Only three weeks after insisting that California should encourage dense development near transit lines, state lawmakers have approved a budget that yanks funding from transit and redevelopment. And that might be the nicest thing that anyone can say about the spending and revenue plan approved after last call on Monday night (Tuesday morning, actually). All the budget really does is permit the state to pay its bills a while longer. "All we've done is roll the problem over to the next Legislature," State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) conceded. Among the provisions in the budget is a shift of about $1 billion in the transit fund to the general fund, supposedly to pay for transportation programs. A second provision shifts about $350 million in redevelopment agency tax increment to schools and community colleges. (You can find out how much your local redevelopment agency will lose here .) As best I can tell, these are not loans. The state is simply re-allocating the money. The shifts appear to be one-time acts. Three weeks ago, state lawmakers approved SB 375 (Steinberg) , a complex bill that insists developing dense, mixed-use communities with good public transit will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make California a better place. Yet public transit requires public money, especially in areas that have grown up without good transit infrastructure. And dense, mixed-use development near transit nearly always involves some level of redevelopment. When SB 375 passed, more than a few people said the measure would be effective only if state spending decisions follow suit. Well, the first spending decisions have been made. Business as usual. – Paul Shigley

Metrolink is one of California's true public transit successes. But it's cobbled together from old freight lines – many of which are out of date operationally. Can we afford the upgrades necessary to make a truly 21st Century system? Can we afford not to make them? I'm a pretty frequent rider on the Metrolink Ventura County line – the line where a Metrolink train crashed head-on with a Union Pacific late Friday, killing 25 riders so far.  Every week or two, I ride all the way from the Montalvo station in Ventura (the end of the line) to Union Station for meetings in downtown L.A. I know the faces on the train and, occasionally, I know the people as well. It's gotten more crowded as gas prices have gone up, because why spent $20-30 on gas and $20 to park downtown when, for just one crisp $20 bill, you can take the train? I'm more than familiar with the sharp left turn coming out of the Chatsworth Station just before the Santa Susana Tunnel where the crash occurred, though I have to admit that I'm not always paying attention. Like most people, I'm usually working on my computer or talking on my cell phone. And that's because, like everybody else on the train –indeed, like public transit advocates everywhere -- I take a safe arrival for granted. Often while driving, I worry about how easy it would be to get into an accident. While traveling on the train, it never occurs to me that I am hurtling forward at a very fast speed in a heavy and enormous projectile, entrusting my life to the engineer. Friday's crash reminds us all of the pros and cons of the Metrolink system and the way it works. Overall, Metrolink really is one of California's most remarkable public transit successes. It was created from a standing start 16 years ago when the five county transportation commissions in Southern California got together and created a joint-powers authority to run a commuter rail system. (One of those five is the Ventura County Transportation Commission, on which I sit as the City of Ventura's representative.) Metrolink isn't cheap; it cost more than a billion dollars just to put together and many millions more in tax money per year to operate. But it's been successful. In recent months, the system has been carrying a million people a month – not as much as a freeway, but not bad. The Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange County lines often run on 20 or 30 minute headways – remarkable for a heavy-rail system. Daytime and suburb-to-suburb services is so good that I have begun to use it to get to and from business appointments in the Inland Empire. But in order to get this far this fast, Metrolink had to take one short-cut – which was to balance itself on the back of the Southern California freight system, one of the busiest in the country. Metrolink was put together because Southern California was not moving far enough or fast enough to build a comprehensive passenger rail transit system, like BART in the Bay Area. BART currently operates in four counties and is planning to penetrate a fifth. It's a heavy-rail subway system, though it runs above-ground in some places. It operates on its own right-of-way in a seamless fashion. L.A. rail transit system, on the other hand, has been stitched together with a motley combination of rights-of-way and technologies. There's a backbone subway line (the Red Line), but there are also a lot of incompatible light-rail lines. And building new lines to the outlying counties has, up to now, simply not been in the cards. So in order to provide effective commuter rail, Southern California had no choice but to use the freight lines. As L.A. Times' "Road Sage" blogger/reporter Steve Hymon pointed out on Saturday , Metrolink was put together during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s because the freight railroads were interested in unloading their right-of-way. (By the way, Hymon – who in a mid-career break from journalism picked up a master's degree in geography from USC – has been one of the most useful and insightful sources of information about the Metrolink system and the institutional reasons behind the crash.) Today, Metrolink and its member agencies owns a lot of the right-of-way, which allows the agency to gives its own trains priority over freight trains. (This means they don't often pull over and wait forever for a freight train to pass, as Amtrak trains must.) But it also means that Metrolink has huge operational challenges coordinating with freight corridors, which in the Los Angeles area are among the busiest in the nation, thanks to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This is especially true because so much of the L.a. rail system -- unlike the Northeast and elsewhere -- is single-tracked. This seems to have been a particular issue in Ventura County. Through the Valley and into Ventura County, Metrolink and Amtrak alike have been plagued with conflicts between trains and cars and trains and people. This is largely because through the Valley and into agricultural Ventura County, the rail line is not a sealed corridor. A few years ago, I was riding on an Amtrak train just short of the Moorpark station when it struck and killed a pedestrian, apparently one bent on suicide. And everyone remembers the 2005 crash in Glendale that killed 11 people, when a suicidal motorist got smashed by trains going in each direction -- one on the Ventura County line, one on the Antelope Valley line. As we were tragically reminded on Friday, the