The proposed CEQA Guidelines prohibiting lead agencies from categorizing traffic congestion as a significant impact will likely trump any significance finding tied to local general plans that contain a level of service standard, state officials said at a forum on the draft guidelines Friday in San Diego. In response to a question, Chris Calfee, counsel at the Governor's Office of Planning & Research, indicated that General Plan congestion standards won't be counted as significant under CEQA. "Once the guidelines are adopted, then those measures can't be the basis of a significance finding under CEQA," he said. He later indicated that it may be necessary to revise the CEQA checklist to reflect this viewpoint. At the same time, Calfee emphasized: "We are only making changes to the CEQA analysis. Local General Plan policies, zoning codes, things like that, those remain in place. This does not interfere with local police power. Local agencies get to keep their impact fees, their planning processes, as otherwise." Nevertheless, the general impression conveyed by OPR is that the CEQA Guidelines amendments are likely to drive local government policies away from congestion and toward VMT as a standard. The draft guidelines � issued by OPR pursuant to the SB 743 CEQA reform bill passed last year � would replace the congestion-based "level of service" standard with a "vehicle miles traveled" standard. OPR is now taking the show on the road to gauge response. On Friday � as a warmup to the state American Planning Association conference in Anaheim � OPR's Chris Ganson and Calfee presented the proposed guidelines to a crowd of 250 planners, transportation engineers, and advocates at San Diego City Hall. Much of the event consisted of Ganson providing detail on the proposal that has been previously reported in CP&DR . Along the way, however, Ganson provided some interesting detail about why other prospective measures � especially multi-modal level of service � had been rejected in favor of VMT.  He said LOS as a general standard often focuses on the wrong things � moving vehicles instead of people, for example, and solving the program of localized congestion around a particular project without considering the overall impact on the transportation system. "The scale of analysis is too small," he said. "Oftentimes, you relieve a bottleneck and end up with a worse bottleneck downstream, which worsens the whole situation." In other words, he said: "All you did was you moved impact outside of your scope of analysis to somewhere else." Discussing multi-modal level of service � which has often been identified as a possible alternative to vehicle level of service � Ganson said it has many of the same defects as vehicle level of service. "There are a lot of situations in which inserting multimodal LOS could be quite useful, "he said." We found CEQA not to be one of them because it creates some of the same perverse incentives � in infill development it's again going to trigger impacts on transit, bicycling, ped facilities. It looks at crowding and says adding more people is bad but of course what we want is to add more people." Ganson also reiterated that even if congestion itself would not be considered a significant impact, the new guidelines would continue to permit actual environmental impacts of congestion � air quality, for example � to be analyzed, and would also permit analysis of safety concerns, a matter of interest to Caltrans in particular. In a panel discussion after Ganson's presentation, representatives of other agencies discussed the need for additional technical information and better collaboration to make the VMT standard work. Mike Calandra, a senior transportation modeler at SANDAG, emphasized the need for accurate traffic counts in order to accurately estimate VMT and referred interested parties to a SANDAG white paper on the topic. Meanwhile, Marc Birnbaum, senior statewide transportation analysis advisor at Caltrans, said the agency will probably want to work more closely with local agencies in implementing the new standard. "We're not a land use agency, so when it comes to the land use side, we've kind of been beggars trying to seek mitigation, he said. "On the transportation side, we have relied on planning at regional and city and county level to justify our projects. So we're going to have to work a lot closer (with local agencies) to ensure that VMT is addressed earlier."

Advocates for affordable housing and advocates for environmental justice have a lot in common, but their goals and assumptions don't always mesh fully. Now the new cap-and-trade law is forcing them to have a more serious conversation. They're especially having to work out grantmaking guidelines under the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. It isn't easy. (For prior coverage of the AHSC guidelines debate see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3556.) Some of the difficulty was on display at a September 3 workshop in Oakland, held to discuss CalEPA's proposals on how to define "disadvantaged communities" under all of the cap-and-trade programs regulated by SB 535, and related proposals from the Air Resources Board (ARB) on how to define when such communities receive benefits. With comment on these proposals due September 15, the conversations in small-group discussions at the workshop had a note of urgency. Anxiety was especially high in the Bay Area because the whole region tended to score lower in the agencies' proposed statewide rating of disadvantage. A sign-on letter organized by the SB 535 Coalition, with signers from housing, environmental justice, poverty and transit groups, said grants out of cap-and-trade proceeds should genuinely help disadvantaged groups of people in significant ways, with care taken not to actually burden them. They said programs should not simply commit to spend money in geographic areas defined as disadvantaged. (Comments on the proposals are posted publicly on the site maintained for the disadvantage guidelines and workshops at http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/upcomingevents.htm.) Housing advocates also questioned whether the CalEPA approach to defining disadvantage, which emphasizes environmental hazards, might direct additional housing toward areas that are defined as disadvantaged precisely because they are unhealthy to live in. Another question was how directly the funding process should respond to the specific problems of a given disadvantaged place -- linguistic isolation, for example, or toxics from a particular industrial site, or extreme poverty in some far northern areas that have relatively low exposures to industry, agricultural chemicals or traffic. Regional differences on an environmentally-oriented metric At the center of the agencies' approach was CalEnviroScreen 2.0 (CES 2.0), the multiply workshopped, politically honed and visually astonishing mapping tool that CalEPA has developed to show intersections of environmental and social inequity. Available at http://oehha.ca.gov/ej/ces2.html, the tool now rates census tracts' levels of disadvantage according to measures of toxic exposures, environmental degradation, and aspects of public health and socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., asthma and poverty) that increase vulnerability to environmental hazards. Many Bay Area census tracts known for poverty and environmental hazards tend to score lower on CES 2.0 than areas with similar reputations in other regions of the state. CalEPA's proposed "cutpoint" for defining disadvantage is the worst 20% of statewide census tracts. Officials said that in the Los Angeles workshop some commenters from areas with very high disadvantage ratings actually called for the cutpoint to fall at 15%. In the Bay Area however, many areas with significant problems fell into a borderline area between the worst 20% and the worst 25% of census tracts according to statewide ratings. Hence some Bay Area advocates were calling for the cutpoint to fall at 25%. The Bay Area has some tracts rated very high for disadvantage, especially along the east fringe of San Francisco Bay, toward San Jose and along Interstate 80. But there are some surprising results too. Among the dense downtown neighborhoods of San Francisco, the highest disadvantage rating, of "86-90%", is shown for a tract east of Fifth Street near Moscone Center where many of the residents are seniors living in subsidized housing. Poverty, linguistic isolation, and exposure to environmental hazards are all real problems in that tract, but other downtown areas known for poverty amid gentrification, such as Sixth Street and the Tenderloin, show much lower disadvantage ratings. The Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood on San Francisco's southeast waterfront, with its long record of economic disinvestment and toxic exposures, shows up with worse disadvantage ratings than many other parts of the city. But even the highest ratings there fall in the "76-80%" range, i.e. they are within the worst 25% but would not qualify as "disadvantaged" under the 20% cutpoint rule. A similar result was worrying Janet Pygeorge, head of the Rodeo Citizens Association. Her concern is with Census Tract No. 6013358000, which covers the area of Rodeo around the Phillips 66 refinery on the Carquinez Strait. The tract has a CES 2.0 rating of "76-80%" with very high ratings for hazardous waste, asthma and traffic density, but lower concern ratings for some factors such as ozone, drinking water, pesticides and formal educational attainment. (Only agricultural pesticides, not urban ones, are considered in CES 2.0, a circumstance that led at least one commenter to ask if urban burdens were under-measured.) Pygeorge said the area is vulnerable to releases from the refinery and has dilapidated public housing near there that would be first to suffer in the case of a major toxic event. She wrote after the meeting, "Nobody is at fault, but we are here, drowning." Her submitted comment on the disadvantage determination process, describing effects of toxics on her neighbors, is at http://bit.ly/1quGE5p. Regarding the Bayview-Hunter's Point and Rodeo results, CalEPA Communications Director Alex Barnum said, "We are looking at that in the context of all the other comments." A further comment by Nancy Rieser, of Crockett Rodeo United to Defend the Environment (CRUDE), supported a "Method 6" proposed by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in addition to the five approaches proposed by CalEPA. Her comment, at http://bit.ly/1utoK3k, said "This method, which still relies on the CalEnviroScreen indicator data, ensures that communities with top ranks in a few indicators will be better represented." Her letter also suggested considering added factors including cost of living and urban pesticide use. David Armijo, General Manager of the AC Transit district, which serves Alameda and Contra Cota Counties, also submitted a comment supporting "Method 6" and suggesting disadvantage had been undercounted in areas such as West Oakland and Richmond. See http://bit.ly/1m229Jz. The Bay Area's lower ratings are in part because the region has comparatively clearer air, and it has a relatively small proportion of active industry and industrial agriculture. CalEPA officials noted the designers of the metric chose to weight current exposure indicators, such as toxic emissions from active industrial sites, more strongly than environmental degradation indicators, such as toxic materials buried in a Superfund site. They said the reason is that the exposure indicators are more likely to show a direct impact on health of people than the environmental indicators. As several housing activists noted, CES also doesn't directly consider differences in local cost of living. It arguably under-counts the challenges faced by people who, in addition to the CES 2.0 disadvantages, face high prices for housing and other essentials. Hence it considers the differences in air quality between, say, San Francisco and Bakersfield, but it doesn't directly address the differences in housing or food prices. (For comparison, HUD's map of Qualified Census Tracts, available for 2013 at http://www.huduser.org/QCT2013/qctmap.html, maps disadvantage very differently, noting census tracts where local incomes are exceptionally low compared with area median incomes, with area rent levels a secondary influence in the calculation. The results track CES 2.0 in some areas but diverge in others.) Agency officials said "CalEPA could look into a way of incorporating a cost of living indicator into a future version of CalEnviroScreen." They said the disadvantage definition decision due this month would be based on the current version of the CalEnviroScreen tool with its existing 19 indicators. They said "CalEPA did consider including rent burden as a factor, but plugging it into the tool, it had a high correlation with other indicators," so they decided instead to use unemployment because that added more to the analysis. Agency officials meanwhile noted there is a difference in capacity, in the sense of staffing and experience, between the Bay Area and the Central Valley. They suggested because organizations and local governments in that area often have greater capacity, they are likely to produce more grant applications. People in some other areas of the state have felt slighted as well. Jim Kemp, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, wrote at http://bit.ly/1tQOaZT that the proposed processes "do not appear to recognize any 'disadvanted communities' whatsoever in 33 of California's 58 counties." Why a 20% cutpoint, not 25%? Agency officials said one reason why the department chose 20% as the cut point initially was that many indicators of vulnerability affect about 20% of the state's population: for example, lack of a high school diploma, unemployment (realistically viewed), and lack of adequate health care. Additionally, they felt the focus on these areas should be concentrated, not proportional to the population. For most SB 535 programs, the officials noted, 25% is the minimum proportion of benefits required to serve disadvantaged populations according to current agency positions. So a 25% cutpoint would simply be imposing a fair-share rule that 25% of the funds should be spent on 25% of the population. The SB 535 Coalition's group letter had argued that the requirement for 25% of cap-and-trade proceeds to "benefit" disadvantaged communities should be in addition to the separate requirement that 10% of the funds benefit projects within those areas. Barnum said, "We plan to overshoot that 25%. We plan to maximize the benefits to disadvantaged communities. We view that 25% as a minimum." In the AHSC program, 50% must benefit disadvantaged communities and 50% must provide housing opportunities for lower-income households. Officials said the Fresno and Los Angeles groups spent more time discussing CalEPA's proposed alternative methodologies, which would change the use or weighting of the factors currently used by CES 2.0. They said the strongest focus was either on CES 2.0 as is, or on CalEPA's "Method 4", which would make weighting more similar between socioeconomic and pollution burdens. Major themes at the Oakland workshop were the call for a 25% cutpoint, the concern about cost of living and housing costs, and calls for funding to address the specific types of disadvantage affecting each area respectively. Some commenters who worked in housing also questioned whether the CalEnviroscreen approach, which was largely developed before housing entered the cap-and-trade picture, was properly applied to the new purpose of funding affordable housing, especially in the AHSC program. Felix AuYeung, a project manager with EAH Housing in San Rafael who attended the workshop, wrote afterward: "the other programs under Cap and Trade work well in terms of prioritizing capital directly into Disadvantaged Communities to invest in new infrastructure and transit, because it would directly improve that community. Housing, however, does not directly improve the conditions that make an area a Disadvantaged Community; in fact, many have argued that more housing in Disadvantaged Communities will put even more people directly in harm's way (for example, poor air quality)." Regarding the comment at the workshop that programs should address the particular problems that are worst in a given area, Arsenio Mataka, Assistant Secretary for Environmental Justice and Tribal Affairs, said afterward that the administrative agencies were looking at that goal. He said if, for example, a project is planting trees in an area with high unemployment, it may be a helpful goal to hire unemployed people to plant the trees. While he called it a valuable thing to strive for, he said it might not be possible in every case. Comments are due September 15 on the ARB and CalEPA drafts. They go to an Air Resources Board meeting September 18-19, and a CalEPA decision is due out by the end of the month. For an overview of public documents on the process see http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/auctionproceeds.htm.

