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Monterey County has settled a lawsuit over its General Plan filed by the LandWatch advocacy group. The settlement includes a commitment to addressing water supply problems and paying more than $400,000 in LandWatch's legal bills. The settlement commits the county to addressing Salinas Valley basin overdraft, seawater intrusion and falling groundwater levels if those remain issues by 2030. The county also agreed to place restrictions on wineries, including limitations on agriculture on steep slopes and stiffening permitting requirements for stand-alone inns and restaurants. San Francisco, Sacramento Pursue Light-Rail Improvements Both San Francisco and Sacramento announced last week that they are taking major steps to improve their light-rail systems. In San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee announced a plan to spend more than $600 million to replace every single car in the Muni system. The contract, with Seimens Rail Systems, calls for the city to purchase 175 cars, with an option for 85 more. In Sacramento, city officials announced a partnership with downtown business owners to improve the light-rail system there in anticipation of the opening of a downtown sports arena and entertainment center. The effort will focus on operational improvements as well as improving trash pickup and other basic items at the stations. No General Plan Update for Irvine The Irvine City Council voted not to pursue a general plan update in the near future, meaning the city will continue to operate under the plan adopted in 1999. The state recommends that cities update their general plans every five years, but transportation and housing are the only elements those updates are mandatory. In voting against pursuing a plan update, a split city council cited several concerns, including Orange County's control of 100 acres inside the city and the ongoing problems with development of the Great Park. These unresolved issues would make the drafting of a new general plan premature, according to council members who voted against the motion. Some 27 development projects are currently under way in Irvine. Walnut Creek Specific Plan Unveiled Walnut Creek residents got their first glimpse of the West Downtown specific plan, which includes proposed higher-density development in the corridor from Downtown to the Walnut Creek BART station. The plan , produced by PlaceWorks, calls for 2,400 new housing units in addition to 1,700 already in place. The plan not meet with universal support at the rollout meeting. Said one resident of the plan's increased densities: "I don't see character; I see Emeryville, I see San Ramon, and I don't want to live in those towns." State of Jefferson Movement Now Includes Five Counties In far northern California - where compliance with CEQA and other land-use regulations is often viewed as optional already - five counties have joined the long-simmering movement to secede from California and form the new State of Jefferson. Representatives from Tehama, Glenn, and Yuba counties presented the State Legislature with "declarations of separation." They join Siskiyou and Modoc counties in petitioning the legislature to move forward with such a succession.

August 11 would have been the deadline for California's statewide ballots to go to press, but state legislators pushed that date back as they continued to work on a water bond deal with Governor Jerry Brown. According to Ben Adler of Capitol Public Radio, details emerged late in the day of a plan calling for almost $7.2 billion in spending -- most of it in new bond funds -- of which $2.5 billion would support surface water storage projects. He reported the Legislature passed, and Governor Brown signed, bills to delay the voter guide deadline, change the number on the November "rainy day fund" measure to Proposition 2, and label whatever water bond proposal is on the ballot as "Proposition 1". See http://bit.ly/1yoDYFC. The Sacramento Bee has more at http://bit.ly/1kXLI0B. In a more detailed report at http://bit.ly/1oECjLc, Adler reviewed disputed issues, including the goal of making the bond measure "tunnel neutral" with respect to the Governor's Delta tunnel project, and pending proposals for water storage projects, including the Temperance Flat dam proposal. (For a detailed read on Temperance Flat, see blogger Patricia McBroom's article last February at http://bit.ly/1B9TQzP.) If placed on the ballot, the new bond measure would replace the dated $11.1 billion proposal currently on the ballot. The LA Times said a Republican  $8.7 billion counterproposal was also pending as of last Friday. See http://lat.ms/1oxAevz. The LA Times ' Jim Newton has a bigger-picture news analysis on the politics and context of the bond negotiation -- and the fragility of LA's own water infrastructure -- at http://lat.ms/1opsBx7. Other bills before the Legislature this month include major legislation that would make California the last Western state to regulate groundwater use statewide. Dave Puglia of the Western Growers Association told the LA Times , "California hasn't attempted to change water law this dramatically in 100 years." See http://lat.ms/1yjQUML. Ponte Vista project breaks ground with a diminished plan for 676 units A popular article last week by the LA Times ' Andrew Khouri presented the Ponte Vista project in San Pedro as a case study of a large-project proposal whittled down by community opposition to a smaller design with lower density and higher costs per unit than first proposed. He writes that the original 2005 design called for 2,300 condo and town house units plus 10,000 square feet of retail -- but as of the groundbreaking last week, the design called for 676 units including 208 single-family homes. See http://lat.ms/1mpl23M/. A series of stories over the years by Curbed LA , collected at http://la.curbed.com/tags/ponte-vista, recount more of the project's reshaping over time from a large "mixed-use urban village" to a smaller "suburban-ish" gated complex. It says the project changed owners along the way, lost all its proposed rentals, and picked up agreements for an access road, union labor, local hires, and public access to recreation spaces. 'Boomerang campaign' secures Alameda Co. post-redevelopment funds for housing Housing advocates persuaded the Alameda County Supervisors on July 29 to commit a dollop of former Redevelopment funds to affordable housing and homelessness prevention. The Supervisors committed $13.7 million in one-time funds to the programs plus a promise to reserve more for the programs starting in 2016-17: 20% of tax funds that would formerly have gone to Redevelopment, or at least $2 million a year. The one-time commitment consisted of $9.8 million in funds "swept" from ex-Redevelopment accounts reserved for housing, plus $3.9 million of additional ex-Redevelopment funds. The campaign that won the distribution was led by the East Bay Housing Organizations coalition (see http://ebho.org/news) and was associated with the "Boomerang Campaign" of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. (See http://nonprofithousing.org/policy-advocacy/the-boomerang-campaign/.) Although the dissolution of the redevelopment agencies ended Redevelopment's 20% housing set-aside for tax-increment funds, the campaign has urged local governments to honor its intent. The campaign frames returned ex-redevelopment amounts as "boomerang funds" and argues that equivalents to the old 20% set-aside � or more � should be used for housing, not simply poured into the general fund. The campaign claims successes in multiple Bay Area towns and counties over the past two years. For details on the Alameda County decision see the Supervisors' July 29 "Attachment 99.3" agenda item. The staff-prepared agenda packet materials are at http://bit.ly/1yoROrs and video is at http://alamedacounty.