — is bigger. Political leaders and Northern California environmental groups hailed the Cargill deal as a turning point in their long effort to reverse the destruction of San Francisco Bay wetlands, nearly 95% of which have been lost to urban development and agricultural conversion. Gov. Gray Davis, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Interior Secretary Gale Norton all rushed to share credit for brokering the deal. But even Davis and Norton acknowledged that it was Feinstein's involvement that finally made the agreement possible after years of speculation about the fate of Cargill's holdings, most of which lie in a 20-mile-long arc around the bay's southern tip from Redwood City to Hayward. Although the tentative agreement announced May 29 is significant, ecological restoration experts warn it barely counts as a first step in a long, expensive and difficult process. A host of contractual and liability issues must be resolved before the purchase can be concluded. Even if those negotiations succeed, there will remain the much more complicated matter of planning, funding and carrying out the restoration itself, which could take decades and cost as much as seven times the actual purchase price. The stage for the May 29 deal was set about three years ago, when Cargill offered to sell to the state and federal governments about 19,000 acres of its San Francisco Bay property. Cargill had acquired the property in 1978 when it purchased Leslie Salt Company. Cargill determined that modernizing its production techniques would allow it consolidate operations near its Newark processing plant and dispose of excess evaporation ponds, which are inefficient to operate and costly to maintain. The property Cargill initially offered to sell — a combination of land it owns outright and mineral rights to land it sold in 1979 for inclusion in the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge — was appraised at about $300 million. That amount was far more than any government agency was willing to pay, so negotiations stalled. San Francisco officials continued to press acquisition as a way to offset a proposed new San Francisco International Airport runway in the bay. (See CP&DR , February 2001, September 2000 and January 1999.) San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and other local officials persuaded the Legislature to budget $25 million for salt pond purchases in 2000, but local officials eventually dropped their effort to link airport expansion and salt pond acquisition. Discussions resumed in January after Feinstein persuaded several private foundations to join state and federal agencies in fashioning a deal acceptable to Cargill. The preliminary agreement reflects a reduction in the acreage from the offer three years ago and, as a consequence, a drop in the overall value of the deal, now down to $240 million. Cargill agreed to accept $100 million for 16,500 acres, and will take a tax deduction for the difference. Most of the property is already within or will be added to the Edwards wildlife refuge, although about 1,400 acres lie along the Napa River north of San Pablo Bay. Cargill also agreed to negotiate the future donation of mineral rights to another 8,000 acres inside the wildlife refuge, where salt production will continue for now. Of the total purchase price, $53 million is due at the closing of the sale, which is scheduled for December 16. The money will come from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund ($8 million), the state ($25 million, budgeted two years ago), the Hewlett, Moore and Packard foundations ($6.33 million each) and the Goldman Fund ($1 million). The remaining $47 million will be payable to Cargill once the salt ponds have been cleaned up enough to meet Regional Water Quality Control Board discharge standards. The source of that money, however, is unclear. Under the agreement announced May 29, the state promised to provide the money. But no additional state funds have been budgeted, and the state faces a projected budget deficit of $23.6 billion. In June, the Legislature formed a committee of six Bay Area lawmakers to scrutinize the deal. The agreement calls for another $35 million to be spent over the next five years to plan and begin carrying out the ecological restoration. The Hewlett, Moore and Packard foundations have agreed to contribute $5 million each toward that expenditure, and the state and federal governments will split the remaining $20 million cost. Again, no funds have been budgeted for the government share. Other hurdles also remain. Before the sale closes in December, the state and federal agencies must negotiate with Cargill a purchase agreement and a phase-out agreement, the deadline for which is September 16. Those agreements will specify how the salt-contaminated ponds will be cleaned up, who is responsible to perform the clean up, and how permits must be obtained. The agreements are also supposed to specify who is responsible for maintaining the vast system of levees that prevents the bay from rushing into the ponds and, ultimately, flooding San Jose and other urban areas below the high-tide level. Once all those hurdles have been leaped, there remains the much more complicated matter of how the ponds will be restored — what types of habitat (mudflat, marsh, open water), they should become, and how quickly. Those decisions are crucial, because they will determine how much the project ultimately will cost. Projections vary. In a report issued in April, the environmental group Save the Bay estimated it would cost between $148 million and $228 million (exclusive of acquisition costs) over the next 20 years to turn the Cargill salt works into a mosaic of tidal wetlands and shallow ponds, while raising and reinforcing key levees to protect low-lying urban areas from flooding. A more detailed feasibility analysis, issued in May by Wetlands and Water Resources, a private engineering firm in San Rafael, places the total restoration cost at between $264 million and $523 million if the ponds are allowed to silt in and become marsh through natural processes. If dredged fill is used, the estimate ranges up to $720 million. Despite the challenges remaining, many of those involved in the long effort to preserve some of the last unprotected but restorable wildlife habitat along the bay are optimistic, although clearly aware that the process will take a long time. "We're working to restore the whole thing," said Dev Novack, public affairs director for the Audubon Society's San Francisco Bay Restoration Program. "This is just the first step." Contacts: Lori Johnson, Cargill Salt, (510) 790-8157. Marge Kolar, Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, (510) 792-0222. David Lewis, Save the Bay, (510) 452-9261. Dev Novack, Audubon Soceity, (415) 947-0331.