rail line through Ventura County and northward is only a single track in most places. North of Ventura, things get even worse: In many locations, engineers still must get off the train and operate switches manually, just as they did in the 1920s. Upgrading this line will be extremely expensive – hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least. It's more than just putting safety devices. A true upgrade will also require double-tracking huge chunks of Southern California and also making basic improvements in switching and signaling. (In some other parts of the country, the green-red signal is actually received in the locomotive itself, rather than alongside the tracks, making it harder for the engineer to miss it.) Los Angeles has major money for transit and may soon have more if Measure R passes in November, but also has a lot of competition even for rail dollars. And outlying counties may not be willing to put money into the system. In Santa Barbara County, the cost of upgrading the Ventura-Santa Barbara rail line to serve commuters – hundreds of millions of dollars – was one of the things that sunk Santa Barbara's transportation sales tax ren ewal in 2006, which contained major dollars to upgrade the rail line north of Ventura. Ventura County has no transportation sales tax but may go for one at the ballot box in 2010. Even so, the county does not have the tax base of the other Southern California counties, meaning the tax revenue realized will be much less. I'll continue to ride Metrolink whenever and wherever I can. But in the wake of Friday's crash, I will always recognize that there is a risk in doing so. And when I complain about schedules and headways, I will also recognize that unless and until a lot of these operational problems are solved – a very expensive proposition – there's an upper limit to what Metrolink can accomplish. – Bill Fulton

A plan to build what would essentially be a new town 40 miles north of Sacramento may be stillborn. We have a story in the current edition about potential exurban growth north of Sacramento . However, the Colusa County Planning Commission made clear earlier this week that it is not interested in a large development along I-5. (The Colusa County Sun-Herald , which does a nice job of covering land use, reports from the Planning Commission meeting .) Colusa County is sparsely populated and not terribly wealthy. But the people who live there are not unsophisticated Valley hicks, and they are not about to roll over for a developer, especially one from Southern California. Pacific Cascade's project would be a major departure from the Colusa County general plan. On a 4-1 vote, the Planning Commission recommended the Board of Supervisors stick with the plan. The board is scheduled to consider the proposal next week and is unlikely to depart from the Planning Commission's recommendation. The day after the Colusa County Planning Commission rejected the Pacific Cascade proposal, Yolo County released a draft general plan update that calls for dramatic growth in Dunnigan, just south of the Colusa County line. – Paul Shigley

The proposal by Anschutz Entertainment Group to install the equivalent of a football field in signs and lighted billboards in front of the LA Live development near the Los Angeles Convention Center is a glaringly bad idea. AEG's proposal is over-reaching and garish. According to the Los Angeles Times , views of the city from the newest wing of the LA Convention Center would be partially blocked. And the acre of signs would likely create a wall of intense, intrusive light that floods the picture windows of hundreds of apartment and condo-dwellers, especially those who will live in any of the half-dozen high-rises planned within a few blocks of 18-acre sports-entertainment-hospitality-condo-retail extravaganza. Los Angeles has outlawed large outdoor signs in many parts of the city, and placed restrictions on those that remain—as if it mattered.   Watch closely as Phil Anschutz gets what he wants. As the builder of the 54-story convention center hotel, the developer already enjoys favorite-son status. The city used bond financing to acquire the hotel site, just north of the convention center and the Anschutz-built Staples Center sports arena. The city also cheerfully amended the city plan, allowing the developer to take over several downtown streets and create an inward-looking island of development . With a 7,000-seat Nokia Theater, themed night clubs, and a large-scale courtyard lit up by Jumbotrons, the complex has been brilliantly designed to capture the attention—and discretionary spending dollars—of both out-of-town conventioneers and local basketball and hockey fans. It is bad enough that the city chose to subsidize LA Live, which, in my opinion. subverts several goals of downtown planning, such as promoting pedestrian movement  along Figueroa Boulevard. LA Live is an inward-looking fantasy environment, not entirely dissimilar from the echt-urban retail playgrounds developed by Rick Caruso (such as Americana at Brand in Glendale and The Grove at Farmers Market near Hollywood.) At LA Live, a wall blocks the project frontage along Figueroa Boulevard. Message to public: We're having a private party, and you're not invited. The views admittedly are much better from 11th Street, with the convention center hotel on the north  and the Jumbotron courtyard on the south. By that point, however, you're already inside the belly of the beast—an entirely privatized environment, except for the asphalt on the street. One sign that the developer is ready to deal is the initial proposal to devote 25% of signage to promote the Convention Center—a give-away that the city's tourism and hospitality bureau will probably support, to the detriment of the convention center itself. Despite its prosperity, Los Angeles seems perpetually afraid of saying no to developers, especially those who undertake risky redevelopment projects like the convention center hotel. The policy in both the city and its redevelopment agency has been to "give the developer whatever he wants, as long as we get what we want." Sacrificing both public policy and urban design so the city can obtain some tourism-and-hospitality benefits, however, is a cut-off-your-nose strategy the city should have abandoned long ago. The role of government, in my view, is to identify goals for both public policy and urban design, and let the private sector figure out how to make viable projects that fit those goals. The current policy, however, is the opposite: Let the private sector do whatever it wants, mitigate the worst effects, and tack on some public interest (such as a few affordable housing units or public art or open space) as an afterthought. So, get out your popcorn. Phil Anschutz, the largest owner of cinema screens in the country, is about to give us a virtuoso performance in massaging LA City Hall. I predict some big lights are coming to the skies of downtown Los Angeles. For those people who live within a mile or so of LA Live, I recommend some extra-heavy window drapes. – Morris Newman