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=2314. (The vote is reported in the Pleasanton Weekly at http://bit.ly/VdGG3Z. Noted via the League of California Cities.) After court ruling, San Diego considers new approaches to convention center, stadium San Diego officials were regrouping after an appellate court overturned the city's special hotel tax, leaving no agreed way to pay for a convention center expansion. California's Fourth Appellate District had ruled in City of San Diego v. Shapiro that the tax was invalid as approved by hotel landowners/lessees, and instead required approval by two-thirds of the city's voters. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3545.) As the plans headed back to the drawing board, JMI Realty, builders of the existing Petco Park ballpark, were proposing a new San Diego Chargers stadium design that could be combined with a convention center expansion plan. See http://bit.ly/1kXMNpo. In an op-ed at http://bit.ly/1lQ4mCp, City Council member David Alvarez argued that the process by which hotel landowners agreed to tax themselves for the convention center expansion had been short on public participation and would need to broaden into "a citywide civic dialogue". In a Twitter thread beginning at https://twitter.com/sdutOsborne/status/498487348531712001, Alvarez debated with Mark Cafferty of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation over the quality of the public process last time around. Cafferty argued that the last approach came out of an inclusive process at the start and had a wide coalition "to push this plan across the finish line"; Alvarez wrote in part, "hoteliers dominated previous process. No real input from public was sought or accepted... Real question is: are hoteliers and the mayor willing to engage the public on options going forward?" Chiu short-term home rental legislation passes SF Planning Commission San Francisco's Planning Commission gave initial approval August 7 to legislation by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to legalize, regulate and tax short-term rentals through online services such as Airbnb. The Bay Guardian covered the long, contentious hearing at http://bit.ly/1sx5XEQ, reporting the  legislation would require hosts to "register with the city, pay all associated taxes and sign up for liability insurance." Previously, the San Francisco Business Journal reported a new group of short-term rental hosts, the Home Sharers of San Francisco, kicked off a public campaign July 31 in favor of the Chiu legislation. See http://bit.ly/1m5GURx. The Guardian 's former editor, Tim Redmond, gave his own opinionated account of the hearing on his own 48 Hills site at http://bit.ly/1oFHWDM. He and the Guardian described arguments from opponents of the legislation who ranged from former planning officials, to apartment landlords concerned about insurance, to a hotel workers' union representative. Redmond reported that although many short-term rental hosts spoke on their own behalf, no direct representatives of Airbnb or VRBO spoke for the companies at the hearing. The legislation next goes to the Board of Supervisors in September. WeHo developer gives up 'poor door' pool policy but still loses Planning vote Under criticism from the West Hollywood Community Development Department, developers of the 8899 Beverly office building conversion gave up a proposal to bar residential tenants of affordable units from using the property's pool � but they still lost a Planning Commission vote, possibly also due to the size of the project. Southern California Public Radio reported project proponents backed down and agreed to share the pool shortly before the planning commission vote. See http://bit.ly/1ulWBfF (via CACities). The proposal was locally condemned as a "poor door" � a term derived from New York City projects that have fully separate entrances to their affordable sections. Per the LA Times at http://lat.ms/1mEA3Pe, the project calls for renovating a 10-story office building into a mixed-use complex including 64 market-rate and 17 affordable residential units. The Times reports the commission's August 7 vote against the proposal becomes a recommendation to the city council, which will decide the project's future. In other news � The Coastal Commission begins a special four-day session August 12 with a full agenda that includes the expansion of I-5 along the 27-mile North Coast Corridor north of San Diego. See http://coastal.ca.gov/mtgcurr.html. The agenda item, No. 17 on August 13, is at http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2014/8/W17a-s-8-2014.pdf. In an interview on her plans as Speaker of the Assembly, Rep. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, told the Voice of San Diego she would support a "down and dirty discussion" of possible legislative changes to CEQA. The paper reported she "questions the need for an environmental impact report when a property owner wants to upgrade or replace an existing building." See http://bit.ly/1BaBj6H. The Sacramento Bee reported on a statewide increase in available charging stations for electric vehicles at http://bit.ly/1orbVoM. The SF Chron 's JK Dineen reported on a proposal by Build, Inc. to build 900 residential units on the 14-acre property at 700 Innes Ave. near the India Basin Open Space in the Bayview District of San Francisco. The paper reports it's "the largest remaining privately owned development site in the city". And it says Build, Inc. is "talking to" the John Stewart Co., a major developer and manager of subsidized housing, about including "for-sale housing targeted at middle-income families" on the site. See http://bit.ly/V88kyS. The water issues weblog Maven's Notebook has posted an August 1 decision by the Mammoth Community Water District to sue the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District over the Casa Diablo IV geothermal project. The water district contends the project's FEIS/EIR failed adequately to consider effects on groundwater that it says could harm the city water supply. See http://bit.ly/1sLLWad. The Mercury News reported Los Gatos was near approval of a specific plan for a mixed-use development on the "North 40," described as the city's last large vacant parcel. See http://bit.ly/1oFQBGg. The Riverside County town of Hemet approved a specific plan in June for the Ramona Creek mixed-use development at the west end of town. The Press-Enterprise reported recently the project would turn "200 acres of dirt" into "more than 500,000 square feet of retail, entertainment, restaurant, office and mixed-use development along with approximately 1000 houses." Local officials welcomed the plan as the first local major development since the mid-2000s. The developer is Regent Properties of Los Angeles. See http://www.pe.com/articles/hemet-698633-city-development.html. City documents for the specific plan are at http://www.cityofhemet.org/index.aspx?NID=627.