For some affordable-housing activists and local governments, SB 628, the end-of-session bill expressing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal for Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts, isn't similar enough to the way redevelopment programs worked when they were shut down as of 2011. (See last week's detailed coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3563.) But columnist Steven Greenhut in the San Diego Union-Tribune greeted SB 628 by asking, "Redevelopment: Back with a vengeance?" Greenhut's widely circulated commentary warned against potential for "eminent-domain abuse and debt spending." See http://bit.ly/1olyiY2. It also picked up a sidelight on the bill's passage: "It passed by one vote in the Senate, with that coming from Senate Republican leader Bob Huff, whose wife has worked for one of the bill's prominent supporters (City of Industry's Ed Roski, who is pursing an NFL stadium there)." For that association he cites to a 2011 news report on Huff in the LA Times at http://lat.ms/1AxvTPM. Governor Brown is considered likely to sign the bill. EPA sides with critics of the Delta tunnel plan As you've likely heard, the EPA reported in late August that the Bay Delta Conservation Project (BDCP) twin-tunnels scheme may violate federal law by reducing fresh water flow into the Delta. For an account by the Sacramento Bee 's Matt Weiser, see http://bit.ly/1xHxxSS. Bettina Boxall of the LA Times also caught the story at http://lat.ms/1qgQ8RT. Via Boxall and the AllGov Web site, which posted its own account at http://bit.ly/1qEesML, here's a link to the 43-page EPA letter itself: http://1.usa.gov/1pbrCer. The letter is dated August 26. On August 27 the BDCP planning Web site announced at http://bit.ly/1rAodNT that the proponent agencies would publish a partially recirculated draft offering proposed revisions to the environmental impact documents "in early 2015." Editorializing at http://bit.ly/1pOmE7w, the Modesto Bee said it was about time the Delta project was questioned at a high level. The Stockton Record 's Alex Breitler noted that in the September 4 gubernatorial debate, Republican Neel Kashkari said the project should be stopped, while Governor Brown said the plan "isn't cooked yet". See http://bit.ly/1qgR9cB. Breitler has a little more of that debate exchange on his blog at http://bit.ly/1AxG1rS. Water bond ballot argument viewing period closes Sept 12 A 20-day public review period opened on the ballot arguments for the statewide water bond ballot measure. The period's closing date is September 12. For background from the Association of California Water Agencies see http://bit.ly/1orK4Af. For the review page itself see http://bit.ly/1tBSMjQ. The Sacramento Bee was reporting "strong early support" for the measure as of September 10. See http://bit.ly/1lUjoMY. Fresno City Council rejects planning grant rather than favor high-speed rail Fresno's City Council reportedly chose by a tough, close vote at its August 21 meeting to turn down $1 million in planning grants for the city's projected high-speed rail station. The Fresno Bee reported at http://bit.ly/1lSTo4F that while Mayor Ashley Swearengin supported the high-speed rail program, several City Council members opposed it intensely, viewing it as a misplaced use of money alongside local drought-worsened hardships. The August 21 vote was Swearengin's second try to get the planning grant through after a prior rejection. In discussing the issue's history August 10, reporter George Hostetter wrote in the Bee that "station planning in Fresno has turned into a proxy for a bigger fight on the bullet train's life or death." (See http://bit.ly/1wfPsM8.) The Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted to oppose the whole high-speed rail project in July. (See http://bit.ly/1o9zzVd.) Funding comes through for South Bay Area BART extension In August a major round of California transportation funding awards included a crucial $39 million installment to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to finish the BART extension through Milpitas and Berryessa stations toward arrival (at last) in San Jose. See http://bit.ly/1lSLd8q for the VTA official announcements. Urban ag gets planning support in Sacramento, arguments in San Francisco Urban agriculture was getting favorable attention in Sacramento -- the Bee reported at http://bit.ly/1lNen8R that the city is working on planning changes to allow more urban farming. But San Francisco's tax incentives for urban farming got slanged in an early-September snark spat of the week: the Atlantic published a commentary this month in which Conor Friedersdorf claimed San Francisco's tax incentives for urban farming were helping to drive up local rents. (See http://theatln.tc/1nWPqmN.) Co.Exist hooted at the idea similarly at http://bit.ly/1qIJv8y. But Eli Zigas of SF's local SPUR organization posted a rebuttal in CityLab at http://bit.ly/1tF5pNA saying San Francico's program "targets land that is unlikely to be developed in the near future" and makes use of places that might otherwise be neglected. Fresno extends General Plan comment deadline Fresno extended the comment deadline on its 2035 General Plan draft until October 9. For city materials and comment instructions see http://bit.ly/1rW40SY. A big-picture view of the Fig bike fight Drew Reed has a detailed look at the Figueroa Street bike-lane controversy in CityMetric at http://bit.ly/1pOpWb8, laying out some of the conflict that unfolded over the summer between bicycle activists and City Council member Gil Cedillo. For more from a bicyclists' point of view, see the "Fig4All" campaign's Web site at http://www.fig4all.org or its more frequently updated @fig4all Twitter account. For a sampling of this summer's arguments about it, and the text of a letter Cedillo distributed last summer, see Streetsblog LA at http://bit.ly/1oOrIMl. Carlsbad campaign forms against vacation rentals The Orange County area's Coast News reported at http://bit.ly/1shDmC7 that a campaign is afoot in Carlsbad (as in many larger towns) to limit short-term vacation rentals. Problems cited include neighborhood disruption and the economic pressure created by higher profits compared with long-term residential rentals. Kern blaming LA for waste dumping again Disputes over waste between Kern and Los Angeles Counties didn't end with a State Supreme Court ruling that sided against LA over its use of sewage "biosolids" as fertilizer on Kern County land. (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3561). Now the LA Times reports Kern is trying to fine its richer neighbor up to $895,000 for allegedly dumping 100 tons of yard trimmings near Lebec without observing quarantine rules for agricultural pests. See http://lat.ms/1pC1BVU. Brown likely to sign plastic bag bill; local reactions vary SB 270, the bill by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, to ban single-use plastic bags, has become, if anything, further politicized since it squeaked through the Legislature in the end-of-session rush. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3564 on the bill's difficult ride last month.) Governor Jerry Brown still hasn't formally signed the bill, but during the September 4 gubernatorial debate, Brown said, he would "probably" sign it. (Republican candidate Neel Kashkari said he wouldn't.) See http://lat.ms/1rFh0tW for details. Meanwhile the Orange County Tea Party blog made liberal (or, anyhow, ample) use of the epithet "nanny-state" in relaying local news reports on the state of bags in Huntington Beach via http://bit.ly/WRxWkU. As the blog noted, the Orange County Register reported the Huntington Beach City Council was waiting for Brown's decision to decide whether to undo its own bag ban. See http://bit.ly/1Brp4BE. Whereas in San Luis Obispo (a district possibly less beset with concern for the right to bear paper or plastic), the League of California Cities spotted an item at http://bit.ly/1p5Yiq3 saying the City Council has moved on from plastic bags toward also restricting polystyrene, including Styrofoam. Do Brown and Kashkari really agree on 'CEQA reform'? Further in the Brown-Kashkari debate, the Sacramento-area Fox News 40 station reported at http://bit.ly/ZgAbQ5, "Brown, Kashkari Agree on CEQA Reform During Debate." The station highlighted a clip from the debate that focused on the special SB 743 provisions for the Sacramento Kings arena project, with a political commentator adding, "If the Kings can get it, why shouldn't everyone get it?". On the other hand, Ethan Elkind noted on his blog that Brown had called Kashkari's approach to CEQA "glib". Elkind had a few further skeptical things to say about Kashkari's view of the subject at http://bit.ly/1shVz2k. In Other News -- Los Angeles Metrolink reported a continuing decline in fares and ridership. The LA Times has details at http://lat.ms/1lSIE6f. The LA Times at http://lat.ms/1oW1ZnD reported on a planning effort to densify and renew investment in the part-built Warner Center in Woodland Hills, in part by zoning for more commercial development and raising height restrictions. Best, Best & Krieger (at http://bit.ly/1tvCjfT) noted a libertarian take on California's housing affordability crisis and CEQA in The Economist at http://econ.st/1qKT1YT. The commentary draws partly on last month's affordability-shortage report by the California Housing Partnership Corporation at http://chpc.net/ (and see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3561). A widely mirrored Los Angeles Daily News editorial blamed CEQA for the Tesla factory's move to Nevada -- see http://bit.ly/1lSJHmG. A study at UC Davis reported California has allocated five times more surface water than exists in the state. See http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10999. A federal draft Environmental Impact Study is out for the Temperance Flat dam project. The Fresno Bee has details at http://bit.ly/1qgGUVu (via the Maven's Notebook blog). the DEIS itself is at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=821. Comments are due October 21. The state Water Board is accepting comment until October 10 on a proposed amendment to local wastewater treatment rules, including for "wet weather overflows". The amendment has already passed San Francisco's regional water board and is now up for state-level approval. See http://bit.ly/1qgJ33E. A report by the Pacific Institute at http://pacinst.org/publication/hazards-toll/ says "massive public health and environmental costs" could result if no remediation work is done on the Salton Sea. The San Bernardino County Sun has details at http://bit.ly/1qAk6PC. The Sacramento Bee reports the Nature Conservancy has taken to renting wetlands from rice farmers for birds: http://bit.ly/1lSIyM1

The partnership that owns a mobile home park in Fillmore, California received a Ninth Circuit determination September 2 that it has standing to sue the city over "interference" with its application to subdivide the park. The El Dorado Estates park was seniors-only when its owner applied to subdivide the property. In the court's description, the partnership alleged that city officials imposed "unreasonable delays and extralegal conditions" on the subdivision application for fear that, if approved, it might allow families to move in. The partnership therefore alleged it had suffered losses as a result of discrimination prohibited under the Fair Housing Act. Without reaching the merits, the court found the partnership had standing to pursue its claim in federal court because it alleged it had suffered losses directly in the form of extra expenses caused by the city's allegedly unfair treatment of its application. The case is El Dorado Estates v. City of Fillmore . For the opinion see http://1.usa.gov/1qxmtkT. 'Friendly Village' owners blocked from raising rents The San Jose Mercury News reports a federal judge has sided with the city of Milpitas in its effort to stop the owners of "Friendly Village Mobilehome Estates" from raising their tenants' rents by 50 to 90 percent. The city's rental review board had found the proposed increases violated the local mobile home rent control ordinance. For details see the Mercury News report at http://bit.ly/YvOY9B. ADA claim upheld over street parking for local government offices The Ninth Circuit ruled September 5 that a wheelchair user's right of access to local government offices in the city of Lomita included his need for accessible diagonal-stall on-street parking outside the buildings. The city had argued unsuccessfully that since no specific ADA regulations existed specifically for on-street parking, it was not required to provide that type of access. For the opinion see 1.usa.gov/1xmoqqC. More of the ParkMerced decision ordered published The California First District Court of Appeal, in two increments on consecutive days, ordered publication for all of Part II of the ruling that approved San Francisco's ParkMerced expansion project. Part II addresses General Plan consistency. Part III, the CEQA review, remains unpublished. The case is San Francisco Tomorrow v. City and County of San Francisco . See http://bit.ly/1mGwnNa for the online docket showing the publication history and http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A137753N.PDF for the opinion. Initial reports on effects of the decisions appeared in the SF Chronicle at http://bit.ly/1qpnusx and the SF Business Times at http://bit.ly/1w8ikcI. The city's page for this large, dense project in the west of the city is at http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=2529. Newhall Ranch litigation inches along with Cal Supremes In the Newhall Ranch litigation before the State Supreme Court, the plaintiffs'/respondents' opening briefs on the merits have been filed (see http://bit.ly/1uvpcwY), and the Court has refused to grant a stay to the related case of Friends of the Santa Clara River v. CA2/5 (County of Los Angeles) . See http://bit.ly/ZgpqNL. Check your local rail trail rights In case you missed the case of Brandt Trust v. U.S. , in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated certain "rail trail" rights, the Abbott and Kindermann law firm has a detailed new writeup at http://bit.ly/WGCOZC.