The state budget stalemate may get handed to the new Legislature that is seated in December. In the meantime, lawmakers could pass a series of emergency resolutions authorizing the state to pay its bills. Last week, people were whispering about this scenario. Now, they are speaking out loud about it. After the 21-13 defeat of the Republican budget proposal in the Senate on Monday, it's clear that lawmakers and the governor are no closer to a budget resolution today than they were in June. The Republican plan contained one truly stunning provision: A grab by the state of $349 million in undesignated and unreserved low- and moderate-income housing monies held by local redevelopment agencies.  The proposal infuriated affordable housing advocates and put redevelopment agencies on the defensive one more time. By law, redevelopment agencies must set-aside 20% of tax increment for low/mod housing. The undesignated and unreserved monies are those in the housing set-aside fund that the agency has not committed to specific projects. Recalcitrant cities will indeed let money pile up in the housing set-aside fund because they have little interest in providing affordable housing. More commonly, the money accumulates while redevelopment agencies put together development deals. The fact that the money has not been legally committed doesn't necessarily mean that local officials don't know how they plan to spend it. Development of affordable housing with multiple funding sources can take many years. The Republican "no tax increase budget" would have allocated this money to the state, killing an untold number of affordable housing projects that are somewhere in the process. The Senate Transportation and Housing Committee estimated the proposal would prevent development of 5,000 to 7,000 affordable units. Among the agencies that could have lost the most were San Bernardino ($11.9 million), Richmond ($14.2 million), Riverside ($11.2 million), Cerritos ($23.6 million) and Pomona ($10 million). Think any of those cities could use additional, decent housing that's affordable to poor families? Maybe even housing for some of the people earning 10 bucks an hour at the 1.3-million-square-foot Los Cerritos Center? The Republican redevelopment revenue shift would apparently have come on top of the governor's proposed shift of $225 million of redevelopment agency tax increment to school districts annually for three years. In other words, the Republicans would take $1 billion from redevelopment agencies. (I should note that Democrats appear to have accepted the governor's $225 million annual shift.) I'm trying not to pass judgment on these budget proposals. I'll only say that they would significantly decrease redevelopment activity in California. That might be fine with some conservatives who fret over government intrusion in the marketplace, although I'd suggest those conservatives might want to talk to their friends in the development, construction and retail sectors before pushing too far. No one seems to know where the budget standoff is headed now. Mike Madrid's California City News offers up these cold hard figures on the budget standoff. Madrid notes that Gov. Schwarzenegger has only 4 months before he must propose a budget for 2009-2010. – Paul Shigley

John McCain had even less to say about cities and planning – absolutely nothing -- in his acceptance speech than Barack Obama did one week earlier . But, like Richard Nixon before him, he's got a vice presidential candidate who's long on local government experience but a short record as a governor. Why do local electeds rarely wind up in the presidential race?  This year's is the first in American history in which both vice presidential candidates are former local elected officials. And because of Sarah Palin, ironically enough, it is the McCain candidacy that has raised the question of whether being an elected official in local government, dealing with zoning and land use and libraries and police officers, is good preparation for being president. Ironic because McCain evinces almost no interest in domestic policy. And despite representing Arizona in Congress for more than a quarter-century, he still comes across as a guy who isn't really from anywhere – the perpetual Navy brat. By contrast, his running mate – and both members of the Democratic ticket – are deeply rooted in the places where they come from – suburban Anchorage, Wilmington, and the South Side of Chicago. One thing is for sure: Local government is rarely a springboard to the presidency. Most politicians start out on their local planning commission, city council or school board. Yet most presidential and vice-presidential nominees bypass local office, starting out either in their state legislature (Obama) or in Congress (McCain). Joe Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, is such a creature of Washington (with 36 years in the Senate) that it's easy to forget he was elected at age 26 to the New Castle, Delaware, County Council, the office from which he ran for Senate at age 29. His Republican counterpart, Sara Palin, was elected to the City Council in Wasilla, Alaska, at age 28; and served six years as mayor beginning at age 32. The last vice president with experience in local office was a Republican who, in some ways, bears more than a passing resemblance to Palin. That was Spiro Agnew, who had served as Baltimore County executive for four years (and on the Baltimore County Board of Zoning Appeals before that) but had been governor of Maryland for only a year and a half when Richard Nixon picked him as running mate in 1968. Agnew, of course, was best known as Nixon's mudslinger – the guy who went negative against the media, much to the delight of the conservative Republican base. Sound familiar? Of course, Agnew picked up a few habits in local office in Baltimore that proved hard to shake when he became vice president. He eventually resigned amid allegations (probably true) that he had shaken down construction companies as governor and still tried to collect the bribes as vice president. A few other scattered candidates had local experience. Hubert Humphrey, vice president and presidential candidate, was the fiery mayor of Minneapolis in the late 1940s, when he gained national renown for turning around the city's reputation as anti-semitic. Barry Goldwater, McCain's predecessor as Arizona senator, was an heir to a department store fortune who was elected in 1949 to the Phoenix City Council, which he used as a springboard to the Senate. Most of these folks didn't have much of a local record. The one who did was Harry Truman, who served for 10 years as a county "judge" (commissioner) in Kansas City. Truman was affiliated with the Pendergast Democratic political machine, but he had a real record of achievement, including impressive public works programs during the Depression. Truman, Agnew, and Humphrey were all elected to office in big cities. It's been a long time since the former mayor of a small city was president – or vice president. And you can bet that Palin isn't likely to imitate that fellow's style. The taciturn Calvin Coolidge served as mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, (population at that time about 19,000). Coolidge served as a city councilman, city solicitor, and clerk of courts – and then lost a race for the school board! – before being elected mayor in 1910. Barely a decade after leaving local office, he was elected vice president, and in 1923 he assumed the presidency when Warren Harding died of a heart attack.  -- Bill Fulton