Restrained congratulations were circulating in late November over a deal brokered by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti that persuaded the Kinkisharyo company to expand its rail car assembly operation in Palmdale after all. The Japanese rail car manufacturing company had threatened to move the planned expansion of its U.S. branch elsewhere after activists supportive of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 11 filed a CEQA appeal with the Palmdale City Council against the expansion. (See prior coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3601.) The L.A. Times reported the deal allows Kinkisharyo to expand without facing environmental review challenges, while the IBEW will be able to conduct a "card-check" union organizing campaign as it had sought to do. But the paper wasn't happy about the outcome necessarily: that report appeared in an editorial that suggested: " Kinkisharyo and IBEW win; CEQA loses? " The paper suggested that the Legislature in its new session would have reason "to make it harder for groups with ulterior motives -- be they labor unions or business rivals -- to stymie projects," and that in turn would make environmental challenges more difficult for concerned citizens. The Rafu Shimpo has more details of the agreement. Because IBEW Local 11 got the card-check organizing agreement out of the deal, the conservative Breitbart site described the agreement as an abuse of process to gain a labor negotiating advantage. And although the deal preserved the promised production jobs in Palmdale, the Chamber of Commerce wrote that construction jobs were lost because Kinkisharyo went back on its original plan to build a large new assembly building. Protest takes to freeways as well as streets The nationwide demonstrations over accountability for police killings continued to suburbanize, with freeway ramps as well as streets frequently occupied by demonstrators. Sites of freeway occupations in California included Oakland and Berkeley (the Bay Bridge was blocked late on December 8), Sacramento , and Los Angeles -- places where downtown neighborhoods were disrupted by freeway projects in the 20th century. Among commentaries posted, one choice by Planetizen is " On the Symbolism of Highway Protests " featuring Alex Ihnen's NextSTL essay about freeways' ambiguous images as symbols of freedom for some but segregation for others. As of November 25 Ihnen wrote, "At last glance, protesters had closed portions of highways in Detroit, Atlanta, New York City, Cincinnati, Oakland, Nashville, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and elsewhere." Notorious 'Jungle' encampment evicted in San Jose In early December, after a heavy rain, local authorities staged a full-scale eviction of the famous "Jungle" encampment along Coyote Creek in San Jose. The action followed a city services campaign that has gone on since spring to whittle down the camp's population by moving residents to subsidized housing. The L.A. Times reported "Nearly 150 had found housing, but over 50 had yet to find a place to live." Other news reports said 60 people had been offered city vouchers but couldn't find landlords who would take them. The camp had been a substantial village of some 200 to 300 people, said to be one of the largest unofficial encampments in the United States. Homes at the site reportedly included elaborate underground dwellings, as well as more ordinary tents and lean-tos. Residents had been accepting city help in clearing out trash but the site suffered from lack of sanitation and running water, and had a reputation for violence. Even so, the Mercury News reported some residents were in tears at having to leave without other housing prospects. Some told the paper they had to leave property behind. City policy calls for staff, when they remove campers' property, to preserve and store items of value to be claimed -- but there have been past disputes about how carefully the policy is followed. As CP&DR reported in May , the site was only one of many creekside encampments that provide low-quality housing in an area characterized by high rents, suburban environments, an economy divided between high and low wages, and scarce supplies of SRO-type housing. The practice of camping in creekbeds has intertwined the problems of housing shortage and waterway contamination. In response, some neighbors and officials have called for wholesale evictions of campers. Others have called for initial provision of sanitation facilities as a starting point, and, as a next goal, for plentiful housing away from the creekbed, even if at first such "housing" might take the form of organized camping. News reports on particulars of the eviction have appeared widely, in publications including the San Francisco Chronicle , Los Angeles Times , New York Times , Sacramento Bee , and even the UK's Daily Mail . The KQED public radio station's Michael Krasny hosted a "Forum" debate on the eviction that included an activist organizer and a "Jungle" resident as well as a news reporter, a service provider, and city homeless response team manager Ray Bramson. Listeners' comments responding to the KQED debate and to a news report of the conversation included an essay by Chris Herring, a UC-Berkeley grad student who has become a recognized authority on U.S. encampments. (He's the author of the paper, " The New Logics of Homeless Seclusion: A Comparative Study of Large-Scale Homeless Encampments in the Western U.S. ") Herring wrote that he expected the evicted people would only move to more obscure camp sites elsewhere along Coyote Creek, likely with worse consequences for the creek and for themselves. APA joins amicus for regulating signage by type Do free speech rights trump a city's ability to regulate signs placed in public? The American Planning Association has gotten nervous enough about the answer to join the National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors and other groups in filing a Supreme