A developer proposing to replace two century-old houses in Fresno with 28 new two-story townhouses lost its appeal of a CEQA writ of mandate but won significant points from the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Citizens for the Restoration of L Street v. City of Fresno . The August 29 ruling upheld the trial court's finding that the city failed to comply with CEQA in granting approvals for the houses to be demolished and the project built. But it nevertheless found the trial court properly applied the "substantial evidence" test in declining to second-guess the city's determination that the houses were not so historic as to qualify for an EIR review of their proposed demolition. The plaintiff citizens' group had opposed the project, seeking to have the houses preserved both for their own sake and as part of a larger proposed historic district. One house had been designated a "Heritage Property" but the court's narrative said both were "in disrepair." Fresno's Historic Preservation Commission issued approvals to demolish both houses; the City Council endorsed its action. A month after the last city action in late 2011, the plaintiff group's writ petition was filed -- and within that same week, both houses were demolished. The court refused to consider the question moot, allowing the parties to continue disputing whether the Preservation Commission had acted with proper authority and whether it properly determined the houses lacked "historical resource" status. The trial court granted the plaintiffs' writ petition based on city officials' procedural errors. However, it held that the Preservation Commission properly held the houses were not sufficiently historic. In August the Fifth District upheld both of the trial court's actions. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fifth District Court of Appeal, Justice Donald Franson, Jr., joined by Justices Dennis Cornell and Jennifer Detjen, held that Fresno, and local lead agencies in general, do have power "to delegate authority to approve a mitigated negative declaration and a project to a nonelected decisionmaking body" such as the Preservation Commission. However, it found that in this case Fresno, by its municipal code, "did not actually authorize the Preservation Commission to (1) complete the environmental review required by CEQA and (2) approve the mitigated negative declaration," hence that the resulting approvals did not comply with CEQA. Further, Franson's opinion found deficiencies in the "Notice of Intent to Adopt a Mitigated Negative Declaration". Although the City Council endorsed the Preservation Commission's actions in a separate vote, Franson found the Council's action did not cure defects in the initial process. He found the Council did not genuinely review the matter using its own independent judgment under CEQA-compliant procedures, and it approved only the mitigated negative declaration rather than the demolition permit or the proposed project itself. Although the houses were long gone, Franson wrote that the matter was still not moot because it was still possible to grant a form of relief: if the court saw fit to do so, it could still require the City to prepare an EIR for the project replacing the houses. However, the court found there was no need for an EIR because whether or not the plaintiff presented a "fair argument" for the properties' "historical resource" status, the necessary standard for the court to apply in evaluating the "historical resource" determination was one of "substantial evidence", as previously held in Valley Advocates v. City of Fresno (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 1039. So although the court did uphold the writ based on the city's procedural errors, it did not reject the city's decision to deny "historical resource" status to the buildings. The case is http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/F066498.PDF. The Stoel Rives firm, which represented the city and the developer in the case, has its own detailed writeup at http://bit.ly/1qKrgzD. Art Coon of Miller Starr Regalia has an analysis at http://bit.ly/1p5u6vb.

Pismo Beach: Price Canyon planning Residents of Pismo Beach will vote in November on a measure that will give them more say in development decisions involving a large swath of land that few visitors to the city ever see. It's located inland in Price Canyon, behind the coastal Santa Lucia Mountains that flank the city. The 1,100 acres that are at the center of debate in Measure H-14 are currently in unincorporated county land, but are located in the city's sphere of influence. The city council approved an EIR for a mixed-use development there in 2013. Called Spanish Springs, the development would include over 400 single family and multifamily homes, a hotel, a nine hole golf course and vineyards. It was proposed by developer Stephen Hester of Orange County. After the project was approved, opponents from a group called Save Price Canyon got the city council to rescind approval of the EIR in October 2013. Save Price Canyon collected enough signatures at the time to force the council to either rescind the development EIR or place the measure before the voters in a referendum. Sheila Blake, a member of Save Price Canyon, said residents don't want development in the area, which she describes as a "fire-trapped canyon."    "There's no way out," she said, adding, "There's no water to supply a huge mega-development." Blake and another member of Save Price Canyon are also candidates for the city council in the November election. After succeeding in their 2013 fight against Spanish Springs, members of Save Price Canyon again collected signatures, and put H-14 on the upcoming ballot, to give local residents a chance to vote on the project if it ever comes up again, Blake explained. The measure amends the city's general plan to zone the area as a watershed and resource management area, and limits the area to primarily agricultural uses for the next 30 years. Those limits only apply if the land is annexed into the city, according to an analysis of the measure prepared by the city attorney. Blake thinks the measure will pass. "Most people have no interest in becoming another Huntington Beach," she said. "We're not in favor of the measure," said developer Hester, from his Orange County office. He called the measure "poorly crafted." Costa Mesa: 405 freeway toll lanes While Los Angeles' efforts to widen its 405 freeway have garnered national attention, Orange County also has struggled with congestion along its stretch of the famed freeway, which runs close to many of its coastal cities. A 14-mile section between Seal Beach and Costa Mesa carries 375,000 vehicles a day, and traffic volumes are expected to increase by 35 percent by 2040, according to Caltrans, which is overseeing an expansion project there. Caltrans announced plans in July to add two toll lanes to the highway, as part of an overall expansion project. Local cities cried foul. One of them, Costa Mesa, has moved its protest on the November ballot, asking its residents to vote on a measure saying the toll lanes are a bad idea. To increase its impact, mayors and elected officials from other communities also signed the ballot statement, said Costa Mesa Mayor Jim Righeimer. "At this point, it's a political issue," said Righeimer. "Our city is making a statement to the Governor." Three lanes of the widened San Diego Freeway are affected by the new project. A new lane will be built with money from an earlier Orange County sales tax measure called M2, which passed in 2006. That lane will be free to commuters. But Caltrans also plans to convert two lanes in the current freeway to toll lanes. One of those lanes is a current carpool lane, and the second lane can now be used without paying a toll. Righeimer said $1 billion of the $1.3 billion project cost is coming from Orange County voters, who increased their sales tax to pay for the expansion. Caltrans is expected to pay the remaining $300 million from state funds. Righeimer said that most of the expansion cost is to widen more than 15 bridges that cross the freeway. He said voters were never told a toll road would result from the sales tax. He said the new toll road could cost commuters $19 for a round trip. Caltrans has stated it is using different money to bring the toll lanes to the freeway. "We're not using that sales tax money to do the toll lanes," said Caltrans spokeswoman Yvonne Washington. El Dorado County: growth and density controls El Dorado County voters are no strangers to ballot box planning measures. This fall, voters will have three on their ballot. The county, which extends from the Sierra foothills to South Lake Tahoe, has been at the center of growth battles for years, as its population has nearly doubled from 85,000 in 1980 to 156,000 in 2000. A landmark growth control measure passed in November 1998, Measure Y, affected some development. A July 1998 CP&DR article noted that the county's general plan called for a population of 260,000 in 2015. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-1324.) But growth slowed, and the county had 181,000 residents in 2013. Measure M, also called "Fix Highway 50", would place limits on new housing, and would force the county to be more specific about the requirements of Measure Y, including some of its traffic requirements. Highway 50 is the main road through the county to Lake Tahoe. "We can't approve any more large subdivisions unless the road capacity is there," said Don Van Dyke, a member of Rural Communities United, which placed the measure on the ballot. The county uses its own traffic numbers to approve development projects, Van Dyke explained, while the ballot measure will force the county to use Caltrans' figures. Van Dyke said the measure will have no impact on 16,000 residential parcels that have already been approved in the county, but would affect proposals on 17,000 more units.     A second environmental measure, Measure O, was placed on the ballot by residents who oppose San Stino, a proposed 1,000-home subdivision near Shingle Springs, according to the Sacramento Bee . The project hasn't yet been voted on by the county's board of supervisors. The measure would also restrict high density construction in other parts of the county. A third ballot question, Measure N, was placed on the ballot by a Sacramento builders' group, Region Builders. It promised to extend Measure Y past its current expiration in 2018, to 2025.The measure, which focused on funding sources to expand Highway 50, was later abandoned by Region Builders, which did not submit a ballot argument in favor of it. Several building groups are reported to be opposing all the El Dorado County measures.