The state and federal governments are throwing a lot of "new money" at the housing market in hopes of stabilizing prices and bailing out subprime mortgage borrowers. For California alone, the total looks to be several hundred million dollars – at least – in the next year alone. But is that anywhere near enough to make a dent in the problem? The federal housing bill was passed at the end of July, and it contains a brand new federal affordable housing program for local governments. Buried in the bill – alongside the subprime mortgage bailout and the possible bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – is a $4 billion program that locals will administer starting this fall. Depending on how the money is allocated, this could mean a half-billion dollars for California. The housing bill also contains a couple of other new funding sources for affordable housing. One is a permanent housing trust fund – funded by contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that could reach $300 million a year, which would presumably give California $30 million to $50 million more per year. A second is an increase in the low-income housing tax credits, which could add $7 million to the California pot this year. And there's more. The feds authorized the issuance of an additional $11 billion in tax-exempt bonds this year – funds to be used to help first-time homebuyers and to finance rental apartments – and approximately $1.2 billion is likely to be earmarked for California. This funding allowed the California Housing Finance Agency to create a new program earmarking $400 million for first-time homebuyers buying foreclosed properties in areas where the subprime problem is especially bad. On top of that, the Legislature in August passed a bill that would allow local redevelopment agencies to spend some of their money helping subprime mortgage holders (see CP&DR , July 2008 ). And don't forget that the state Department of Housing and Community Development just doled out more than a half-billion dollars for housing projects and infrastructure in infill locations (see CP&DR Insight , August 2008 ). Even all of this funding may not be enough to turn the market around. But it could be enough to change the nature of certain neighborhoods – especially in older cities as opposed to newer suburbs. The federal Department of Housing & Urban Development will be shoveling the $4 billion out to local governments in California and elsewhere this fall, based on a yet-to-be-created formula focusing on the number of foreclosures and the number of subprime mortgages in each jurisdiction. Then the locals will have 18 months to spend the money. Considering that about one-fifth of the country's housing foreclosures are in California, local governments here should receive substantial allocations. What can the locals do with all this dough? Pretty much anything that they can do with any other affordable housing funds, except they have to focus their efforts on properties that are abandoned or in foreclosure. This includes: • Buying and rehabilitating houses • Selling or renting houses • Banking the land • Demolishing blighted structures and redeveloping vacant properties. Yes, it sounds a lot like redevelopment. And, in fact, there may be a match with the state redevelopment program because AB 2594, assuming Gov. Schwarzenegger signs it, gives redevelopment agencies the power (but not a mandate) to use their non-housing funds to help out subprime mortgage holders. But it's not clear how much of a mesh there will be between traditional redevelopment practices and the neighborhoods where this money is likely to go. HUD's distribution formula is supposed to target the funds to areas where there are lots of foreclosures, lots of subprime loans, and lots of houses where payments are delinquent. Stereotypical subprime country includes the Central Valley and the Inland Empire (the Stockton-to-Merced corridor on Highway 99 appears to be the worst-hit subprime area in the nation.) In these areas, cities will probably focus on buying the houses and turning them around to new buyers as quickly as possible. That, at least, appears to be the goal of local officials in those areas. But there's another kind of subprime landscape in California. In older urban areas – southern Los Angeles County, for example – the subprime problem is just as bad. In these areas, the buyers are pretty much the same as in the Central Valley. They are not really creditworthy and they are unable to pay the increasing interest rates. But the houses and neighborhoods are different. Single-family houses they may be, but they are older homes located in tough neighborhoods. It could be hard to find qualified buyers willing to take these houses on – although if the prices are low enough, the bottomless market of first-time Latino homebuyers in Los Angeles will probably help move along these properties. In older cities, however, the new program raises another question: Will the funds be used mostly for rehab and sale write-downs, or will they be used for more classic redevelopment purposes, such as demolishing blighted buildings and buying or redeveloping the land? The program certainly permits the use of funds for classic redevelopment purposes. So it is possible these older cities may simply see the new federal program as another piggy-bank for redevelopment. It is true that the cities may not use the money for commercial purposes. They have to use all the funds to benefit low- and moderate-income residents, including at least a quarter of the money for low-income residents. But will some cities use the money to buy up foreclosed single-family houses, declare them blighted, tear them down, and move on with higher-density projects? This clearly won't happen in Moreno Valley and Elk Grove. But it could happen in Compton and even in parts of Merced. It's worth noting that not everybody in Washington thought throwing $4 billion at local governments was a good idea. President Bush apparently held his nose on this aspect of the bill when he signed it (at 7 o'clock on a Saturday morning with no members of Congress present). Bush's criticism was that the local money was simply a bailout for lenders, because the locals will wind up creating a price floor for the properties. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Dallas, said the new program will simply "allow local governments to expose themselves to the risks of the market." But local governments will be entering the market with federal dough, not their own. Even a billion or more dollars may not be enough, given the massive size of the California housing market, and the massive size of California's subprime problem (1 million of the state's 20 million housing units at risk of foreclosure). Still, this is shaping up to be the biggest infusion of housing cash since the 1970s. We'll see if it works.