Court amicus brief in the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert . The petitioners in Reed seek to overturn rules in the city of Gilbert, Arizona that regulate publicly placed signs according to their general purpose. In the underlying dispute, a pastor of a Christian church rented space at an elementary school and placed signs announcing services there. He was cited for violating a local sign code regarding the size, placement, and other physical characteristics of "temporary directional signs". The pastor and his church sued on free speech and equal protection grounds, arguing that signs inviting the public to his services were more heavily regulated than other types of signs, such as yard signs for political campaigns. The petitioners argue that the regulations are content-based and hence should be reviewed under a strict scrutiny standard. The city contends it acted properly to apply regulations to the signs based only on their generic purpose, and did not make a content-based decision, so that its actions may be reviewed as regulating only the "time, place and manner" of sign displays. The city has contended that "Petitioners wanted free, permanent, off-site billboards in Gilbert -- and were trying to misuse Gilbert's temporary directional sign regulation to fit that inapposite goal." Courts thus far have upheld the city's action. The APA writes that its brief supports the city, arguing that strict scrutiny of sign codes "has the potential to invalidate nearly all sign codes in the country." Review denied in Pasadena cases The State Supreme Court declined to review City of Pasadena v. Cohen , an August ruling by the Third Appellate district in one of California's many disputes over asset claims of former redevelopment agencies. Pasadena had challenged an effort by the Department of Finance to redistribute property tax funds that the city's post-redevelopment "successor agency" claimed it needed to pay down pension bonds and subsidized housing bonds. At the city's request, the trial court had granted an injunction sequestering the funds until a trial on the merits could be held.  The appellate opinion , by Justices M. Kathleen Butz, George Nicholson and Harry E. Hull, Jr., rejected the city's procedural choices. The appellate panel found the city mistakenly sought declaratory relief when it should have filed for a writ of mandate. They accordingly sent the matter back to the trial judge with instructions to either dismiss the proceeding or "construe it as one for traditional mandate and proceed accordingly." The state Supreme Court also denied review in City of Pasadena v. Superior Court (Mercury Casualty Co.) , the August ruling that paradoxically found a city-owned tree falling on a private home is "serving a public purpose" in doing so for the purpose of allowing the homeowner's insurance claim to go forward. The Second District's opinion was tartly written up in the National Law Review at the time. Ninth Circuit: no new ozone rules The Ninth Circuit turned down a petition in WildEarth Guardians v. McCarthy that sought to require the EPA to create new "Prevention of Significant Deterioration" rules for ozone pollution under the Clean Air Act. It based the rejection on ambiguity in the relevant statute, � 166(a) of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. � 7476(a)), saying the law did not establish clearly enough that the duty to establish the standards was mandatory. San Francisco to combine city offices in new tower on SoMa site The San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed to spend almost $327 million to purchase part of the former Goodwill charity's property at 11th and Market Streets and replace it with a 17-story city office building. The San Francisco Business Times , partly drawing on the Socketsite real estate blog , reported the cost was earlier quoted at $253 million. The reports said developer Related California originally bought the property from Goodwill for $65 million and also planned to develop up to 550 units of housing next to the office building. The site is currently a single-story warehouse-type complex used partly as a thrift store but largely to receive and sort donations. A downtown best-kept secret for years has been the "as-is" shop on 11th Street, where bargain-hunters dig through bins of newly donated items. The news reports say the city will sell its existing five-story office building at 30 Van Ness ( likely for housing ) to help finance the purchase, and will combine offices in the new building for Public Works, Building Inspection, Planning and Retirement and Health Services. Studies look toward more rail in northwestern San Francisco A study commissioned by San Francisco transportation officials predicts a rail extension would be popular if it ran from the end of the currently in-progress Central Subway project westward to Fisherman's Wharf. Michael Cabanatuan of the San Francisco Chronicle reports the study found an extension of the T-Third line to Fisherman's Wharf might increase ridership about 55 percent. Separately, the BART system's planning office announced it would begin a long-range study on a possible new train route that might travel through an additional tube under San Francisco Bay and into San Francisco's currently low-rise western neighborhoods. A drawing released with Streetsblog SF 's report shows the route crossing the Bay south of the current Transbay Tube, running from Alameda to Mission Bay. It's shown crossing Market Street northbound, heading west, then dividing, with one line going west to the cliffs of the Western Richmond District near the Fort Miley VA hospital, and the other heading southwest through the Sunset District outside the city's central ridge to rejoin the existing commuter line in Daly City. Streetsblog SF suggests the design may owe something to former BART board member James Fang's dream of "BART to the beach," an idea often dismissed in the past as not serving a dense enough population.