The California legislative session ended this Labor Day weekend. Now it's all about the Governor's signing decisions. We'll have more on end-of-session legislative outcomes as the news shakes out but here are some preliminary items: SB 270 plastic bag law goes to Governor The AB 270 ban on single-use plastic bags had a tough time during the Legislature's final week but made it through after all. As we noted in last week's news briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3561, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) pulled support from the bill right before an August 25 vote in the Assembly that narrowly ran against it.  As of August 28, however, the UFCW was back on board. Per the Sacramento Bee , "Central to the union's reversal was a provision allowing grocery stores to offer paper or reusable bags for a minimum 10-cent fee." See http://bit.ly/1tPevov. The Bee reported the bill passed the Senate 22-15 Friday, sending the bill to Governor Jerry Brown to be considered for signature. The Bee called the plastic bag ban "one of the most heavily lobbied issues in the final days of the legislative session." See http://bit.ly/1sRJ9Mg. As we reported last week, pro and con accounts traded barbs on Twitter. According to the Mercury News , one lobbyist sent letters against the bill to legislators on behalf of a group called "Familias Latinas de California"; the newspaper said it was "run by political consultants fighting the ban." See http://bit.ly/1u1584f. Meanwhile, Monterey County and the city of Salinas both adopted plastic bag bans in late August. (See http://bit.ly/1nqUD6C.) The terms of local bans will be grandfathered under the new statewide statute if they were either adopted or passed at first reading before September 1, 2014. American Canyon's City Council heard a presentation August 19 on a possible plastic bag ban (via League of California Cities -- see http://bit.ly/1ozqMYU) but it wasn't clear if the Council had been able to meet the September 1 deadline. (For prior coverage of plastic bag bans' history and litigation see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3481.) Last-minute bid to keep Garcia's Coastal Commission seat fails A late legislative effort failed to save the eligibility of Coastal Commissioner Robert Garcia to remain on the Commission after becoming mayor of Long Beach. Under the terms of Garcia's appointment to the Commission, he was eligible only while he was a member of a city council or board of supervisors, but not once he became Mayor. On August 18, Assemblymember Anthony Rendon converted AB 1759 into a gut-and-amend that would allow Garcia to continue to serve. But the proposal didn't pass after all. The state legislative tracking site shows the bill's last bit of progress was at the gut-and-amend stage on August 18, after which the site says it was "withdrawn from committee" and re-referred to the Rules Committee as of August 19: http://bit.ly/1x4i7aW. The story is covered fully by the Capitol Weekly at http://bit.ly/1sWfb9Y and in a quick item by the Bee at http://bit.ly/1tpXEuQ. For prior coverage of Garcia's eligibility to serve on the Commission, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3511. Garcia's term on the Commission accordingly ends September 13, 60 days after the end of his term on the council. (See http://bit.ly/1q7RPhE.) The Senate President Pro Tem, currently Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has power to appoint a successor to Garcia. Sen. Kevin De León, D-Los Angeles, will succeed Steinberg as pro tem in October. See http://lat.ms/1kI5uGB. The Weekly suggested the AB 1759 effort was led by Sen. Ricardo Lara, "D-Bell Gardens, whose district includes a piece of Long Beach." The Long Beach Report blog posted material at http://www.lbreport.com/news/aug14/coastcom2.htm, attributed to anonymous "conservation activists" and not otherwise confirmed, that suggested the bill's failure to advance represented a definite choice by the Legislature's Democratic leadership. The blog named 15 local officials in Los Angeles and Orange Counties who it said were under consideration to succeed Garcia. Post-redevelopment bills pile up on the Governor's desk With bills related to the dissolution of redevelopment agencies, the question all year has been not so much what the Legislature can pass, as what Governor Brown is willing to sign. So the suspense is nowhere near gone. As noted separately at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3563, the AB 2280 bill to revive a limited quasi-redevelopment tax increment financing mechanism passed the Legislature last week with doubtful further prospects, while a bill Brown was said to support, the SB 628 gut-and-amend on infrastructure financing districts, passed early Saturday morning, August 30. Both of those bills were still waiting for Brown's attention. Additionally, as of this writing the League of California Cities' "Hot Bills" tracking page at http://bit.ly/1nRfHmu showed the following post-Redevelopment bills as passed: AB 1450, on pension-related tax revenues. AB 2493, to allow use of more bond proceeds to finish redevelopment projects SB 1129, a much-watched post-redevelopment "cleanup" bill to ease the redevelopment dissolution process for successor agencies. The League's tally showed AB 1582, on successor agencies' loan repayment interest rates, made it only to a third reading, hence failed to pass the Legislature. In other major legislative moves -- The momentous Pavley-Dickinson groundwater regulation package, consisting of AB 1739, SB 1168, and SB 1319, passed the Senate August 27. The Association of CA Water Agencies (ACWA) reported on that vote at http://bit.ly/1nIQBWU. The three bills passed the full Legislature August 29. For details see ACWA again at http://bit.ly/1tVC4MH and, e.g., the Chico News and Review (via the Maven's Notebook blog) at http://bit.ly/1B9yJwI. AB 52, the CEQA bill on consultation with Native American tribes over projects potentially affecting tribal cultural resources, passed with the amendments discussed in last week's news briefs at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3561.  See the state legislative tracking page at http://bit.ly/1wyoe7e. The bill's passage is confirmed by multiple Twitter comments on the #AB52 hashtag, including one by tribal issues strategist Jacob Mejia at https://twitter.com/MrJacobMejia/status/505115365437751296. AB 1839, the film production tax credit, passed and was expected to be signed by Governor Brown. See http://lat.ms/1lfjHS2 for LA Times coverage, http://bit.ly/1qwKFUq for formal legislative history, and the August 27 joint statement by Brown and legislative leaders on the bill at http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=18670. The Sacramento Bee reported August 25 that the campaign to stop or delay the "gas tax" portion of AB 32 implementation was "over for the year." See http://bit.ly/1q2t0oJ. The legislative vehicle for that purpose, Assemblymember Henry Perea's AB 69, never formally emerged from its early-July committee referral, reportedly due to opposition from Senator Steinberg. The LA Times reported during Labor Day weekend that it appeared there would be no legislative deal to grant tax breaks to the Tesla company as an inducement to build its battery factory in California. See http://lat.ms/1nrTFqK. SB 1309, which Senator Steinberg emptied out and readied as a legislative vehicle for Tesla in June, remained empty except for generic placeholder text as of the end of the session. See the legislative history at http://bit.ly/1u0hGI1. Tesla's Elon Musk didn't end the session empty-handed, though. As previously reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3508, tax advantages enacted under AB 777 that would aid Musk's SpaceX company have been finding regulatory expression over the past several months at the Board of Equalization. An notice arrived a few days ago from the Board saying that amendments to its Property Tax Rule 133, the rule that now exempts certain space rockets from property tax by calling them "business inventory," was approved in final form August 21, to take effect October 1. See https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/ptr133.htm. The Legislature passed SB 1077, to create a pilot program testing an approach to vehicle taxation by measuring miles traveled. See the League of California Cities' tracking page at http://bit.ly/1zBHkpo. As previously reported the bill was supported by the Southern California Association of Governments (see http://bit.ly/1nkxKTG) but had raised privacy concerns (see http://lat.ms/1jwnuHj). Sen. Lois Wolk's SB 614, to finance water and other infrastructure in disadvantaged unincorporated communities, passed the Legislature August 25. For her press release see http://bit.ly/1pkQ1hv. The tracking page is at http://bit.ly/1B9zqpC.

It looks like Governor Jerry Brown's vision for Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts will become law. Meanwhile, a minor revival of redevelopment has also reached the Governor's desk but Brown appears likely to veto it. In the closing days of the California legislative session, a bill expressing Brown's longstanding goals for Infrastructure Financing Districts (IFDs) came to the floor through a gut-and-amend of SB 628, by State Sen. Jim Beall, D-Campbell. The substitute amendment went on the record Tuesday, August 26. It passed the Legislature without further amendment in the year's closing session early Saturday morning, August 30, and was sent on to the Governor. If, as expected, the Governor signs it, SB 628 would expand the existing but underused mechanism of IFDs, with the idea that they could take up some former functions of the state's abolished local redevelopment districts. The mechanism would be simpler, more focused on infrastructure, and more dependent on electoral approval, without the flexibility or protections for the existing urban public that were built and bashed into Redevelopment over the years. The bill's language reportedly came from the Governor's office. It was supported energetically by the California Economic Summit organization. (The Summit's op-ed-style case for the bill, which Beall linked to prominently on his legislative Web site, is at http://bit.ly/1pfneLr.) But the bill alarmed housing advocates, who warned that it could lead to displacement of poorer neighborhoods as in the redevelopment "blight" clearances of the middle 20th century. And while the League of California Cities supported SB 628, the League's legislative director, Dan Carigg, described it as a "helpful" tool that should be one of several, saying it did not by itself replace the usefulness of redevelopment funding mechanisms to serve populated urban areas. The Governor's press office, in response to a detailed request for comment, wrote: "SB 628 is consistent with the administration's previous proposal regarding infrastructure financing districts." A very different bill, AB 2280 by Assemblymember Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, made it to the Governor's desk as of August 27 after extended negotiations (partly through its 2013 predecessor, AB 1080) that gathered support from business, local government and housing advocates. But the odds were still running against the Governor's signing it. AB 2280 would revive redevelopment-style tax-increment financing in narrowly chosen urban areas, with 25% affordable housing set-asides. Those provisions are more reassuring to housing and local-government advocates but more likely to trigger the Governor's opposition to former redevelopment mechanisms and his skepticism toward housing affordability restrictions. Compared with its last formal expression in the May budget proposal revision, the Enhanced IFD's legislative language picked up two major changes in SB 628. The bill removed a prior 55% popular vote requirement to create an Enhanced IFD, though it still requires a 55% vote for any such district to issue bonds. Carigg characterized this as the major change since May. But he still said the 55% requirement for bond issues made Enhanced IFDs more likely to be created where "it's less populated, or on the edge of town." Legislative staff veteran Fred Silva, now a senior fiscal policy advisor to California Forward and staff to the California Economic Summit "infrastructure action team", said his group and the League had each advocated for the single 55% vote, to be required only at the stage of issuing bonds, rather than requiring two votes, first to create the district and then to issue the bonds. Brian Augusta, a legislative advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, noted SB 628 also softened a requirement on post-redevelopment disputes, appearing in the bill's proposed new Sec. 53398.54 of the Government Code. As of the May revise this provision would have blocked local governments and/or special districts from making use of the Enhanced IFD mechanism unless they first had "resolved all litigation" with the state over specified statutes related to the redevelopment dissolution process, involving either themselves or their successor redevelopment agencies. But in the parallel SB 628 provision, as Augusta noted, "it says that they can't use any assets of a former redevelopment agency that are the subject of litigation to 'benefit' the new IFD entity." The requirement remains in place in SB 628 that each would-be Enhanced IFD creator must first receive a Department of Finance "finding of completion" regarding assets managed by the successor agency for its former redevelopment agency. Augusta wrote that the requirement to resolve litigation "was a big sticking point, I am told, in discussions between the Governor's office and legislative leaders. Apparently the revised language was satisfactory to both sides." The Governor had been pushing all year to expand the IFD mechanism to perform selected redevelopment functions, rather than re-enact the old Redevelopment laws and processes. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3480 on the post-Redevelopment picture as of mid-spring, http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3492 on the IFDs proposal in the May revise.) The relevant May Revise language is at http://bit.ly/1qqn4ol. For comparison the SB 628 bill as passed is on the state legislative tracking site at http://bit.ly/Z38wlC. Silva said the May revise already reflected a policy his group had supported: authorization to include vehicle license fee "backfill" funds as a source of IFD financing. Carigg said that over the Legislature's summer break the League sought something more along the lines of Sen. Lois Wolk's SB 33, which was not successful in the 2013-14 session. He still saw a need to have some financing mechanism available that is patterned after "the proven tool of the past, which is redevelopment." He said, "If you're going to be realistic about the challenges of urban California," addressing them would take more than SB 628. Housing advocates said the bill did not contain adequate protections against displacement, nor any requirements to fund or build affordable housing. They warned that housing protections of these types were painstakingly added to redevelopment law because of lessons learned from the slum-clearance devastations of the twentieth century, and dropping them risked having to learn those lessons over again. Augusta's concern was for the possible loss of affordability and anti-displacement legal protections reflecting 70 years of lessons learned on redevelopment. He said it took creation of Redevelopment's low- and moderate-income housing fund and the 20-percent housing set-aside obligation to stop the program's original gentrifying effects, together with replacement housing requirements and housing production requirements assuring that affordable housing would be built in redevelopment areas. Although SB 628 does include some housing replacement and relocation protections, he described it as a redevelopment tool of a type "that often drives gentrification, displacement" without including the old tools that were developed to prevent it. Hence he called it "kind of half a loaf." He said those concerns were expressed to the Assembly and the Governor's office but word came back that SB 628 in its current form was what the Governor was willing to sign. The bill does provide some anti-displacement and relocation provisions, including that if an IFD removes affordable housing, it must be replaced within two years by "the construction or rehabilitation, for rent or sale to persons or families of low or moderate income" of an equal number of units if the removed units were home to people of "low or moderate income," or 25% of the units if the residents themselves were not of "low or moderate income." Affordability restrictions are to apply for 55 years to rentals or for 45 years to "owner-occupied units," with an alternative option to set up an equity-sharing agreement. Silva said housing advocates were concerned, though, he argued, unduly so, about the bill's definition of "low or moderate income" by reference to Health and Safety Code Sec. 50093. Section 50093 under current law defines "Persons and families of low or moderate income" as "persons and families whose income does not exceed 120 percent of area median income," adjusted for family size. The current official state income limits under Sec. 50093 appear at http://www.hcd.ca.gov/hpd/hrc/rep/state/inc2k14.pdf. They give San Francisco's area median income for a four-person household in 2014 as $103,000 per year and Los Angeles County's as $64,800 per year. As of early 2013 the maximum CalWORKS cash aid payment for a household with four eligible persons was $762 per month. (See http://bit.ly/1pvGGtf.) While some spoke of fixing the legislation in a later cleanup bill, policy director John Bauters of Housing California sent a furious series of Twitter messages during the SB 628 gut-and-amend's brief pendency to liberal legislative leaders, once calling it a "horrible bill" and repeatedly saying "#SB628 will displace people of color from their communities. Vote NO!" Arriving on the floor late and suddenly, the bill was not amended. Housing advocates had hoped to add an anti-displacement amendment but could not. Silva said in addition to housing relocation provisions, he expected cleanup legislation on the process for forming districts and setting up their financing with public participation -- especially the question of whether a city that initiated formation of a district should be the only author of its financing plan, if the district included other local governments or districts as partners. Silva said the bill's history was an instance of "one of the dilemmas where the Administration is working through the elements of a proposal and is not prepared to have a proposal heard and worked on by a legislative policy committee." Augusta said work on a cleanup bill was likely to start in January, with any cleanup amendments likely to take effect in the fall of 2015 -- timing that might not be a huge problem because he didn't expect "a gold rush" to create IFDs after the bill's signing. He said, "The administration and the Speaker have committed to working next year to clean up the relocation and replacement housing provisions, and that's good. We are also looking to have the broader conversation about putting in place requirements and funding for affordable housing, because that is a key anti-displacement tool that is missing from this." Silva argued that the objectives of the new Enhanced IFDs would be to create infrastructure, not so much to build housing. He suggested the example of a five-square-mile district, partly within a city limit, for which a city, its surrounding county, and the local water district might choose to layer together their tax increment eligibilities to cooperate on financing a stormwater capture project. Multiple districts would be most likely to agree on infrastructure types of projects, he suggested. Silva noted that cities have extremely varied policy positions on whether to favor affordable housing, and said "we're silent on that question because the Economic Summit wanted to tools available as opposed to requirements that said, 'whatever you're going to do, you have to set money aside for a particular purpose'," because "purposes are always going to be different." He said his own group and the Governor's office had concluded adequate tools were needed for infrastructure investment, not "the old redevelopment model that had more of a target to reduce blight." Responses by the Western Center on Law and Poverty to relevant parts of the May Revise are at http://bit.ly/1lT16rZ and http://bit.ly/1lAtRqo. The League of California Cities' response to the May Revise is at http://bit.ly/1lDa76W.

It can sound like a simple step, to end Level of Service (LOS) metrics in CEQA transportation analysis. The more conceptually elegant Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) metric is easy to welcome in the abstract, with its incentives for shared and active transportation, its arguably simpler calculation methods, its potential to realign CEQA analysis with state climate protection law – and most of all, its escape from the addictive spiral of induced demand for broad, free-flowing highways that, under the logic of LOS analysis, always need widening again. But in early August the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) published a detailed discussion draft setting out an alternative transportation impacts metric in compliance with last year's SB 743 mandate. And alongside the big-picture discussions of environmentally conscious innovation, the technical arguments began. Last week, with the appearance of a highly critical online comment from the Holland & Knight law firm, the depth of the disagreements involved became clearer. The state-level policy people who watch this matter aren't so much debating the merits of rail lines or bike lanes. Nor are any of them professing special love for the LOS metric or the internal combustion engine. They're talking about which LOS analyses are still going to be around (a lot), and who may now apply which version of VMT analysis under CEQA, and whether suggested means of reducing VMT represent constructive reforms or potentially "shackling" mandates, and what mix of fresh data with safe assumptions can be used, and whose fault it will be if the assumptions are wrong, and how much this all needs to have to do with the unforgiving math of AB 32 emissions reductions. Only the 'beginning of the end of LOS' Amanda Eaken, the sustainable communities deputy director with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said "I hope this is the beginning of the end of LOS." But for now the likelihood is that VMT and LOS analyses will both continue to be used, though somewhat differently than before, each still representing important means of negotiating what it means to take up space, and who has power to do so. VMT analysis is already familiar under the Clean Air Act and, more recently, from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions analysis and Sustainable Communities Strategies under SB 375. Christopher Calfee, Senior Counsel with OPR, called it "a different way of measuring transportation impacts using tools that people are already familiar with" that would involve "building on that information that's already been developed." Environmental and transit advocates have their criticisms of the proposed draft but on the whole they like it better than do advocates for developers. For one thing, advocates had not been certain that the proposed new standards would apply statewide – and they do. Or rather, if the guidelines are adopted they'll begin to apply statewide under a phase-in schedule starting with developments within half a mile of transit, and will cover the whole state as of January 1, 2016. NRDC senior attorney David Pettit called it "properly aggressive as to the dates of phase-in." Eaken said state agencies, including Caltrans, were solidly behind the plan. As Bill Fulton explains http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3549, local governments will still be applying LOS standards for reasons unrelated to CEQA. These are likely to include general plan provisions, zoning, safety, municipal Congestion Management Programs and impact fee programs. As he also mentions, analysis within CEQA may use LOS approaches to analyze some impacts including noise and air quality – though under the proposed guidelines "automobile delay" (congestion) would not be treated as an environmental impact in itself. (Eaken said she and representatives of the Council of Infill Builders pushed successfully for the clarification regarding auto delay, and it "is going to change things fundamentally.") 'Radical mitigation recommendations'? Amanda Monchamp, a partner with the Holland & Knight law firm who works on land use and environmental issues, called the draft "far broader and more complicated than the statute actually requires," with "a huge list of mitigation measures" applicable to infill projects, and with continuing requirements for LOS analysis on air quality, noise and "hot spots". Since Monchamp's comments, the Holland & Knight firm has posted an aggressively phrased critical commentary on the draft. The comment is primarily authored by partner Jennifer Hernandez, with Monchamp and another attorney as coauthors. It charges that "OPR's VMT proposal goes far beyond CEQA's statutory scope by recommending mitigation measures that delve into socioeconomic issues, undermine regional and local greenhouse gas reduction plans, attempt to erode local agency constitutional land use policy authority, and increase the cost, complexity and litigation uncertainty already inherent in CEQA." The Holland & Knight comment refers to Subdivision II(d)(6) in a proposed amendment to Appendix F of the guidelines, which lists 14 "potential measures to reduce" a project's VMT. The comment characterizes them as "radical mitigation recommendations". The listed possibilities for reducing VMT include "Improving or increasing access to housing," "Increasing access to common goods and services such as groceries, schools, and daycare, "Incorporating affordable housing into the project," "Improving the jobs/housing fit of a community," and assorted other measures including traffic calming and bicycle parking. The firm's argument attacks each of these suggested items as a possible means of imposing new demands or mandates on developers beyond the scope of existing CEQA requirements. The commentary argues the existing proposal should be "tabled," and Monchamp said she would be calling for "a shorter, cleaner, more precise change" consistent with SB 743's direction but more narrowly tailored and more effective in facilitating infill. The dual use of LOS and VMT analyses concerned Monchamp as a possible cause of extra work for project proponents. She mentioned, for example, the North San Jose area-wide traffic mitigation process, which imposes a clearly defined traffic mitigation fee on projects. She said that process was all LOS-based, whereas, under the new state-level requirements, VMT analysis would have to be added for projects in that area. Prospects of extra paperwork and uncertainty likewise concerned Mott Smith of Civic Enterprise Associates LLC, a board member with the Council of Infill Builders. Smith viewed rules on matters like air quality and noise impacts as "back doors for people to reintroduce LOS" into the CEQA environmental process. With requirements such as general plan consistency determinations in the mix, he said builders could end up "right back where we started and we're still looking at level of service." (Anticipating such discussion, OPR wrote in the draft, "there is nothing in SB 743 that requires analysis of noise or air quality in a transportation section of an environmental document.") Calfee responded further that LOS analysis for air quality and noise does include a vehicle component but it's not the full LOS traffic study – the analysis does not have to be done "intersection by intersection, roadway segment by roadway segment." He said the reduced analysis for those purposes may rely on data about traffic volumes, speeds, or other trip generation data that are readily available. So he said, "it's not like you'll be doing a full LOS analysis" at least for those purposes. He said local decisionmakers choosing how to address congestion outside the CEQA context are entitled to a lot of deference if challenged in court – more so than under CEQA – so "This should end up being a good thing for both cities and developers." But Smith said "I don't have the comfort that... this protects infill builders trying to do the right thing when they've got hostile actors" contesting their projects. He questioned, for example, whether, if he built a project without parking – which ostensibly would reduce VMT – an opponent might point to impacts from cars circling the building in search of parking, hence might "push me into EIR territory" due to the "potential air quality and noise consequences of lowering my VMT." So in Smith's view, the new approach "pushes the potential impact from one category on the checklist... to other categories," in which case "it doesn't give me the protection that I really need to do smaller-scale... lower-value projects and more incremental projects in infill areas." (On the issues of noise, air quality, safety and circling for parking, Calfee wrote: "These issues are already being raised in the CEQA context. This proposal does not create those issues.") Smith said, "If these rules are successful they will make it easy for builders like me to build good incremental, walkable, transit-accessible projects in California cities." He praised the drafters for intending such an effect but asked, "Can they protect me from hostile CEQA petitioners?" Calfee responded in writing to a somewhat different but related question: whether VMT presents a disadvantage to infill projects by comparison with the prior LOS analysis. He wrote that LOS analysis "puts infill at a disadvantage" compared with lighter-traffic urban peripheries, while "Vehicle miles traveled will not penalize infill development the way that LOS does, because infill developments tend to reduce the amount of driving that is required to get between destinations. The proposed Guidelines go a step further and say that if the project is located near transit, the transportation impact is likely less than significant, which should in most cases eliminate the need for any study." Thresholds of significance Many technical responses to the OPR draft have focused on its guidance for local lead agencies in setting thresholds of significance for projects' VMT levels, viewing it as one of the most novel parts of the document. And under that heading of threshold-setting guidance, areas of argument and uncertainty include how much latitude exists for local lead agencies to choose their own thresholds, and whether the standards should be strict enough to reduce GHG emissions in accordance with statewide AB 32 goals. The OPR draft states in its "background" narrative, "SB 743 did not authorize OPR to set thresholds, but it did direct OPR to develop Guidelines 'for determining the significance of the transportation impacts of projects<.