Stem-cell therapy and urban design have little in common, or so I thought, until I saw Dan Solomon's design for New Railroad Square in Santa Rosa. One type of stem cell therapy, as you have probably heard, is to inject healthy cells into diseased tissue with the expectation that the good cells will drive out the bad ones. In other words, the healthy cells become the templates for the production of healthy tissue. In the San Francisco architect's plan for the former rail yards in downtown Santa Rosa, the typical block from the older sections of Santa Rosa takes the role of the healthy cell. The imported block, with its small dimensions, helps weave the New Railroad Square project into the fabric of the historic downtown. And the imported grid does more, or "wants" to do more, than bring scale and order to an area lacking those qualities. When looking at this plan it is easy to imagine the imported grid spreading out beyond the borders of the New Railroad Square development and communicating its newfound energy to other downtown areas in need of similar re-ordering. Proposed by a partnership of Creative Housing Associates of Los Angeles, The John Stewart Company and Equity Community Builders, New Railroad Square is a 5.3-acre mixed-use, transit-oriented project along the historic railroad line. The old station and at least two old warehouses survive, and they are happily being integrated into the project as housing and a parking structure, respectively. The site is the city's former rail yard, which has become an industrial no-mans-land that separates the city's West End on the north and the Railroad Square shopping district to the east. To the east lies the tracks of the proposed Sonoma Marina Area Rapid Transit (SMART) train, whose curving rail bed serves as the eastern boundary of this project. Further east still, beyond the project boundaries, is the 101 freeway, which also helps break down the sense of scale and urban form in the immediate area. Moving east from the 101 freeway, we find another event that interrupts the urban pattern with a blind wall: a 1970s regional mall. In short, the neighborhoods bordering the 101 freeway in downtown Santa Rosa are a catalogue of quasi-functional urbanism lacking easy connections. The New Railroad Square site is wedge-shaped, which is awkward to develop. To fill the site in the most rational way possible, the planner has opted for three courtyard buildings, each of which occupies a city block. The southernmost courtyard, just north of Third Street, is a "flatiron" building with office and retail space. Between Fourth and Fifth streets, a multi-tenant "public market" will occupy the ground floor, while 68 affordable units are on upper stories. The northernmost block contains 118 market-rate townhouses, and their three-story size corresponds in size to existing row houses in West End. A new north-south street draws together the three buildings of New Railroad Square, with three related buildings: a dance theater, a public parking structure and loft housing. SMART and the developers approved a deal in October 2007 in which the developers agreed to buy the land from the transit agency for $2.5 million. Construction dates on the $100 million project have not been finalized, although the project is likely to be completed before the SMART train's first phase, which is due in 2014. New Railroad Square is a small-scale version of rail yard redevelopment, which has become popular throughout the country, replacing the tangle of freight train tracks and rail spurs with dense, mixed-use development. The largest is probably the Atlantic Yards, the politically vexed project that Forest City is trying build in Brooklyn, N.Y., while Los Angeles and Sacramento are also pursuing similar projects. Making the Santa Rosa project possible in the first place is the SMART train, which would stretch from Cloverdale in the north to Larkspur on the Bay. (A quarter-cent sales tax to fund the system is on the November ballot in Marin and Sonoma counties.) It's an intriguing, if idle, thought that the train gave part of this city its original form more than a century ago, and that a new train, rolling on the same footprint, is the catalyst behind the latest event in the formation of downtown Santa Rosa. The organizational power of the newly gridded New Railroad Square also seems catalytic. The site plan wants to spread east and break down the scale of very large-scale objects that impede free movement of pedestrians. The idea of the grid "wanting" to spread may need a word of explanation. I mean to say the site wants to spread its order-making grid, just as the architect Louis Kahn would tell his students that elements in architecture "wanted" to do certain things. Kahn was not actually anthropomorphizing walls and roofs. Instead, when he said things like the "wall wants to become a ceiling," he meant the wall has a design potential that the architect should be aware of. In a similar vein, the grid – one of the simplest urban design tools – wants to spread order throughout the disorderly elements in downtown Santa Rosa. A railroad crossing, in fact, is planned at Fourth Street. Existing underpasses connect pedestrians to either side of the freeway, while an underpass at Third Street beneath the mall provides a connection further east. The big challenge here is the enclosed mall, which blocks the clear sight lines and visible order of a genuine urban grid. The enclosed, street-blocking structure "wants" to be sliced through by Third, Fourth and Fifth streets. It would not be impossible to reconfigure the mall as an outward looking lifestyle center that could conform to the grid while gaining support, in turn, by new and existing foot traffic in Railroad Square. Those are admittedly a lot of fantasies inspired by a single project, but good urbanism creates energy that spreads outward. It wants to drive out the bad, dysfunctional spaces. If the streets of New Railroad Square and the existing streets in Railroad Square want to unify downtown Santa Rosa, who are we to object?