Attorney Robert May of the LA-based Telecom Law Firm writes in the San Francisco Daily Journal that a new order from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could limit local power to regulate cell phone towers. The October 17 FCC approval interprets Sec. 6409 (a) of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 to allow the addition of new equipment within the areas of currently used wireless sites. He writes that new rules will "require local governments to do more, with less information, in a shorter time, or face harsher consequences." Among other rules, the order allows applicants to start construction if they receive no response to a qualifying permit application after 60 days, and allows them to file suit under "Shot Clock" rules when local governments delay responding to an application by "90 to 150 days depending on the application type." Telecom Law Firm has posted detailed analysis and commentary on the ruling at https://telecomlawfirm.com/sec6409/ . The FCC announcement is at http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-boosts-wireless-broadband-easing-infrastructure-burdens . A statement attributed to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says the order responds to the reduced size of recent cell phone technology "by crafting a more efficient process for small deployments and other installations that do no trigger concerns about environmental protection for historic preservation." The Ninth Circuit upheld a grant of summary judgment against the National Resources Defense Council and local environmental groups in late October, allowing a project to go continue linking the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the I-405 freeway. The case is NRDC v. USDOT , No. 12-56467 . The Coastal Commission has requested rehearing in the Bowman sisters' case, now formally known as SDS Famly Trust v. CA Coastal Commission . This is the October 2014 Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) victory, reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3607 , in which the Second Appellate District reversed itself on rehearing. It allowed daughters who inherited a coastal property from their father to file a fresh application for a coastal development permit, removing the burden of a coastal access easement that had been imposed as a condition for granting a previously sought permit to their father. (The sisters' family trust is known as "SDS", hence the case name.) The PLF noted the review request indignantly on its blog and posted a copy of the request . The request challenges the court's decision to adopt a different version of the facts in October than it had related as part of its first decision in March. The request also challenges the court's October finding that the coastal easement was unfair because it had little to do with the work for which the coastal development permit was sought: renovations and rebuilding to a dilapidated farmstead a mile inland. The review request alleges the court made its more recent decision "based on facts that were different than those before the Commission and a legal theory undeveloped in the record below." It alleges the facts stated by the court "are not only directly contradicted by the record, but are also contrary to SDS's representations" to the Commission and the courts. It asks the court essentially to return to the March fact pattern (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3452 ). That version says the current landowners' father did do some work on the property in anticipation of the first permit, thereby becoming bound by its terms. Further, the review request argues the Court had no right to exercise independent judgment about the fairness of the easement requirement. The Cambrian has local coverage . The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out HUD's disparate-impact rule under the Fair Housing Act as of November 3 in American Insurance Association v. HUD . (Opinion may be downloadable here .) As of October 3 the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case of Texas Dept. of Housing v. Inclusive Communities , a Fifth Circuit appellate ruling on the distribution of affordable housing subsidies in Dallas. Forbes has a writeup of the Texas case . (Links to both via HAC News .) The State Supreme Court has denied review of an appellate ruling against Target Corporation in the recent case of Target Corp v. La Mirada Ave. Neighborhood Association . The LA Weekly reports the request for review concerned Target's request to resume construction of a store on Sunset Boulevard. As described by Curbed LA , the litigation had previously won an October order stopping construction of the store at Sunset and Western Avenue. It's another success for the La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association and its counsel, Robert Silverstein. They are profiled in the Weekly article , which includes a catalogue of their recent victories. The San Diego U-T reported that Superior Court Judge John Meyer upheld a $120 million infrastructure bond issue over a challenge brought by activist litigator Cory Briggs on behalf of San Diegans for Open Government. The paper said Meyer "essentially agreed" with Briggs that the bond issue was structured to avoid a public vote via "subterfuge", but that he ruled, "like it or not, it's legal." The League of California Cities noted a chance to comment to a State Supreme Court commission on the way California courts are run. The State Supreme court denied review of several appellate court orders in litigation between the Taxicab Paratransit Association of California and Internet-dispatched transit companies Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. Per the San Francisco Business Times , the taxi association has been suing since last year over the Public Utilities Commission's decision to legalize the "ride sharing" companies. See Supreme Court case numbers S218427, S220982, S218564 and Third Appellate District Case No. C076432, all at http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search.cfm?dist=0 . A writeup by the Nossaman firm discusses U.S.A. v. 1.41 Acres of Land (N.D. Cal. Nov. 10, 2014). This ruling by California's Northern