Generating economic activity at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino has proven to be difficult since the base closed in 1994. But Norton is now the scene of a proposal to replicate a successful airport in Texas that was built during the 1980s solely for industrial users. In fact, the same developer of Alliance Texas in Fort Worth — Ross Perot Jr.'s Hillwood — is negotiating with base reuse officials to develop a logistics and maintenance airport along with a warehouse and manufacturing hub at Norton and on surrounding land. The proposed Alliance California development could eventually provide jobs for 6,000 to 8,000 people. However, the deal has proven difficult to consummate, and now a planned expansion of a rail hub that is part of the project is drawing concern because of the potential for trains tying up automobile traffic. "This is an extremely complicated deal," said T. Milford Harrison, executive director of both the Inland Valley Development Agency (IVDA) and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority. "The things that complicate it so much are that we still have buildings full of asbestos and lead-based paint. We have ground contamination that still is not clear. … We have not received title to all of the property yet. And we have about six different agencies that have been granted part of the Air Force base for one public reason or another." Both Harrison and John Magness, Hillwood's project director, said they expected to sign a master development agreement long ago. And both predicted a contract could be settled within a few months. In the meantime, Hillwood and the local entities have already worked out one agreement that allowed construction of a Kohl's department store warehouse. Other small agreements are on the table. "We made a conscious decision about a year ago," said Magness, "to push ahead with development, bureaucracy be damned, because it's the right thing to do." Everyone agrees that bringing jobs to San Bernardino is the right thing to do. When Norton closed, the community lost about 10,000 jobs. That economic blow followed Santa Fe Railroad's closure of a large maintenance facility in San Bernardino in 1992. Since the base closure was announced in 1988, government agencies and the private sector have presented numerous proposals for site reuse. The largest operation to move to Norton is a Defense Department finance and accounting office. It employs 270 people, about half its peak, and federal officials are considering closing it altogether. Among the failed reuse ideas are a prison, a large facility for the homeless, a passenger airport, a small-business incubator, a jet repair business, housing and retail development. "You have every kind of idea coming out there," said Robert Christman, chairman of the airport authority, vice chairman of the IVDA and a Loma Linda councilman. "I found it interesting how many times we dealt with developers who had lots of nice plans and ideas, but when it came time to wire in $50,000 for something, they didn't have the money." These failed schemes make Hillwood's proposal all the more attractive because Hillwood has the capital and the experience to complete a large project, Christman said. Thirteen years ago, Hillwood opened Alliance Texas in a pasture about 15 miles north of Fort Worth. Since then, the 9,600-acre facility has become the most successful logistics airport in the country. About 20,000 people work for 107 tenants in 21 million square feet of warehouse and industrial space. Hillwood also has 5,000 acres of housing, office and retail development nearby. While Alliance Texas provides a model for Alliance California, the projects are quite different, Magness noted. Alliance Texas was a greenfield development with a substantial residential and retail component. The San Bernardino project would be an infill and brownfield development on a smaller location, and the sites would not necessarily be contiguous. Still, the site is ideal for logistics operations and manufacturing, Magness said. Three freeways surround Norton. With some improvements, the airport could accommodate large cargo airplanes flying to and from Asia and Europe. And Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad plans to expand its existing intermodal facility. A number of studies have pointed to the need for additional cargo handling capacity. The Southern California Association of Governments estimated the amount of air cargo in the region would triple from 2000 to 2025. The proposed master development would allow Hillwood to develop about 800 acres of the closed base that are controlled by the IVDA. (Composed of three cities and San Bernardino County, the IVDA is a redevelopment agency whose project area covers 14,000 acres in a roughly three-mile radius around Norton.) The master development "is most akin to a joint venture," said the IVDA's Harrison. "We put up the land, and they do the development." A master development agreement would let IVDA and the airport authority settle many issues at one time, Christman said. It would encourage uniform development and prevent the agencies from having to negotiate with dozens of developers of small projects. Plus, a private entity with a profit motive is more likely to carry out the development, he said. The sheer number of local agencies involved is a factor in everything at Norton. Representatives of San Bernardino, Colton, Loma Linda and San Bernardino County sit on the IVDA board. The airport authority has the same members, plus the City of Highland. The various local agencies have not always agreed about base reuse, as evidenced by the City of Redlands's decision to drop out of the airport authority. The railroad proposal is one of the latest issues to cause friction. The proposed expansion of the intermodal facility could greatly increase train traffic, blocking busy San Bernardino surface streets a dozen times a day for up to seven minutes at a time. San