Despite high gasoline prices, concern over greenhouse gas emissions, a dismal housing market and a renowned "smart growth" regional planning blueprint, a whole new phase of exurbs is being planned north of Sacramento. From the far-reaches of Yolo, Sutter and Yuba counties to rice-growing Colusa County, landowners, developers and planners are working on planning and entitlements for projects that could bring tens of thousands of new housing units to rural communities and greenfield sites located 30, 40 and even 50 miles from existing employment centers. Whether and when the projects actually get developed are open questions, as everyone involved is talking about the long-term. Some of the most ambitious proposals lie along the lightly developed Interstate 5 corridor. As part of a comprehensive general plan update, Yolo County is considering designating Dunnigan – a community of about 800 people 20 miles northeast of Woodland – as a 2,000-acre growth area for 7,500 housing units. Only about two miles north in Colusa County, developer Pacific Cascade is proposing 6,600 units on 2,600 acres. Both the Dunnigan and the Colusa County projects could also include extensive industrial, commercial and retail development. Elsewhere, the cities of Williams, Colusa and Live Oak have made clear their interest in growth. And projects with the potential for more than 10,000 housing units are pending in unincorporated Yuba County. All of this comes in a region where housing construction has slowed to its lowest level in many years. In the Marysville-Yuba City region, for example, housing starts this year are down 94% compared with the boom year of 2005, according to the California Building Industry Association. Starts are down 75% over the same three-year period in the Sacramento-Roseville area. "Developers realize the market is going to come back someday," said Denis Cook, a planning consultant to developers and the interim, part-time planning director for Live Oak. Virtually all of this potential growth is incompatible with the Sacramento Council of Government's regional growth blueprint. (Colusa County lies outside of SACOG's boundaries.) The blueprint calls for infill and higher densities before new growth areas open up. The blueprint, for example, envisions a new town in Dunnigan — but not until after 2050. Yolo County envisions build-out by 2030. Developers have been eyeing Colusa County for several years because of its I-5 frontage and because Yolo County, which lies between Colusa County and Sacramento, has permitted little growth in unincorporated areas. Pacific Cascade is the latest to pitch development just north of the Yolo-Colusa county line. However, before county staff members spend much time on Pacific Cascade's application, county Planning Director Stephen Hackney intends to ask the Board of Supervisors whether it even wants to consider the concept of large-scale growth on farmland. The county has long directed growth into the cities of Colusa and Williams while protecting unincorporated areas for agriculture, he explained. The Pacific Cascade proposal, he said, "is not only inconsistent with the general plan land use designation in the land use element, but it is inconsistent with the goals and policies in most of the other elements." The application is scheduled to go to the Board of Supervisors this month. "The board in essence could make a policy decision. The board can give me and the world clear direction," Hackney said. In Yolo County, officials this month are scheduled to release a draft general plan that designates several unincorporated areas for a total of 9,000 to 11,000 new housing units, according to Assistant Planning Director David Morrison. Up to 7,500 of those units would be in Dunnigan, a farm town at the junction of I-5 and I-505 and about 35 miles northwest of Sacramento. Such growth would be a marked change for farm-friendly Yolo County, but the county government needs to diversify its tax base to survive fiscally, Morrison said. The county selected Dunnigan for development because it is a poor community that could benefit from new services and amenities, Morrison said. In addition, most of the territory in question is not good agricultural land, and the I-5/I-505 junction is reportedly the least developed interchange of two interstate freeways in California, he said. Despite the recent housing market slowdown, Morrison said, "There is always going to be a strong demand for residential development in Yolo County, situated as we are between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area region." The trick, said Morrison, is ensuring that Dunnigan becomes a complete community, not simply a bedroom for Sacramento. The draft general plan contains policies to ensure that commercial development occurs concurrently with housing development, he said. "It always boils down to the political will to carry out the plan. We've always had that will, and the voters expect it," Morrison said. Indeed, large housing developments without jobs and services is a common concern, Cook acknowledged. "All of these communities want to have the jobs-housing balance that everybody desires. None of them wants to become commuter towns," he said. "But the way the market works, you've got to get the rooftops first." Cook cited Roseville as an example of a city that added thousands of houses during the 1980s before jobs started showing up during the 1990s. This jobs-housing balance has been of special concern in Yuba County, which has little employment to offer outside of Beale Air Force Base. Among the projects being discussed in Yuba County are a 3,500-unit subdivision in Spring Valley about 10 miles east of Marysville for which voters approved a development agreement 10 years ago, and a re-worked Yuba Highlands project, which was approved for 5,100 units before developer Gary Gallelli pulled out and voters defeated the project in a referendum earlier this year (see CP&DR , March 2008 , June 2007 ). Neither of those projects has been approved. On hold in Yuba County is Reynen & Bardis Community's 6,250-unit Woodbury project between Marysville and Wheatland. Farther out is the northern Sutter County city of Live Oak, which recently adopted a growth-friendly general plan, and the City of Colusa, whose new general plan would permit the population to more than triple to about 20,000 by 2030. A city of about 8,500 people, Live Oak began growing a few years ago after completing a wastewater treatment plant upgrade. Wastewater treatment has stalled growth in Williams, whose population has grown 44% to about 5,300 this decade while the city emerged as a bedroom for commuters to Sacramento and the Vacaville-Fairfield area. City officials favor more development, but a state order has halted growth until the city upgrades its wastewater treatment facilities. Contacts: David Morrison, Yolo County Planning and Public Works Department, (530) 666-8775. Stephen Hackney, Colusa County Planning Department, (530) 458-0480. Denis Cook, planning consultant, (530) 751-9614.