> '" It argues for viewing the threshold of significance as the regional average VMT, in part because metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are already gathering regional VMT data under SB 375. The draft's proposed new Guidelines Sec. 15064.3(b)(1) suggests, "A development project that is not exempt and that results in vehicle miles traveled greater than regional average for the land use type (e.g. residential, employment, commercial) may indicate a significant impact." Calfee said the proposed guidelines only gave suggestions as to what may or may not be a significant impact. He returned repeatedly to the established legal principle that "Under CEQA it's always the lead agency that determines the level of significance." On the other hand, a consultant who works in the area suggested the choice to define even an optional threshold standard directly in the Guidelines at the state level would implicitly burden local lead agencies to justify any different choices they might make. Asked how opposition to VMT metrics might appear, Pettit suggested "a local jurisdiction that hates this idea may fool around with the threshold of significance" so projects would qualify easily – but he warned, local officials raising the threshold too high could expect "litigation by some pesky enviro group, maybe us." But Calfee said, "That is something that's baked into CEQA... It's always up to the lead agency to determine what's significant... That's not something that this proposal is causing." Calfee emphasized repeatedly that lead agencies have power to choose their own VMT models. In an interview he noted the proposed guidelines mentioned out applicable case law supporting such power: "That should give relief to lead agencies in picking the model that's right for them." He wrote separately: "The proposed Guidelines expressly note lead agency's discretion in the choice of methodology, the use of professional judgement in adjust model inputs and outputs, and apply the rule of reason.  These will each make lead agency decisions more defensible." Are regional average VMT thresholds fair? To whom? Eaken's strongest comment on the OPR draft was that significance thresholds based on regional average VMTs would not do enough to meet statewide climate change goals for 2030. She asked, "Is average good enough?" What qualifies as "average" is part of that question – and a reason why, to a developer, a regional average might not always seem locally fair. Eaken brought up the possibility of unfair leniency under a "regional average" standard in the very large region covered by SB 375 programs of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) – which states it serves "more than 18 million residents" across Southern California. She suggested it might be too easy for a project that fell below the VMT average for such a large region to qualify as having "no significance". The consultant (who asked not to be named) made a converse point: with relatively dense Los Angeles bringing down overall average VMTs for the SCAG region, some projects in Riverside County might be almost automatically over the regional average. Calfee, for his part, said actually the city of Riverside was fairly densely populated so downtown "you can be fairly comfortable that you have a lower VMT," while projects in outlying areas could reduce VMT by means such as adding a commercial component to a residential subdivision. To the objection that Riverside still wasn't Santa Monica, he said the standard wasn't based on Santa Monica, but on a regionwide average, and it was still up to lead agencies to set the level of significance. The consultant, however, questioned whether the surveys and methodology yet existed to be sure of VMT levels in the Riverside area as divided up by type of use (office, housing, etc.). On the more general matter of SB 375 consistency, Calfee pointed to current "tension" between the CEQA mandate for LOS-based traffic studies and SB 375 calls for reductions in automobile use: "What we've done in these proposed guidelines is attempt to alleviate that tension." He said the proposal was intended to allow lead agencies to use models and data in their analyses that are also used under SB 375, "so that should lead to fewer conflicts, not more." (The proposal's Subdivision 15064.3(b)(1) reads in part, "Land use plans that are either consistent with a sustainable communities strategy, or that achieve at least an equivalent reduction in vehicle miles traveled as projected to result from implementation of a sustainable communities strategy, generally may be considered to have a less than significant impact.") Monchamp argued SB 375's "sustainable communities" requirements were only "just starting to come into bloom" and "the schemes aren't harmonized"; that SB 375 needed to play out without adding new complexity. She said standards worked out under SB 375 in Sustainable Communities Strategies might actually come out different from regional averages for CEQA purposes, requiring double calculation. She argued the new VMT guidelines – especially in the (b)(1) area discussing thresholds – should be handled as a cross-reference to regional averages the MPOs have already calculated under SB 375. The Holland & Knight comment states as an aspect of inconsistency between the OPR draft and existing SB 375 standards that SB 375 metrics in the Bay Area find new market-rate infill development tends to command higher prices from richer residents, so that "affluence rather than location has led to higher VMT levels." It complains, "OPR's proposal undermines the SB 375 planning framework with a VMT regime... that has social justice and planning implications that extend beyond CEQA's existing framework." It adds: "This proposal raises many litigation issues for those unhappy with the land use decisions" made in local Sustainable Communities Strategies and other local planning documents, "and allows project opponents to happily use CEQA to seek different projects or a different project location." Are the models 'plug and play'? A regional average, as the Subdivision (b)(1) guideline draft itself accepts, can be calculated a number of different ways: the subdivision suggests it be done "per capita, per employee, per trip, per person-trip or other appropriate measure." Further questions on how to calculate regional average data include how to count particular trips that fit multiple categories. The many different VMT modeling data sets linked in the draft's amended Appendix F further suggest a diversity of approaches. So does the Holland & Knight comment in its discussion of litigation potential surrounding the possibility of disputes over VMT calculation. Smith expressed uncertainty whether the models were truly "plug and play," in the sense of whether "I can figure out on my smartphone whether or not my project is above or below" the applicable level of significance – though, again, he suggested "that'll be relatively easy to answer" and the hard part would be "how vulnerable is the methodology itself to one-off attacks by bad actors?" (i.e., by objectors to projects.) Calfee's comments noted that disputes are common over the methodology of LOS traffic studies. He wrote, "OPR has identified approximately two dozen models that could be used to estimate VMT, many of which have been routinely used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions. To minimize disputes about methodology, the proposed Guidelines would specifically acknowledge the lead agency's discretion to pick its model and adjust model inputs and outputs as needed. The draft Guidelines would also expressly apply a rule of reason to the analysis." Calfee wrote that for LOS analysis "depending on the scope of the project, the study can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars," whereas "VMT can be estimated using free models within a couple of hours." Responding to a prior similar comment from OPR, Monchamp said, "It's far more complicated and takes much longer." She said the draft did not define VMT, while she viewed the guidance on methodology as consisting mainly of links to studies. She said it "is not giving much direction at all as to how to do this," and hashing it out "is going to be a messy and cumbersome process." Critics' opinions diverged again on the types of projects that Subdivision (b)(1) said "generally may be considered" to lack significant impact: projects within half a mile of good transit, or projects expected to reduce local VMT overall." Eaken said a project near transit could still be high-VMT so such projects should be reviewed for impacts. Even on a transportation project, Eaken said unless it was "crystal clear" that a project wouldn't raise VMT, as with a bike lane, projects should still be analyzed. For example, she said, a new carpool lane might add capacity to a road, hence couldn't be presumed to lack impact. Taking the opposite view, Monchamp described projects outside the 0.5-mile radius as "shackled" with many more mitigation measures. Calfee wrote, under the heading of factors likely to reduce litigation, "Projects near transit generally will not be subject to doing a study, so there will be fewer issues to litigate." Smith, saying he'd borrowed the point from Monchamp's colleague Jennifer Hernandez, argued it might work better to drop VMT analysis from some projects entirely, as "by definition good, and we're not going to analyze the traffic impacts, period." Which he said wasn't to argue against local authorities doing their own traffic analyses, only against allowing traffic analysis to push a pro forma project toward a required EIR. Monchamp, having noted that the proposed Subdivision (b)(1) language does not really grant exemptions, said "Oh, exemptions would be lovely." She said so would clarifications: "We're not against the VMT approach. I don't think you're going to get anyone on our side of the world to say VMT is bad, it's just VMT has to be done more clearly and with more certainty." Cumulative impact David Pettit of NRDC asked how cumulative impacts would be handled. Calfee, in an interview clarified by written comments, responded that under current law, consistency with a plan that deals with a cumulative problem can support a presumption that a contribution is less than significant. He wrote: "If you are asking 'does my project have a cumulative VMT impact?' you might look at whether the project is consistent with the regional sustainable communities strategy to help address cumulative impacts." Pettit had asked how fairness would be maintained if one of several similar projects in a popular infill area became the first to exceed local average VMT for its building type. Calfee responded, "When you look at the data and the maps, that's not how it appears to play out." He noted some regional governments have been developing maps of VMT levels for areas within the region, in part through past work under SB 226, which also refers to regional averages. Recalling the lead agency's power to use professional judgment in adjusting models, he wrote: "If the model gives you a result that does not make sense, the proposed Guidelines would recognize that it is appropriate to make adjustments." Comment on the OPR draft is due October 10, 2014. Links: The August 6 proposal from OPR is at: http://bit.ly/1kOofPD via http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_sb743.php. Holland & Knight's critical comment: http://bit.ly/1la6slD Latham & Watkins: http://bit.ly/1vHMO1l Fehr & Peers: http://www.fehrandpeers.com/sb743/ Streetsblog LA initial news analysis: http://bit.ly/1kOtP4n CityLab preview before draft release: http://bit.ly/1qGCFB1

On August 26 the LA County Supervisors gave final approval to the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Program (LCP) on its return from the Coastal Commission with amendments approved there July 10. Since the Commission had already approved the whole program with county participation, a quick pro forma approval and a round of congratulations might have been expected. Instead, a group of indignant winemakers and winelovers made a last attempt to beat the plan before it went through. The plan now bounces back to the Commission and what's expected to be final certification. After which, for the first time in 28 years of trying, Los Angeles County will receive delegated authority to issue its own coastal development permits for the Santa Monica Mountains area. As reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3528, on July 10 the Coastal Commission reached what appeared to be the last substantive approval for the Local Coastal Program (LCP): endorsement of the county implementation ordinances for the previously passed Land Use Plan. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474 for prior Land Use Plan coverage.) The July 10 meeting had been heavy with valedictory talk about success in negotiating approval for the LCP (especially through a negotiated compliance program for properties with horses) and about its status as a closing accomplishment for the area's district Supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky, whose term is about to end. At that meeting, vintners and farmers, led by consultant and vineyard owner Don Schmitz, objected to a blanket rule against new vineyards in the mountains -- but their fight looked to be more or less fought. Going into the August 26 Supervisors hearing, an LA Times editorial favored the approval (see http://lat.ms/1nfSqdz) and the Los Virgenes Homeowner's Federation urged members to turn out in support (see http://lvhf.org/2014/08/support-our-lcp-attend-bos-meeting-aug-26/). However, the Wine Spectator at http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/50439 and the LA Weekly at http://bit.ly/1tJj82F showed that winegrowers and appreciators of the relatively new Santa Monica Mountains terroir were still trying to fight the portion of the all-but-final LCP that would ban the planting of new vineyards. The LA Times posted immediate coverage of the August 26 hearing and vote at http://lat.ms/1taoZ48. It reported Schmitz said the mountains had just obtained federal recognition as an American Viticultural Area and told the Supervisors, "It is an ironic tragedy that you are contemplating destroying this at this very moment." KPCC reported at http://bit.ly/1vOERHR that the four Supervisors at the meeting (Sup. Mark Ridley-Thomas was absent) "split 2-2 on a decision to amend the plan to make more allowances for agricultural uses, including wineries," but since the amendment lacked a majority, the board "then voted to adopt the program as proposed." The LA Times reports the Supervisors passed the plan 3-1 with Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich opposed. Extensive attachments for the matter are linked from Item 6 on the Supervisors' August 26 agenda at http://bit.ly/1trtFz7.