Bernardino officials, who are processing an application from Burlington Northern Santa Fe, appear skeptical. Harrison said the railroad project would be "a great benefit. But it would not be a great benefit if it compromises the quality of life." This summer, Hillwood expects to complete a 650,000-square-foot warehouse for Kohl's. And Hillwood is trying to stir interest in more warehouses and industrial facilities, and the airport. The airport has received a $2.5 million Federal Aviation Administration grant to fund remodeling of some hangars and the terminal, and it has a $6.3 million FAA grant to rebuild the 10,000-foot-long runways. The airport authority also intends to prepare a master plan. Contacts: T. Milford Harrison, Inland Valley Development Agency and San Bernardino International Airport Authority, (909) 382-4105. Robert Christman, IVDA, SBIAA and City of Loma Linda, (909) 307-3811. John Magness, Hillwood, (909) 382-0023. Hillwood website: http://www.hillwood.com

State legislation that would lead to the creation of a planning and transportation "super agency" in San Diego County is moving forward. Capitol insiders and a number of officials in the San Diego region expect bills that address San Diego regional governance to pass in some form before the Legislature concludes on August 31. In fact, there appears to be consensus that San Diego County needs a new, multi-functional entity to coordinate land use and transportation planning better. The sticky issue is one of governance — namely, who will be in charge of the new agency. Bills by Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) and Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon) call for an appointed governing board similar to the existing San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) board, on which all 18 cities and the county have equal representation. However, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and some policy analysts question whether an agency with the extraordinary powers that are proposed should be run by appointed representatives. The county has produced a counter-proposal to create a new transportation agency with a seven-member, directly elected board. As of late June, both Kehoe's AB 2095 and Peace's SB 1703 remained alive in the Legislature. The bills would create the "San Diego Regional Authority." The bills are not identical but are similar, and SANDAG is sponsoring both measures. "We're trying to consolidate the decision-making process so that the people who are making the land use decisions are also the people making the transportation decisions," said Gary Gallegos, SANDAG executive director. One of the key provisions — and a source of some controversy — would be the Regional Authority's ability to override a city or county decision that impacts a "regionally significant transportation project." Peace, who is in his final year in the Legislature, has made regional governance one of his top priorities. And Kehoe, a former San Diego city councilwoman, is a believer. "Along with revenue-sharing and managed growth planning," Kehoe said, "regional governance is one more tool towards trying to stretch our dollars more efficiently, and to respond to housing, transportation and development needs." "The bill is still a work in progress," Kehoe added. "I think something will get through. I don't know what it is yet." The regional government debate has been ongoing in San Diego County since Peace three years ago proposed merging five existing entities, including two transportation boards and the port district, into one super agency. He eventually settled for creation of the San Diego Regional Government Efficiency Commission (known as Regis). Last year, that commission recommended creation of an entity similar to the proposed Regional Authority. The commission also led to creation of a new entity to run all airports in the county and to plan for a large new airport (see , August 2001, October 2001). Officials at SANDAG have been part of the regional debate since its outset and have proposed a five-prong approach, Gallegos explained. • Create permanency. SANDAG is a joint powers authority whose members can come and go. State legislation would mandate a permanent entity, recognizing that metropolitan San Diego is really one place. • Develop a regional plan. SANDAG is already working on a plan that meshes local general plans. A state law would ensure a plan that considers regional needs gets done, Gallegos said. • Assume authority and responsibility for regionally significant transportation projects. This means a two-thirds vote of the Regional Authority board could decide the location of freeways, arterial streets and transit lines, no matter what the local jurisdiction says. • Address the border zone. The state should require a comprehensive plan for San Diego and Imperial counties for the stretch of land just north of the border with Mexico, Gallegos said. • Consolidate SANDAG's regional planning responsibilities with the ability to plan and deliver transit projects. Now, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB) and the North San Diego County Transit Development Board (NCTD) handle transportation planning and operate transit systems. The Regional Authority would take over transit planning and project delivery. Gallegos said SANDAG officials wanted to gain agreement on the five above points before addressing who would run the Regional Authority so that the first — and potentially last — argument would not be about governance. The SANDAG proposal gives every city and the county one representative with the exception of the City of San Diego, which would have two representatives. Board actions would need to receive a majority of board votes, as well as a majority of votes weighted approximately by population, with no city having more than 40% of the weighted vote. The county Board of Supervisors has objected to the governance proposal, saying that an agency with the