District federal court held the General Services Administration (GSA) could use an eminent domain action to increase the profitability of a sale of federal land, but only under specific disposal statutes, not the general authority of the GSA. The court refused to strike a defense noting that the property already had an access easement, hence didn't need the added land. The GSA had attempted to take a part of McKay Avenue in the town of Alameda, which belonged to the East Bay Regional Park District and adjoined the Crown Beach public park. The parcel to be augmented was vacant waterfront land next to the Alameda Federal Center, being sold to a private developer for $3.075 million. The decision text, placed online by the Nossaman firm, said that after the developer outbid the park district for the property, the city of Alameda zoned the property open-space only. The case goes to trial next October. The Supreme Court refused a depublication request made by Caltrans, the High-Speed Rail Authority, and other parties in Town of Atherton v. High-Speed Rail Authority, which upheld the programmatic EIR's analysis of a route through Pacheco Pass en route to the Peninsula. The underlying decision , issued in July by the Third Appellate District, is discussed in detail at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3540 . In Squires v. City of Eureka , landlords filed suit accusing Eureka city officials of singling them out for harassing code enforcement efforts; the city and individual defendants responded successfully with SLAPP suit motions for dismissal. The First District Court of Appeal upheld the trial court's dismissal in October and published its own decision November 14. The decision is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A138768.PDF . The California Supreme Court denied review November 12 for an unpublished August decision in Harper v. Canyon Hills Community Association , by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The ruling held that an aggrieved homeowner in a subdivision had no right to sue her neighbors for an encroaching contruction project based on their alleged violation of conditions, covenants and restrictions of the subdivision homeowners' association.  However, the appellate court upheld her claim against the homeowners' association for approving her neighbors' project, overturning a trial-level ruling that she bore the burden of showing the association's board did not act in good faith. The Fourth District ruling is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/G048445.PDF . The State Supreme Court refused a depublication request in Olive Lane Industrial Park, LLC v. County of San Diego . For prior brief coverage on this Fourth District case upholding a belated transfer of a Proposition 13 reassessment exclusion, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3534 . In the case of Union Pacific Railroad v. Santa Fe Pacific Pipelines , the Second Appellate District ordered recalculation of rent rates in litigation pending since 1994 over the rent due from Santa Fe Pacific Pipelines and Kinder Morgan to the Union Pacific Railroad for use of easements allowing a pipeline along a railroad right of way established in the 19th century. The lengthy opinion includes extensive long-range historical discussion of Western railroads and pipelines and of the pipeline agreement in question. The Porterville Recorder reports former councilman Greg Shelton is claiming vindication from a recent opinion by state Attorney General Kamala Harris on purchases of former redevelopment property. The paper said Shelton purchased property in the local redevelopment zone in 2012, and that Shelton was saying the AG's opinion supported his purchase as legitimate because it was for a residence and not for speculative purposes. It reported the opinion followed from a query raised in 2012 by Assemblymember Connie Conway, R-Tulare. The opinion, at http://oag.ca.gov/system/files/opinions/pdfs/12-1204.pdf , provides that conflict-of-interest laws written for redevelopment agencies are still in effect with respect to members of the governing bodies of successor agencies. It says such provisions in general prohibit acquisition of real property by a member of such a governing body, and resignation from the body would not cure a violation of law committed through an improper acquisition. However, it includes among exemptions a mention of Health and Safety Code Sec. 33130.5 allowing purchase or lease of a project area property for "personal residential use" but "only after any needed property improvements have been completed, or when no improvements are needed." A Superior Court judge in San Jose allowed a contractor to go forward with construction on an aviation terminal primarily serving planes of Google executives. (CP&DR reported on a prior phase of San Jose airport litigation at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3526 .) Meanwhile Google signed a contract to lease Moffett Field, including the historic Hangar One, from NASA. See http://www.cnbc.com/id/102172594 . Developer-side law blogger Art Coon noted the case of Paulek v. CA Dept of Water Resources , a Fourth District Court of Appeal ruling issued October 31 . The case upheld a local activist's standing to bring a CEQA challenge the Perris Dam Remediation Project in Riverside County but rejected the challenge itself. The Department of Water Resources had argued that when appellant Albert Paulek spoke at a public hearing on the project, asking whether the project would achieve what it set out to do, he was raising questions but not making objections, and hence lacked standing to pursue them later. The court said Paulek raised objections sufficiently to qualify to bring a petition. However, the court rejected the challenge itself, which alleged that DWR, by removing plans to include an emergency outlet extension in the dam repair project would leave a flooding hazard unmitigated. It held the decision not to include the extension in the project was not improper segmentation. Further, the court held DWR's responses to comments were adequate, including on a question Paulek raised about cumulative impacts to habitat for the Stephens' kangaroo rat.