It's hemi-semi-official: In the opinion of one of the state's leading geologists, no earthquake fault lies beneath the immense Millennium office development in Hollywood. That is the expert opinion of Stephen Testa, who is executive director of the State Mining and Geology Board. Unlike several other geologists who have addressed the board in this case, Testa is not a consultant for the Millenium project. He testified on August 13 that a much-debated official geological map of the area was probably wrong for suggesting the possibility of a fault beneath the aforementioned real estate development. (Please note the word "probably.") That finding undoubtedly comforted multiple developers in the hot Hollywood office market. Understandably, those developers had been discomfited by the suggestion that the earth could open its maw and inhale their buildings like a hungry whale making a canapé of some unrepentant Jonahs. In an earlier posting about this controversy, at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3451, we made merciless fun of the developer, based on an admittedly uncharitable suspicion that he might be trying to change the rules of reality to soothe his nerves (and those of his investors). Testa, however, is a nationally recognized expert who knows more about this subject than the rest of us. Hell, he probably knows more about geology than I know about anything (except maybe the holograms that can be seen on certain vinyl LPs of the Psychedelic Era, when they are spinning on a turntable). But even with Testa's assurances, some developers in Hollywood may still feel nervous about even the mere possibility of an earthquake fault beneath their properties, however unlikely. For those irrational few who decline to take the word of an expert in the absence of absolute certainty, we offer the following magic formula:   Take some earwax of a City Council member (or her planning deputy), a hair from a politician's toupee, a gram of perspiration from a lender, and an ounce of sand from the shoe of a consulting geologist. Mix these ingredients together in a poultice. Add some glitter, just for looks. Proceed to rub this poultice onto the structural columns of a billion-dollar building currently under construction. (This process is best undertaken under the light of a full moon, preferably in the presence of a coyote, who embodies the spirit of survival in the Hollywood Hills.) Finally, with great solemnity, intone the following: Yo, Cosmic Cartographer! It's me, your favorite developer:May all cracks in the earth be removed from this damn earthquake map,Yea, even unto the dotted lines indicating conjectural faults. May this blight be removed from the rocky underpinnings of my lovely asset.Let no troublesome finding be found under my foundations.Let no unforeseen condition bust a move on my big-ass building.For I have skin in this game, mine own precious skin.Let not my building wiggle in some weird-ass seismic dance,Let nothing jiggle or shake not specifically architected to do so,    Nor let this development, which I love like my own child, Be swallowed up by the earth like that guy in the Bible whose name I can't remember.Get me out of this crisis, O Cosmic Fixer! Take away my seismic blues. Make that map say: ‘Move along, people, no fault to see here.'Thanks, Buddy, I owe you one. Anything, you name it.  As with all magic formulae that appear on this site, typically under the byline of our most questionable reporter, this incantation has a good likelihood of success most of the time. (By way of disclosure, you should also know that our staff geologists, who are fictitious and do not otherwise exist, say this same incantation has the habit of failing, and I mean catastrophically , at least once every 50 years or so. (Which could be tomorrow morning; you never can tell with geologists.)) If you think about it, though, one failure in 50 years is pretty good odds. Hell, I wish my desktop only failed once in 50 years… Pardon me for a second; my iPhone is ringing. (Hello? Your sheep gave birth? And the lamb had HOW many heads?...Yikes! I mean, what are the odds of that?)

It's only $130 million. That's all the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program has to spend this coming year. Spread out statewide, it's enough money to help steer some projects toward the prescribed goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through environmentally responsible development. It's not enough to build a lot from scratch. The rules being drafted now to distribute that money will channel more funding later if the Legislature keeps its promise to give the program 20% of future cap-and-trade auction proceeds. ( Streetsblog 's Melanie Curry reported last week that six mayors of larger California cities paid a lobbying visit to Sacramento in part to make sure the promise held.) But in view of California's housing and infrastructure needs, $130 million isn't big money, not really. When the Strategic Growth Council (SGC) held workshops last week on how to build program guidelines within the new statutory framework, the strength of the response testified to the level of municipal hunger for housing and infrastructure subsidies, as well as interest in sustainability for its own sake. For the Oakland workshop of August 14, the limited supply of 150 free tickets, reserved via online registration, ran out several days in advance; the organizers announced a waiting list and asked to be told of cancellations. Chances for projects in the works Some participants assuredly had projects in mind that could benefit from even a small fraction of that AHSC money. During the Oakland workshop, Steve Hernandez, a housing specialist with the San Leandro Community Development Department, spoke in a small-group session about his city's need for affordable housing funds. He noted Redevelopment was gone -- and with it the affordable housing set-aside of tax increment funds -- and that San Leandro's federal HOME program funds had declined by 65% since 2010. He had a project in mind that AHSC could help: affordable housing across from the San Leandro BART station to be developed in cooperation with BRIDGE Housing. He explained later that the 115 affordable units of Phase 1 "will be underway," hence too far along to qualify for AHSC money, but the new program's Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) "may coincide with the timeline of Phase 2," so "perhaps Phase 2 can be awarded AHSC program funds" to help build a further 85 units of senior housing planned for the site. (The project is the Cornerstone Apartments -- see http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/cd/projects/crossings.asp.) Talk at the workshop wasn't so much about what to build first, as about choosing which increments to support: what tendencies to encourage most; who could or should benefit soonest from more compact, less vehicle-dependent planning; and just how much holistic multimodal public-private goodness could be realistically coaxed to bloom in each particular project using the frugal irrigation methods available. Tyrone Roderick Williams, director of development with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, came to the workshop discussion with a large-scale project in mind: the remaking of Twin Rivers, an aging complex of single-story public housing buildings between the closed railyards and the curve of the American River north of downtown Sacramento. Described at http://www.shra.org/ChoiceNeighborhoodsInitiative/TwinRivers.aspx, the project is the recipient of a federal Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant and part of a larger city plan to redevelop the River District-Railyards area. At the workshop, Williams said Twin Rivers would replace the existing public housing with new units, add more housing, build a new transit station, and add support for a nearby school as part of a plan involving many public and private partners and funding sources. Documents on the Twin Rivers project Web site discuss goals of enhancing employment, education and health services for existing residents in and near the public housing, including the neighborhood's large homeless population. In an interview after the meeting, Williams said AHSC might be able to help with the housing component of the project next to the transit station, though the city wouldn't determine its proposal to AHSC until the guidelines for the program emerged. He said nobody had yet mentioned amounts of money but it appeared types of funding could vary with a project's type and scale. How many purposes can one project serve? Williams had been one of several discussion participants warning against creating pressures on projects to serve too many GHG-reducing purposes at once. Later he clarified, "Those of us who are engaged in affordable housing are facing those pressures all the time." For example, under the competitive scoring system for low-income housing tax credit applications, "you get more points by putting more services and more aspects of the project into the budget" so "in an effort to try to score higher you include other things to help you get points but all of those things cost money." He said, "My hope is that we don't fall into that same situation where to be competitive you're trying to do so many things that by the time you get funded your project costs have gone through the roof in an effort to get funded." Meea Kang, president of Domus Development and a board member of the California Infill Builders Federation, brought concerns to the same small-group discussion at the workshop about the difficulty of keeping neighborhood-serving businesses in the retail spaces of new affordable housing developments. For example (she wrote afterward), "it's difficult to lure new grocery stores into underserved communities." And "it is the developer that has to make the substantial upfront investment to build out the retail improvements and there is always a risk that the small business may not survive the first two years." At the workshop she suggested that, to encourage genuinely local businesses in underserved communities, program money might be used for tenant improvements -- for example, to convert a warehouse to a farmers' market. That would serve GHG reduction, she said, because people wouldn't have to drive so far to the store. She suggested sometimes housing and retail might be best "decoupled" as separate side-by-side projects in different buildings, where the retail use might require its own separately managed support program. As a developer she had a different perspective from Williams' on the problem of trying to do too much. She said, "every local government is going to know that these projects are going to get funded," so from her experience "you've got every other agency coming at you with barriers." She clarified later that she had in mind, for example, "utility districts, special fee districts, various departments," and "expensive impact fees or mitigation requirements or both." Meaning that each agency would like to see the funded project contribute to a needed improvement in that agency's own area. Her concern being that such demands would together "overburden the project to fix all the problems of the past." Kang suggested the process should allow the agencies to work together and support projects while cooperating to reduce overall fees and burdens in order to get more built. Ignacio Dayrit, a brownfields redevelopment specialist from the Bay Area, put in, "Bingo, it's Prop 13." Kang agreed. Dayrit said, "Someone had to say that."  