Regional Authority's proposed powers should be directly accountable to voters. A state Senate committee analysis of AB 2095 agreed that duties such as "connecting land use and transportation choices, or overriding local agencies' decision require the representative democracy." The Kehoe bill does require voters to approve creation of the Regional Authority. But, Kehoe said, there is no need for directly electing the board at this point because the entity would have no taxing authority. The county also objects to the proposal to fold the border development zone into this agency, said Jonathan Clay, a lobbyist for the county. And, he said, there is a need to clarify the Regional Authority's environmental planning role because SANDAG now assists cities with habitat plans and related matters. Leaders of the county's smaller cities have expressed concern about creation of the Regional Authority. The biggest worry is the potential to lose local control, said Christy Guerin, mayor of Encinitas. But Guerin said she is consigned to the likelihood that state lawmakers will approve something this year, so the city needs to work on shaping how the entity will look. Guerin said she concurs with Regional Authority proponents about the county's need for more cohesive transportation planning. And, like many officials in north San Diego County, she complained that the south county cities of San Diego and Chula Vista get more than their share of transportation improvements. "A part of me really looks forward to shaking up things at NCTD and MTDB," Guerin said. A less ambitious regional planning proposal regarding the San Francisco Bay Area also is making its way through the Legislature. The bill, SB 1243 (Torlakson), would merge the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission into the Bay Area Land Use and Transportation Commission. The new entity would be responsible for preparing a long-range policy plan every five years. The bill is opposed by ABAG and a number of local government officials in the Bay Area, although amendments that make the bill more palatable could be introduced before the end of the session. Contacts: Gary Gallegos, San Diego Association of Governments, (619) 595-5332. Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, (916) 319-2076. Christy Guerin, Encinitas mayor, (760) 633-2620. Jonathan Clay, San Diego County lobbyist, (916) 441-0202.

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to review a Clean Water Act case from California's Central Valley. The case involves the federal government's ability to regulate agricultural activity in wetlands. Last year, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2-1 in that federal regulators could protect wetlands from the practice of "deep ripping." The court upheld a lower court's ruling that Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos violated the Clean Water Act when he dragged four- to seven-foot-long metal prongs through wetlands areas in preparation for planting vineyards and orchards on property straddling the Sacramento-San Joaquin county border (see , October 2001). The split court ruled that redepositing soil in swales could constitute adding a pollutant to protected wetlands areas. The court ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers had the ability under the Clean Water Act to prevent Tsakopoulos from converting wetlands to dry lands suitable for farming. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in , 531 U.S. 159 (2001), the Ninth Circuit further ruled that the Corps of Engineers could not prohibit Tsakopoulos from deep ripping in vernal pools — only in wetlands swales. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments during its next term, likely in November or December. The case is , No. 01-1243.

A garbage company can challenge the environmental review of a competitor's proposed trash processing facility because the garbage company was enforcing a public duty of a local government, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The case involved Burrtec Waste Industries' challenge of Taormina Industries' project in Colton. Taormina sought to amend a conditional use permit for a recycling facility so that it could also process solid waste. Colton approved the amended permit and a mitigated negative declaration in October 2000. The appellate court distinguished the Burrtec case from a decision two years ago in , 79 Cal.App.4th 1223 (see , May 2000). In that case, Waste Management argued that Alameda County should have required a competitor to complete an environmental impact report before accepting certain types of waste at a landfill. But the Third District ruled that Waste Management did not have standing to file the lawsuit because Waste Management's only interest was financial, which is not an interest the California Environmental Quality Act protects. In the case at hand, Burrtec argued that Colton did not post a notice of intention to adopt a mitigated negative declaration as required by CEQA in Public Resources Code § 21092.3. Posting of a legal notice is a genuine public concern that is "not confined to any commercial interest" of Burrtec, the court ruled, citing San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Bob Krug's decision, which was upheld. "CEQA litigants often may be characterized as having competing economic interests," Justice Barton Gaut wrote for the unanimous three-judge appellate panel. "But, under CEQA, a corporation is a person entitled to receive notice and to bring a suit for non-compliance. Furthermore, as noted by the trial court, the interest asserted by Burrtec in its writ petition is not a commercial one but an issue involving the adequacy of the public notice required by CEQA. Where a plaintiff seeks by mandamus to enforce a public duty, especially under CEQA, standing is properly conferred." After deciding that Burrtec could pursue its lawsuit, the court moved on to the merits of the case. The court ruled that