The state Department of Water Resources sharpened plans for the construction of two 30-mile-long tunnels on the Sacramento River, releasing hundreds of pages of documents in its environmental impact statement detailing the project's changes from the original 2006 plan worth $15 billion. Among changes, the new details show that the plan will eliminate pumping plants on the east bank of the Sacramento River in favor of a gravity-fed system into the tunnels. The details also present a scaled-back version of the plan, with Gov. Jerry Brown only calling for 15,600 acres for habitat restoration of offset the effect of the tunnels -only one-sixth of the amount of the governor's original proposal - and dropping efforts to obtain a 50-year permit for the project, raising anxiety among water agencies that are expecting more reliability in their water deliveries. Opposition to the project arose following the release of the documents. Stockton-area farmer Dean Cortopassi is circulating an initiative that would force public work projects costing over $2 billion to receive voter approval before issuing revenue bonds, a potential hitch in Brown's plan to avoid a public vote by raising funds from water agencies in exchange for reliable water deliveries. Environmentalists and Delta residents still say that pushing huge volumes of fresh water into the tunnels would greatly decrease drinking water quality for the East Bay and northern San Joaquin Valley and continue to degrade fish habitats, even though the Brown administration is proposing to restore 30,000 acres of habitat in the Delta. Army Corps Approves L.A. River Plan The Civil Works Review Board of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers unanimously approved a plan, over a decade in the making, to restore 719 acres of the Los Angeles River, marking a key victory in the long-anticipated plans to reestablish riparian strand, freshwater marsh, and aquatic habitat while maintaining flood risk management on the river. The Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration project proposes restoration measures in and along an 11-mile stretch of the river to reestablish scarce riparian strand, freshwater marsh, and aquatic habitat, while maintaining existing levels of flood risk management. The city and the Corps are expected to share the $1.3 billion cost, but financial commitments have yet to be worked out.  "The vote today validated that the recommended plan is technically feasible, environmentally acceptable, and economically justified," said Los Angeles District Commander Col. Kim Colloton. "Our partnership with the City of Los Angeles is as strong as it was in 1898 when we were working on the breakwater for the Port of Los Angeles, and it has been providing benefits and functioning well for over 80 years. It's now time to make room for the river." In order for the Corps and the City to begin construction, Congress now must authorize the project under the  Water Resources Development Act and appropriate funds for it. Obama Designates Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument President Obama  declared  the Berryessa Snow Mountain a national monument in an effort to better coordinate management of the area and raise its visibility for additional tourism and economic growth. The 331,000-acre wild land area covering Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Solano and Yolo counties is home to bald eagles, tule elk, and rare plants found nowhere else on Earth. It hosts historic Indian cultural sites from tribes that have inhabited the area for at least 11,000 years. Berryessa had been under mixed jurisdiction, with the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Forest Service governing various tracts. Officials believe that the new designation will better coordinate management of the area, possibly generating as much as $26 million in economic activity over five years under the joint management of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. "After years of tireless work by countless numbers of people, the Berryessa Snow Mountain region is finally getting the permanent protection it deserves," U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and the driving force behind the designation, said in a press release. "This national monument designation will provide a boost to our local economy, enhance recreational opportunities for tens of thousands of people, and protect important wildlife." Judge Rules in Favor of Four Rural Water Districts Potentially hindering the state's efforts to enforce curtailments of 1.2 million acre-feet of water diversion for senior rights holders in the Central Valley, a state judge ruled that the State Water Resources Control Board cannot impose broad curtailments of water usage to four Central Valley irrigation districts without giving each one an individual chance to defend itself. Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled that the SWRCB cannot issue mass notices that property owners holding senior riparian rights must stop diverting water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys "without any sort of pre-deprivation hearing." Experts told the Sacramento Bee that the ruling could affect the authority from an executive order intended to streamline the curtailment process quickly in the fourth year of drought. "The court is sending the state board a message that the water users have been trying to send for a few months," Jennifer Spaletta, a lawyer for the Central Delta Agency, told the Sacramento Bee . "Water rights are complicated. They cannot send out these broad orders." The curtailments marked the first time since 1977 that the state has affected senior rights, and the state had curtailed the rights to more than 1.2 million acre-feet of water leading up to the ruling. Orange County Streetcar Moves Forward The Orange County Transportation Authority agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the city of Santa Ana for the $250 million OC Streetcar Project, outlining the roles and responsibilities, development, operations, and maintenance of the project. Under the new agreement, the OCTA is responsible for the design, construction, and operations, along with securing the funding, while the OCTA and the city of Santa Ana must both develop and participate in a public outreach program for the project. With construction expected to begin in 2017 and operations beginning in 2019, the route will stop at 12 stations from the Santa Ana train station, through downtown Santa Ana, and connecting to a new multimodal transit hub at Harbor Boulevard and Westminster Avenue in Garden Grove. L.A. County May Ban Utility-Scale Wind Turbines The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took preliminary steps to ban utility-scale wind turbines in the county's unincorporated areas, voting unanimously on a draft Renewable Energy Ordinance that would update the county's permitting and regulations on those projects along with small-scale wind and solar projects. After hearing complaints from residents of Antelope Valley that the large wind projects - originally planned to have a height limit of 500 feet- created fugitive dust and contributed to health concerns like valley fever, Supervisor Michael Antonovich proposed the ban in favor of regulations that would incentivize construction of small-scale projects mounted on roofs by streamlining the permitting process for those smaller projects. The county's Department of Regional Planning staff had recommended that the large wind farms, which typically generate electricity for off-site use and are contracted through a