Because, he said, "If you've owned property for more than ten, 15 years, you're not paying your fair share of anything ." That is, the burden falls on the developer to pay for infrastructure needs. (Williams, in his interview, responded to a question about the idea of a cooperative application process by saying any application of the type sought "will require a partnership" by its nature, as at Twin Rivers.) A professionalized process The people who reserved and used the Oakland workshop's 150 tickets -- developers, planners, officials, advocates -- were nearly all policy or planning professionals in some way. That led to a well-informed level of discussion -- for example, when Dayrit noted that only federal subsidies remained deep enough to serve the poorest tenants, he didn't have to spell out the point that "affordable housing" is "only affordable to the middle income" range. Participants already understood the difficulty, for private nonprofits, of using tax-credit housing subsidies to house tenants at incomes below 50% of area median. On the other hand, it was a conversation held more among professionals than among directly affected community members. Devilla Ervin, a fourth-generation West Oakland resident now in his second year of Americorps service at West Oakland Middle School, came to the workshop as a member of a community activist group, New Voices are Rising. Wearing a business-casual polo shirt, he said he quickly decided, "I'm a little underdressed." (Most participants arrived in suits or similar, though one tall bearded man wore denim overalls.) Ervin told the small-group session that West Oakland was seeing "a lot of development thrown at us" and people "coming in telling us what the community should look like." Out of an extended family formerly based in West Oakland, he said he and his cousin remained in town, but the rest were mainly displaced: "Sacramento, Stockton, Tracy, Lodi." (Ervin's related comments on Plan Bay Area, prepared through a project of Breakthrough Communities and Six Wins Coalition/New Voices are Rising, are at http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/plan_bay_area/comments/Invididuals/Ervin_Devilla_5-16-13.pdf.) Among his concerns related to GHG reduction, Ervin said he personally hoped to buy a house and, when he did so, didn't want that to lose his current strong access to transit. He was concerned that new families moving to new development in West Oakland were often sending their children to Claremont or other schools out of the area -- so although the new arrivals' children could walk to West Oakland Middle School, they were actually traveling elsewhere each day. And he worried that new development near transit could displace low-income transit riders, only to replace them with more affluent residents who could afford not to depend on transit, hence might use it less. Asked if he had thoughts about who was or wasn't in the room, he wrote later, "Yeah, I was a little disappointed with the lack of community voice in the room especially from the youth. Our young people are the ones that are going to inherit the cities that reflect the decisions we make today. They should have been there. Other than that I think it was a very informative and worthwhile investment of my time." Defining 'disadvantaged communities' Discussion at the workshop returned often to questions that the meeting officially needed to sidestep due to the regulatory division of labor: What constitutes a "disadvantaged community"? And when can a disadvantaged community be said to benefit? Formally speaking, those questions are largely to be answered by another process. As established by SGC's opening actions on the program (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3529), the AHSC program will be directed by SGC, but in close cooperation with several other state agencies, with administrative duties delegated to the Department of Housing and Community Development for the main stream of funding, and to the Natural Resources Agency for the smaller fraction reserved to protect agricultural land from sprawl. By statute the program must spend half its money on affordable housing, and it also must spend a potentially (but not necessarily) overlapping half to benefit disadvantaged communities. (At each of last week's three SGC workshops -- in Fresno, Oakland and Los Angeles -- staff made an opening presentation explaining the statutes, institutional history and program mandates. For the 45-minute Fresno version of the presentation see http://sgc.ca.gov/s_affordablehousingandsustainablecommunitiesprogram.php.) Discussion moderators from SGC and HCD directed further discussion about the meaning of "benefit to disadvantaged communities" toward a separate set of workshops on defining disadvantaged communities under the SB 535 rules that apply to all cap-and-trade grant programs, to be held August 25 through September 3 by the Air Resources Board (ARB) and CalEPA. Discussions on agricultural land protection were also deferred to their own set of workshops, to be scheduled for October. At the August 14 Oakland workshop, Allison Joe, deputy director of the SGC, said in the opening group session that, although ARB's timetable for developing guidelines is longer than SGC's, "We have all been working with ARB very closely to ensure that what we do, and what we develop at this point, will adhere to and actually align with what will be developed as guidance next year, so there's a little bit of a dance but there's some really good coordination going on that's actually really helped our overall program by being able to work with ARB so closely." The rules reserving benefits for disadvantaged communities brought hope to some workshop participants from areas of the state that broadly qualify for such status. But they drew worried questions from some urban policy veterans who asked what would count as a benefit, and what overlap might be presumed to exist between a disadvantaged place and a disadvantaged group of people. And several participants seemed uncertain exactly where the line fell between SGC's rulemaking authority and that of the environmental agencies. (A discussion group leader offered an illustration on the difficulty of defining a benefit: if a bike path passes through a disadvantaged community, does it provide enough of a benefit to that community?) In preparation for the August 25 - September 3 workshops, the ARB began to post guidance on its workshop site at http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/upcomingevents.htm explaining potential applications for CalEPA's CalEnviroScreen tool to the definition process. The screening tool, which appears in its newest form at http://oehha.ca.gov/ej/ces2.html, provides compelling maps that apply CalEPA's disadvantage formula statewide at census tract level. The widest spreads of red and orange colors indicating disadvantage are across the San Joaquin Valley; they reappear in poorer neighborhoods of each major city, notably in inland LA County and between Ontario and San Bernardino. The CalEnviroScreen standard is based on a weighted combination of pollution burdens, population characteristics that imply vulnerability to further effects of pollution, and socioeconomic disadvantages: low formal educational attainment, linguistic isolation, poverty and unemployment. A CalEPA paper posted on the workshop site August 19 offers five alternative measures consisting of either the unchanged formula, or choices based on narrowing or re-weighting the mix of factors. On the workshop site, ARB promised imminently to post an interim guidance draft for "maximizing benefits to disadvantaged communities." 'Benefit' to whom? Jeffrey Levin, policy director for the East Bay Housing Organizations, was among those wary of assumptions in "disadvantaged communities" definitions. He wrote later, "We have two sets of concerns about this process. The first is whether 'disadvantaged communities' should be defined based on populations or geographic places. We think it's important to focus on populations as well as places. Second, investments need to be guided by principles and criteria that ensure that lower income households are the primary beneficiaries of the investment, and that lower income communities do not suffer adverse impacts." He warned, "We have all seen examples where investment in a 'disadvantaged community' brings little or no benefit to lower income households, and where such investment actually causes harm," as with transit-oriented development in areas defined as disadvantaged that does not itself contain affordable housing. Where such choices displace lower-income people "from transit-rich areas to the periphery of the region," he wrote, "they become more dependent on automobiles and that means more GHG emissions. And the transit may actually lose ridership because the more affluent new residents tend to be less likely to use transit as much as lower income residents." Meanwhile, he suggested, it might sometimes help disadvantaged populations to place affordable housing in higher-income areas instead of lower-income ones. "In short - we are very supportive of Transit Oriented Development, but it needs to be done in a way that clearly promotes social equity." Goals of EBHO included mandatory affordable housing in transit-oriented development and early planning for affordable housing in areas that may become expensive in time because of private development. At the meeting, Dayrit, the brownfields redevelopment specialist, worried that programs encouraging infill tended to lead to construction in areas that often lack services, where it's easier to build, that often tend to be "disadvantaged communities to begin with," so when housing for disadvantaged people is built there, "the concentration of these disadvantaged communities in existing disadvantaged communities" gives the impression of creating a "ghetto or unattractive neighborhood." He noted, for example, the appearance of strong opposition to new services for homeless people in Hunter's Point in San Francisco -- though also that affordable housing might also be opposed in an affluent neighborhood. Public health cautions Solange Gould, a PhD candidate at UC-Berkeley working with the Public Health Institute, brought some public health warnings to the "unintended consequences" part of the discussion, which she clarified after the workshop: While she joined the public health consensus in favor of walking and biking -- for personal health and "community cohesion" as well as GHG reduction -- she warned against inviting people to walk and bike in risky traffic situations, instead calling for "good infrastructure that separates cars and people as much as possible." Gould wrote, "Disadvantaged communities are often more exposed to heat with lack of vegetation or green canopies" and "Studies of extreme heat have shown large racial disparities in heat-related deaths. There are maps that show that low-income and communities of color are more likely to live in areas with little tree canopy and permeable surfaces and are thus more vulnerable to urban heat islands." She suggested projects should get priority if they are in urban heat islands and add mitigations such as vegetation, white roofs, permeable surfaces, open space or other mitigations. Proximity to transit, while mainly a good thing, has special risks for the many low-income tenants who live with asthma, cancer or respiratory illnesses. (Vulnerability to respiratory illness is among the CalEnviroScan criteria for disadvantage.) So Gould suggested siting transit-oriented development more than 500 feet from freeways or, if that can't be done, then "really high-quality indoor air ventilation systems" such as MERV 13 systems. She wasn't calling for all such costs to fall on the developer but said "reducing those health care costs is worth the cost of the indoor air filter." She suggested they could be financed as in the State of Oregon's "on-bill financing program, in which the energy savings from home energy upgrades pay off the bill from the installation." More ideas and arguments: Rob Wiener of the California Coalition for Rural Housing raised a question during the main presentation about the choice of rental apartments as examples in the opening presentation, asking staff to confirm that the legislation was "tenure-neutral" -- allowing homes to be built for single-family ownership as well as multifamily rental. A staff member responded that in the prior transit-oriented development program, the possibility was left open to build single-family homes for sale, but no qualified applications came in for that approach, and there were also relatively few applications for acquisition/rehab of existing affordable housing. Rico Mastrodonato of the Trust for Public Land brought a message in favor of urban parks and open space, including to reduce heat effects and sequester carbon, along the lines of a paper his group has published at https://www.tpl.org/quantifying-greenhouse-gas-benefits-urban-parks Ervin responded to a comment about the need for urban open space by saying West Oakland had several parks already but people were afraid to use them. Kang argued against requirements for infill developers to pay for transit passes. Clarifying her comments later, she wrote, "If infill developers have to factor in the cost of transit passes, it will raise the cost of market rate housing and make affordable housing very hard to underwrite." Despite a suggestion in the discussion that computer-tracked passes like the Bay Area's "Clipper Card" might make such costs more predictable, Kang wrote, "In my opinion if the new housing is located near reliable transit and are located in walkable communities new residents will choose to get out of their cars. The new housing should not be overburdened with the additional cost of transit passes." Dayrit, who is a consultant to the Center for Creative Land Recycling, had a comment related to his work there: that a property to be redeveloped would have "transaction costs associated with environmental site assessments" that ought to be included as an eligible activity. Gould and Dayrit mentioned the perennial Bay Area transit advocates' goal of building more new housing, including affordable housing, in suburbs as well as urban centers. Dayrit argued for walkable density in suburbs as a good in itself: "people are afraid to talk about density." Gould said support for local schools should be part of efforts to draw households to newly developed areas. Workshop materials and comment instructions are on the SGC site at http://sgc.ca.gov/s_affordablehousingandsustainablecommunitiesprogram.php and on the ARB workshop site at http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/upcomingevents.htm. Comments on the ARB and CalEPA materials are due September 9. A summary by Streetsblog 's Melanie Curry, who was at the Oakland meeting, is at http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/08/19/ca-seeks-input-for-affordable-housing-and-sustainable-communities-program/ . Allison Joe briefly provided editorial assistance to CP&DR in the past.