Colton had failed to post at the county clerk's office the required notice of intention 20 days prior to a public hearing, at which the city considered the mitigated negative declaration. Taormina presented testimony from a Colton planner and a clerk in the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisor's office. The planner said she remembered sending the Board of Supervisors a notice, and the clerk explained the procedure for posting such notices. However, the court noted that their testimony was not part of the administrative record, so the court did not have to consider it. Moreover, the court held, the employees did not state when the notice was mailed and posted. "The only reference to ‘posting' appears on a ‘Notice of Public Hearing' dated September 28, 2000, and announcing a hearing on October 10, 2000, concerning the MND ," Gaut wrote. "There is no indication in the administrative record that either the NOI or the notice of public hearing was ever delivered to the clerk of the Board of Supervisors for posting." The Case: , No. E030046, 02 C.D.O.S. 3559, 2002 DJDAR 4479. Filed April 8, 2002. Certified for publication April 24, 2002. The Lawyers: For Burrtec: John C. Nolan, Gresham, Savage, Nolan & Tilden, (909) 884-2171. For Taormina Industries: Edward Casey, Weston, Benshoof, Rochefort, Rubalcava & MacCuish, (213) 576-1000.

Construction is underway on San Jose's Communications Hill, a 500-acre infill project that supporters are promoting as a large-scale, walkable, urban neighborhood. Early indications are that there is a great demand for the new houses, townhouses and apartments, but the easy access to transit and retail areas that might make the neighborhood truly walkable are lacking thus far. The project received numerous planning awards, including a Progressive Architecture Citation, when the city adopted a specific plan for the area during the early 1990s. Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay Area land conservation group, called it a "well planned infill development" in 1999. But only now is the vision taking shape on a brushy area a few miles south of the city's downtown core. A total of 4,000 dwelling units are planned, with about 1,000 units already built or under construction. Most of the area will have a density of 25 to 40 units per acre, with wide patches of hillside land dedicated to open space. Communications Hill gets its name from two microwave communication towers located at its top, which provides a view of the downtown, South San Jose and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Santa Clara County's light rail line bisects the area on its western flank, as does the Highway 87 freeway. Both lead north to downtown and high-tech campuses near the city's airport. A bicycle path parallels Highway 87, as well. The specific plan called for making the neighborhood as distinctive as hillside communities in Seattle or San Francisco. To create that atmosphere, developers are using a grid street pattern, rather than typical carved streets and cul-de-sacs. Most buildings are three or four stories high, with homes built close to the street, and yards located behind units. Bicycle paths, new streets and pathways are designed to connect ultimately with public transportation. Communications Hill, which rises 300 feet at its highest point, looks down over a hodge-podge of San Jose neighborhoods: low-density single family homes, a few mobile home parks, strip malls and heavy industrial areas. A few cows still graze on one side of the hill. The Communications Hill project is a completely different breed of development than its neighbors and is the kind that San Jose planners envision continuing to take root along the light rail corridor. At least four housing developments have already begun creeping up the hill, offering a hint of what the area will look like when it is fully developed. Steep pitched roofs and street-level doors and garages at the 155-unit Helzer Court Apartments call to mind San Francisco's neighborhoods � without the fog and bay views. The Santa Clara County Housing Authority operates the apartments. Three-story townhomes ranging in price from $400,000 to $500,000 are selling out in Western Pacific Housing's Lancaster Gate development on the southern flank of the hill. And KB Homes had to hold a lottery earlier this year when it was ready to sell the first 50 units of its 700-unit Tuscany Hills development. The Housing Authority apartments and Lancaster Gate were developed at the lower, more level parts of the hill, according to Jerry Strangis, a realtor who has represented the primary landowners of the property, the Bettencourt family, for the past 25 years. The KB Homes development is the first to tackle the actual hill and make related improvements. The developer will build a new road over the hill to connect with a light rail station. The layout of Communications Hill is supposed to encourage walking, the use of public transit and placement of neighborhood retail stores. But it will take a greater population before those features emerge, said Dayana Salazar, an associate professor of urban planning at San Jose State University. Strangis agrees, saying none of the current developments include any retail, in part because a critical mass of population "We talk a lot in urban planning about smart growth and I see Communications Hill as being part of that movement," Salazar said. But she added, "It will be a slow process before we see the kind of mixed-use community it will be." The commercial hub of Communications Hill is expected to be a village center with approximately 30,000 square feet of neighborhood retail. Strangis said that retail project will be planned only after KB Homes completes its project and builds a fire station and a park. While the nearby Santa Clara County city of Mountain View has success integrating light rail with housing development (see , July 2001, March 1998), Communications Hill appears to face