State laws approved seven years ago requiring water assurances for large development projects appear to be of minimal aid in determining whether the state and regions have enough water for the future. That's the conclusion of a California Research Bureau (CRB) report released with zero fanfare in August. According to the CRB, a 2001 law requiring water verification for subdivisions of more than 500 units reached only about 7% of new units approved from 2004 through 2006. A different law approved in 2001 for large non-residential developments reached only about one-fifth of the commercial and industrial floor space built during that same period. What researchers also found was an "incredibly frustrating" lack of data, said Rani Isaac, the economist and senior research specialist who wrote the CRB report. There is no central repository of information on development or water usage. Locating, compiling and then testing data on residential development available to public agencies took months, Isaac said. To study non-residential construction, the CRB had to purchase data from McGraw-Hill, she said. The 14-page report concludes with this: "The paucity of data is becoming a barrier to infrastructure investment. Good decisions require good data." The state Legislature closed its two-year session at the end of August with virtually no action on the issue of water. A $9 billion water bond proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein went nowhere, although lawmakers could consider a bond during ongoing budget negotiations. In 2001, lawmakers approved SB 221 (Kuehl) and SB 610 (Costa). Senate Bill 221 requires a city or county to get written verification of a 20-year water supply from a public water system for subdivisions of more than 500 dwelling units. Senate Bill 610 extended an existing requirement for public water purveyors to prepare water supply assessments for large development projects, including residential projects of more than 500 units and large non-residential projects of certain square footages. The bill also amended state law to require water agencies to produce urban water management plans every five years, rather than every 20 to 25 years (see CP&DR , October 2001 ). Senate Bill 221 author Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) asked the CRB to examine the impact of the 2001 legislation with the possible intent of reducing the SB 221 threshold to 250 units. What the CRB found was that the vast majority of residential and non-residential development is untouched by the two laws. About 25,000 of 356,000 new residential units created from 2004 through 2006 were in projects of more than 500 units. There were only 33 such projects, and 16 of them were in two counties — Riverside and Orange. Had the threshold been 250 units, another 37,000 units in 107 projects would have come under the law. In the non-residential sector, 157 projects containing 20.3% of the total area of nonresidential development fell within SB 610's requirements. Nearly all of these projects were in metropolitan Los Angeles or San Diego County. Isaac concluded that California still needs more interaction between water planning and land use planning. "That way, so much doesn't have to be settled by court cases," she said, noting the number of cases involving "paper water" in recent years. "Certainly," she added, "it seems like there is more demand than supply." Local and regional agencies and developers in water-constrained areas should know whether supplies match the predicted future demand, she said. That's not necessarily the case, however. Development interests fought SB 221 and SB 610, had little interest in the CRB study, and have even less interest in broadening the laws. Randy Kanouse, a lobbyist for the East Bay Municipal Utility District who helped craft the 2001 legislation, said the CRB report is of limited use. The 2001 legislation, he said, "was intended to ensure that we grow in a way that doesn't cause harm to existing communities, existing water customers." The data in the report does not determine whether that goal is being met. Kanouse said the state needs to track water supply assessments in high-growth areas and monitor their accuracy. "We need to understand on a local level where we are facing a hardship and need a new water supply," he said. Isaac conceded that she was cautious, as were state water agency representatives who participated in preparation of the report. Still, the report contains several suggestions — the measures are not framed as recommendations — that even the skeptical Kanouse considered worthwhile. Among the suggestions: • The state (either the Department of Water Resources or the State Water Resources Control Board) could collect local water assessment plans and assess whether those plans actually comply with requirements to ensure a sufficient water supply and adequate water quality. • The state could compare urban water management plans with local growth plans to determine where water could become a development constraint. • Before the Department of Real Estate issues a white paper permitting developers to sell homes in a new subdivision, the DRE could require a water certification letter from a state agency. The DRE already requires a letter from the Public Utility Commission when a private water company serves a new project. • Lawmakers could strengthen the Urban Water Management Planning Act to ensure agencies actually prepare the required plans. • Some entity, possibly the Resources Agency, could compile a database with all urban water management plans, city and county general plans, and water plans. The database would be publicly searchable, "would aid in the preparation of a new State Water Plan, and allow resource economists to do a better job of accounting for the state's current consumption," according to the CRB report. Despite the issuance of the report a month before the end of the legislative session, and despite the governor's declaration of a drought emergency earlier this year, lawmakers largely ignored the issue of water. Kuehl, who is termed out of the Legislature, did not pursue amendments to the 2001 laws. Assemblymembers Paul Krekorian (D-Burbank) and Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) proposed a bill that would have required new buildings to fully offset new water consumption through the implementation of conservation measures and fees that would fund water efficiencies elsewhere. Proponents, including the Planning and Conservation League, said the measure would permit development without the environmental or fiscal expense of new water projects. The provisions in the measure, AB 2153, also would have let developers bypass SB 221. However, the bill failed to pass the Assembly. Assembly Bill 2175 (Laird) would have required a 20% reduction in per capita urban water usage by 2020 and directed DWR to demand agricultural water cutbacks of at least 500,000 acre-feet. That bill died in the Senate. The CRB report is available on the State Library's website, www.library.ca.gov/crb/CRBSearch.aspx .