a steeper battle. The light rail lines do not stop directly in the community as they do in Mountain View. Instead, the nearest light rail station is three-quarters of a mile away, and most new residences will lie more than a mile from the transit line. Few people are willing to walk more than a half mile to mass transit, Salazar said. Strangis expects a shuttle will be added someday when the need arises. The project's high density does permit open space conservation, Salazar noted. "It's important to have permanent open space because it's so visible," she said. Communications Hill was part of 23,093 acres designated as critical habitat for the threatened bay checkerspot butterfly by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in April 2001. But the action had no impact on private landowners who do not need federal funding or permits to build. The grasslands on Communication Hill are considered capable of supporting the butterfly, but no insects have been found in recent years. Environmental studies for the area have also found rock containing asbestos, and that asbestos is expected to be exposed during construction. Planned mitigation measures include a dust control and air monitoring program during construction. Areas that have been graded for the projects will be capped with soil and rocks to prevent long-term release of asbestos. Contacts: Jerry Strangis, Strangis Properties, (408) 723-2177. Dayana Salazar, San Jose State University, (408) 924-5854. Janet Stone, Greenbelt Alliance, (415) 398-3730. City of San Jose website: http://www.ci.san-jose.ca.us/planning/sjplan

Two generations of Americans are likely to influence local planning, development, and economic activity in many ways during the coming 10 to 20 years: the retiring Baby Boom and the soon-to-be-working Echo Boom. In 2010, people born from 1946 to 1950 will be ages 64 to 60, respectively – the leading edge that begins a retirement trend that will last 20 years. Today, many members of the Baby Boom enjoy comfortable incomes and accumulated wealth and generally good health. Baby Boomer household incomes are about $10,000 to $15,000 higher than the median for all households, according to the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS). While earned income decreases during retirement, many of these households are building additional income sources during their peak earning years and will not have to rely only on Social Security and an employer's retirement plan, as did previous generations. And, Boomers have substantial assets in their homes. The 1995 Census Bureau estimate of home equity for the 55 to 64 age group was about $70,000, 76% of the national 1995 median home value of $92,000 — and that was at the end of the recession that saw home prices drop considerably in many markets. Census 2000 sample data show a California median home value of $211,000 and that same 76% equity translates into $160,000. These 2000 numbers are already low given the recent increases in home prices in most areas of California. Baby Boomers have three choices when they retire: stay in their current homes, move locally, or leave the area. Each possibility has consequences for a community. If boomers stay in their homes, which are likely to be upscale, larger homes in suburban settings, those neighborhoods will take on a different set of local government service needs and will remain assessed at lower than market values. Planners should be careful not to "smart growth" a retiring Baby Boomer neighborhood with higher density. After working all their lives to buy the a single-family detached house that holds a large share of their net worth, Baby Boomers could see higher densities as a threat to their home equities and way of life. Some Baby Boomers may want to move locally to smaller, high-quality, low-maintenance, owner-occupied housing. This could be an opportunity for infill and upscale attached housing that also turns over the housing stock and boosts assessed values. The Baby Boomers' former neighborhoods would then, theoretically, be available to younger households with children. Cities might meet future housing needs by encouraging building at the top end of the market and letting the older, larger housing units filter down. Finally, retiring Boomers may opt to "cash out" and go just about anywhere they please. If a community is already a pleasant retirement area, it's likely to stay that way and grow with more retirees — who could run up housing prices and eat into a housing supply that was originally planned to serve the locals. The Echo Boom is the latter offspring of the Baby Boom, which started having children — albeit in smaller families — in 1970 and largely finished by 1995. The youngest kids of Baby Boomers added to the children of 1980's immigrants, many of whom had relatively large families, create this population bubble. In 2010, today's high school underclassmen will be looking for jobs, apartments and household necessities. Once they get jobs, Echo Boomers have to live somewhere. In tight housing markets, they could continue to live at home, team up into expensive rentals, or commute long distance. All of those options have inherent social, environmental and financial implications. To check a community's boomer balance, use Census 2000 tables broken out by age cohorts. These data at all levels of census geography are in Summary File 1 (SF1 dataset), Table P12, Sex by Age. Use ages 35 to 44 and 45 to 54 to determine the Baby Boomer population, and age cohorts 5 to 9 and 10 to 14 to approximate the Echo Boomers. Set the data up in a spreadsheet (set either males or females to all negatives) and you can generate a simple population pyramid like the example shown below for the City of Ventura. Then, promote the 5-year cohorts by 10 years, so that the 0 to 5 population is now 10 to 15, and so on (shown in gray). This is a crude analysis, but it provides some warning of how the two booms may impact the city's future.

The state Supreme Court will hear a case involving a county's ability to regulate a water district's construction of a water treatment plant. Earlier this year, the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled that a Government Code exemption to local zoning for "facilities for the production, generation, storage or transmission of water" did not extend to a water treatment plant. The court held that if the Legislature wanted to exempt water treatment plants from local zoning, it could have specified them in the statute (see , April 2002). The ruling came in a case in which a homeowners association sought to prevent the Soquel Creek Water District from building a water treatment plant in a residential subdivision. The ruling drew the attention of special districts, cities and counties around the state. All seven state Supreme Court justices voted to hear the case. A date for oral arguments has not been set yet. The case is , No. S104952.

A decade after the passage of the "revenue neutrality" law, the incorporation of new cities appears to be back as a major planning issue in California. Now, however, there is a somewhat different twist. During the 1980s, almost every community with a strong retail base seemed to be incorporating. Then came the revenue neutrality law in 1992. Promoted by counties, the law was intended to ensure that a new city would not be created literally at the expense of a county. Incorporations slowed to a trickle because cityhood proponents were placed in a quandary. On the one hand, the community had to prove to the Local Agency Formation Commission that it would be fiscally viable on its own. On the other hand, proponents had to prove that the county would not be hurt financially by incorporation. (See , May 1999, April 1998, April 1993.) In the tax-squeezed, post-Proposition 13 world, this seemed like an unsolvable dilemma. But it turns out to be a dilemma that can be solved by one concept: alimony. Virtually all new cities today get around the revenue neutrality requirement simply by agreeing to turn some of their tax money back over to the county and, therefore, holding the county harmless. Alimony payments can be large or small — some are as little as a half-million dollars a year, others amount to tens of millions of dollars annually — but they appear to be the key to allowing new incorporations. As a result of this newfound reliance on alimony, incorporation efforts are reappearing. In the last few years, three cities in south Orange County and two cities in Sacramento County have incorporated. In February, the Santa Barbara suburb of Goleta finally became a city after decades of talking about it, partly by agreeing to pay big alimony ($5.8 million a year) to Santa Barbara County. This November, it appears there will be four incorporations on the ballot. Two have received national publicity — the secession attempts in Los Angeles by the San Fernando Valley (which would have to pay more than $100 million a year in alimony) and Hollywood. A third is in Rancho Cordova, another city being carved out of the vast swath of unincorporated Sacramento County suburbs. And the last is in Castro Valley in Alameda County, which, like Goleta, is a mature suburb that has been talking about incorporation for a long time. Although the secession efforts have received the most attention, the other two incorporations are more typical — and, for insiders, perhaps more interesting for the way that they represent the emerging trends in relations between cities and counties. Rancho Cordova, a working-class suburb of 55,000 people near the closed Mather Air Force Base east of Sacramento, will have to pay almost $7 million a year in alimony to Sacramento County. Incorporations in Sacramento County have a checkered history dating back to the Citrus Heights incorporation, which was held up for 10 years by opposition from county officials and labor unions (see , September 1998). In addition to steep alimony, the Rancho Cordova incorporation has an interesting wrinkle. The incorporation effort predates the "Hertzberg bill" (AB 2838, see , September 2000) that reformed the Local Agency Formation Commission process. For this reason, the agency that must hold a legally required protest hearing and formally place the measure on the ballot is not the LAFCO but Sacramento County, which has often been hostile to incorporations. Fearing opposition and foot-dragging that might knock the Rancho Cordova incorporation off the ballot this fall, Republican Assemblyman Anthony Pescetti, who lives in Rancho Cordova, has engaged in a classic cityhood maneuver: He is doing an end-run around local authorities by sponsoring AB 1138, which would require the county to make a decision in time to get incorporation on the fall ballot. Thus, no matter what the opposition, it appears likely that Rancho Cordova voters will decide in November. The Castro Valley incorporation has even more interesting wrinkles. This unincorporated area of 60,000 people has tried for cityhood before and failed, largely because proponents could not get enough signatures to reach the ballot. So when Oakland City Councilman Nat Miley ran for Alameda County supervisor, he promised the proponents that he would move incorporation forward. Miley joined the Board of Supervisors in January 2001 and, as a result — quite unlike the Sacramento experience — the county itself is the official applicant for the Castro Valley incorporation. Having the county as the lead proponent is both good and bad, said Alameda County LAFCO Executive Officer Lou Ann Texiera. On the one hand, it has moved incorporation forward quickly; on the other hand, because it was not a ground-up movement, the public is not as aware of the issues, and sometimes people