NOTICE REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS RFQ-PLN09-12 Omnitrans is accepting Qualifications Statements for: PRE-DEVELOPMENT, CONCEPTUAL DESIGN AND VISIONING SERVICES FOR A DOWNTOWN INTERMODAL TRANSIT STATION AND TRANSIT VILLAGE IN SAN BERNARDINO, CA The sealed Qualifications Statements are due at 4:00 P.M. PST, Monday, October 20, 2008 at the Omnitrans facility located at 1700 West Fifth Street, San Bernardino, CA, 92411. Statements will not be publicly opened.  Statements received after that time will not be considered and will be returned unopened. There will be a non-mandatory, pre-submittal, information and networking conference, with a question and answer opportunity, on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. Omnitrans affirmatively ensures that Disadvantaged and Women-Owned Business Enterprises will be afforded full opportunity to submit Qualifications Statements and will not be discriminated against on the grounds of race, color, or national origin.  Request for Qualifications documents may be obtained by visiting Omnitrans' website at www.Omnitrans.org or by contacting: Omnitrans 1700 West Fifth Street San Bernardino, CA 92411 Contracts Manager, Linda Warwick (909) 379-7128 (909) 885-2441 FAX

The validity of a 1915 subdivision map has been rejected by the First District Court of Appeal in a decision that calls into question any subdivision recorded before 1929. The court determined the 1915 map for a 25-lot subdivision in southern Sonoma County is not valid today because the county had very little discretion under the Subdivision Map Act in place at the time. The decision provides a significant victory to local governments concerned about an untold number of antiquated subdivision maps that do not conform to modern-day land use planning principles. Under the map act's current grandfather clause, an old map is valid today only if the local government had authority to regulate the design and improvement of the proposed subdivision. Although the map act was first enacted in 1893, not until 1929 did the act give local governments the ability to regulate the configuration of parcels and the provision of streets, drainage and other services to serve subdivisions. The map act as it stood in 1915 offered the local government little discretion as long as the map properly depicted certain items, the court found. " t was the landowner who determined the size and configuration of the lots, the existence and location of roads and utilities, and whether to dedicate land to the public and, if so, where and how much," Justice Sandra Margulies wrote for the court. "The mere requirement that, once the subdivider had made these decisions, they be accurately reflected on the map did not constitute regulation of the subdivision." Thus, the court concluded, the 1915 subdivision did not qualify for recognition under the map act's grandfather clause. The decision is the most substantive on antiquated subdivisions since the state Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Gardner v. County of Sonoma , (2003) 29 Cal.4th 990 (see CP&DR , March 2003 ). In Gardner , the state high court ruled that maps recorded prior to the first Subdivision Map Act in 1893 could not be validated today. The Gardner decision also cast doubt on maps recorded prior to 1929, when the Subdivision Map Act was amended to introduce the concepts of tentative and final maps and to offer local governments substantive discretion. Deputy Sonoma County Counsel Sue Gallagher said the First District's decision indicates "the courts are going to look to see if the local jurisdiction did have and exercise any discretion. It needs to be some sort of substantive regulation of the underlying subdivision itself." The Board of Supervisors' resolution approving the 1915 map merely certified that the map was signed and met the technical requirements for recording, according to Gallagher, the winning attorney in the latest case and in Gardner . The board's action was ministerial and involved no discretion over lot configuration or infrastructure, she said. That made the map ineligible for the map act's grandfather clause, she contended. James Laughlin, a deputy Solano County counsel, called the decision "very helpful" for a case Solano County has appealed. In March, Superior Court Judge Paul Beeman upheld the validity of a 1909 map depicting 25 parcels on 250 acres of agricultural land on the outskirts of Fairfield. The county has appealed that decision to the First District, Division Five. The outcome of Abernathy Valley, Inc. v. County of Solano , No. A121817, could have implications for numerous other old maps in the county, Laughlin said. Some of those maps depict hundreds of tiny lots and make no provision for public services, he said. Similar litigation is under way in Yolo County, as well. The Sonoma County controversy originated in 2005, when property owner Witt Home Ranch, Inc., filed an application with the county seeking certificates of compliance for 25 lots in the 120-acre "Houx subdivision." Although the subdivision map was recorded in 1915, no one ever acted on it and the same family has owned the 120-acre parcel outside Petaluma since the 1930s. The certificates of compliance, however, would provide legal recognition for 25 lots. The county's Permit and Resources Management Department refused to issue the certificates of compliance. On appeal, the Board of Supervisors upheld that decision, as well as two other decisions against other property owners seeking certificates of compliance. The board said it would not recognize maps recorded prior to 1919, and would consider maps recorded from 1919 to 1929 on a case-by-case basis because a 1919 amendment to the map act provided the county some degree of substantive review. Witt Home Ranch sued, arguing the 1915 map provided a legal subdivision. The property owner also contended that Gallagher and Supervisor Valerie Brown violated its due process rights. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Allan Hardcastle determined the map was not covered by the grandfather clause and that there had been no violation of due process. A unanimous three-judge panel of the First District, Division One, upheld that decision on appeal. Witt Home Ranch contended that the 1915 statute's regulation of development was sufficient for the map to qualify under the grandfather clause. The law at the time required a map to depict and identify lots, highways and property set aside for public dedication, Witt Home Ranch noted. That is enough to meet the grandfather clause's requirement that a map be approved subject to rules in place at the time regarding design and improvement, the property owner argued. The county countered that the 1915 law did not regulate design and improvement. The court agreed. "The requirement that recorded maps accurately depict various features of the subdivision constituted regulation of the drawing depicting the subdivision, rather than regulation of the subdivision's improvement and configuration," Margulies wrote. "Similar to the 1865 map in Gardner , the Houx map is a planning anachronism, merely a grid laid across a parcel of land," Margulies continued. "There is no indication that any consideration was given to the appropriate siting of residences, lot drainage, the feasibility of construction or utility service, or any of the many other issues that arise when development occurs. It is difficult to imagine a plan for real estate development more at odds with modern subdivision regulation." For its due process claim, Witt Home Ranch argued that the board's policy of refusing to recognize pre-1919 maps was a "defacto land use ordinance" enacted without proper procedures, that the board's decision was based on communications outside the administrative process, and that Gallagher's advice to the board on the appeal was improper because she also advised planning staff members. The court rejected all three contentions. It found that the policy merely provided guidance to staff, there was no evidence of improper communication, and Gallagher was simply acting as a legal advisor. The Case: Witt Home Ranch, Inc. v. County of Sonoma , No. A118911, 08 C.D.O.S. 9802, 2008 DJDAR 11923. Filed July 29, 2008. The Lawyers: For Witt Home Ranch: Michael Van Zandt, Hanson Bridgett, (415) 777-3200. For the county: Sue Gallagher, county counsel's office, (707) 565-2421.