get suspicious. The alimony deal in Castro Valley is of interest as well. To be fiscally viable, Castro Valley must take over the county's utility user tax — a tax that must be affirmed by city voters — and must also adopt a bed tax, which the county does not have. (The city will have to pay Alameda County around $600,000 a year in alimony.) So the measure on the ballot is not simply a vote to incorporate. It is a vote on extending the utility tax and imposing the bed tax. In other words, no utility and bed tax, no city. That is not exactly a tax increase — at least it is not a tax increase on the people who live in the city. But it is half-step back toward the old days prior to Proposition 13 when a city incorporation often meant a tax increase to support the new public entity. The rash of incorporations during the 1980s were "incorporations in the cheap" in the sense that the new cities simply transferred tax revenue from the counties and very often contracted back for services in a way that either enhanced critical services or saved money. It was simply a rearrangement of existing tax revenue. Today, however, communities seeking to incorporate will probably have to show more financial juice. In the face of alimony, potential new cities will probably have two choices. They will either need to have enough vacant land to grow their tax base in the future (the Rancho Cordova model) or they will have to take the hit for a few new taxes (the Castro Valley model). Simply put, if they can find a way to make the alimony payments, these communities can divorce themselves from the county. But if they are financially strapped — or unwilling to tax themselves — they may have to stay in a loveless governmental marriage.

The City of Malibu can regulate the use of land owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. Although state agencies are typically exempt from local land use control, the court determined the state law that created the Conservancy keeps in tact the local police power. At issue is the use of a 22-acre ranch that Barbara Streisand donated to the Conservancy in 1993. The residentially zoned property on Ramirez Canyon Road in the City of Malibu contains five houses. The ranch has become the headquarters of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and serves the site of many revenue-raising events for the Conservancy, such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, and conferences. In 1999, the city filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that the Conservancy was not immune from local regulation. The city also sought an injunction against commercial use of the property until an alleged violation of the California Coastal Act — alteration of a streambed on the property — was resolved. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kent Kellegrew ruled for the Conservancy. Judge Kellegrew based his decision on Government Code § 53090 and § 53091. Those sections say that a "local agency" must comply with city and county building and zoning ordinances. And they define local agency as "an agency of the state for the local performance of governmental or proprietary function within limited boundaries." Kellegrew ruled that the Conservancy was not a local agency. The appellate court ignored the Government Code sections and instead looked to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Act (Public Resources Code §§ 33000-33215). The court cited § 33008, which states in part, " t is necessary to enact the provisions of this division as a complement to the full exercise of the police power of local governments. … Nothing in this division shall supercede or limit a local government's exercise of the police power derived from any other provision of existing law or any law hereafter enacted." The Conservancy argued that the act — which cites substandard lots, incompatible uses and other land use problems — was intended to divest cities and counties of their land use control because piecemeal planning contributed to the problems. The Conservancy argued that the act's use of the word "complement" was intended to "encourage teamwork" among local governments and the Conservancy. But the court read the statute differently. "Use of the word ‘complement' with ‘full exercise of the police power' indicates a legislative intent to augment and enhance the City's ability to regulate Conservancy property rather than to restrict this power in any way," Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert wrote for the Second District, Division Six. "The Conservancy's interpretation of § 33008 ignores a significant portion of the statute." In a modification to the original opinion, the court pointed to the act's legislative history as further support for the court's interpretation. "As just one example, the floor statement by the Act's legislative sponsor, then-Assemblyman Howard Berman, states that the proposed statute would ‘not … damage home rule in land use matters in the Santa Monica Mountains,'" Gilbert wrote. Berman went to say the act contained "no limitation on local jurisdictions' police powers." The Conservancy presented other arguments — that the city's ability to regulate land use would render the Conservancy's power illusory, and that the court's reading was in conflict with other parts of the act — but the Second District rejected the contentions. The court did not decide on the alleged violation of the Coastal Act. The Coastal Commission is reviewing that matter. The Case: , No. B151606, 02 C.D.O.S. 4165, 2002 DJDAR 5269 and 2002 DJDAR 6664. Filed May 14, 2002. Modified June 13, 2002. The Lawyers: For Malibu: Christi Hogin, city attorney, (310) 939-1636. For the Conservancy: Robert McMurry, Nossaman, Guthner, Knox & Elliott, (949) 833-7800.