power-purchase agreement with a utility, be allowed but regulated. Oakland Considers Proposal to Keep Raiders Oakland City council members met in a closed session to discuss a proposal by San Diego developer Floyd Kephart in which Oakland and Alameda Counties would finance $100-140 million in infrastructure improvements before submitting plans to finance the $1 billion Oakland Raiders "Coliseum City" project he is heading. While activists rallied to decry the project, saying that Kephart should guarantee local jobs, affordable housing, and public services, Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan defended Kephart's request to be freed from obligations to improve infrastructure. "Even if all the sports teams and Floyd Kephart disappear, we should still develop that site," Kaplan told the San Francisco Chronicle. She added that transit-oriented development - such as a massive sports complex, convention center, or shopping mall near the Coliseum BART station - will create jobs, boost the economy and encourage people to use public transportation. Judge to Deliberate on Sacramento Arena Following Final Arguments A lawsuit over a public subsidy given to fund a new downtown stadium for the Sacramento Kings will go to a judge following final arguments in which plaintiffs argued that the city committed fraud by hiding the full value of its investment. Specifically, they argued that rights to 3,700 parking spaces at the former Downtown Plaza and entitlements to build six digital signboards near freeways amounts to a secret subsidy given by the city without any public disclosure. Attorneys for the city said that the plaintiffs were tossing unproven theories in hopes that one would stick. "They failed to really produce any evidence that there was a collusion or conspiracy among city staff, city officials, the city council to defraud the public," Assistant City Attorney Matt Ruyak said at the hearing, according to Capitol Public Radio . Expedited Review Environmental Approved for Potential S.D. Football Stadium The San Diego City Council voted, 6-3, to approve a $2.1 million expedited environmental review for a new Chargers stadium, hoping to convince the NFL to force the non-complicit Chargers -- currently pursuing a joint venture in Carson with the Oakland Raiders -- back to the bargaining table, . Officials hope that the vote will show the NFL that San Diego is serious about building a new stadium in the wake of a looming visit of NFL executives to San Diego in July and a meeting of NFL owners in Chicago on August 10, along with Mayor Kevin Faulconer's hopes to put a stadium proposal on the ballot in December or January. The proposal would build a new stadium at the Chargers' existing site at Qualcomm Stadium, though the Chargers were in favor of a downtown site. The council members in opposition called the spending an improper use of taxpayer money. "Without a financing plan for this project, we are simply not being serious," as Councilman David Alvarez said at the meeting, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. U.S., Mexico Move Towards Tijuana River Agreement The U.S. and Mexico are preparing to sign a binding formal agreement to regulate pollution that has plagued the Tijuana River watershed on both sides of the border. The agreement, known as a "minute" and expected to be completed before the end of the summer, would set up a bilateral framework composed of government agencies and the nonprofit sector to address the watershed's three major issues: sediment control, solid waste management, and water quality. The Tijuana River Watershed covers 1,735 miles of Baja California and San Diego County, and pollution from discarded tires in Tijuana, sediment erosion from Mexican canyons, and other pollution have affected water quality on both sides of the border for the past three decades. Judge Throws Up Roadblock for Uber Ride-Hailing Service A California judge dealt a blow to ride-hailing service Uber, recommending that the Silicon Valley-based company be fined $7.3 million and be suspended from operating in California for evading a 2013 state law designed to ensure that drivers are doling out rides fairly to all passengers. In the ruling, Karen V. Clopton, chief administrative law judge of the California Public Utilities Commission, said that Uber's annual report concerning data about rides provided through the app did not include hard numbers on customers who requested cars to accommodate service animals or wheelchairs, or raw numbers on requests tabulated by ZIP Codes.  While a $7.3 million fine would be just a drop in the bucket for the company backed by $5.9 billion in venture capital, the suspension of Uber's services in its own backyard would be a major symbolic blow as it faces litigation in other cities in the U.S. along with countries throughout Europe.  "It's not a market they would want to jeopardize their existence in over not handing over some spreadsheets," Juan Matute, the associate director of the UCLA Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies, told the LA Times.

The Mountain View City Council specified the number of houses it is prepared to build in the city's North Bayshore business district, choosing the densest option of building 9,100 units in the area that's home to Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft. "It gives us the most flexibility moving forward," Vice Mayor Pat Showalter said at the meeting, according to the San Francisco Business Journal . "It's not all going to be built. So having more areas where it's allowed is better." Getting to that number of units would require a revision of the final Environmental Impact Report, which the previous council had approved without any residential space. After that, voters put a pro-housing council majority into office last November as housing advocates said approving office space with no housing would aggravate traffic issues and promote suburban sprawl. Councilmembers supported a land-use plan that would allow residential uses for over 60 acres of land, most of which is owned by Google. Mountain View currently has 31,000 households.  Downtown L.A. Subway Project Falters Los Angeles' Downtown Regional Connector project -- considered as a crucial missing link in Metro's expanding mass transit network -- is already encountering cost overruns and schedule delays, even before tunneling has begun. Half of the project's $92.7 million reserve for unexpected cost has been expended because of complications with underground utilities, and a Metro analysis indicates that the estimated $1.42-billion price tag for the subway connection needs to grow by $130 million, or 9%, to cover the added expenses and replenish the reserve fund. The project will be a 1.9-mile connection between the 7th Street subway station near Staples Center to the eastern edge of Little Tokyo near Union Station, and is seen as the linchpin of an unprecedented boom in rail construction for Metro. "These kinds of stumbles that we're having here are very common in construction projects, but especially when you're doing it in a huge business area, in a downtown environment," said Metro spokesperson Pauletta Tonilas. "It's not a surprise that we've hit some bumps in the road." Bay Area Group Calls for Penalties on Cities that Shirk Housing Obligations A controversial new report from the Bay Area Council suggests that Bay Area cities that do not build enough housing to keep up with the region's growth should be punished by having their ability to approve or reject development projects stripped. The "Roadmap for Economic Resilience" report suggests creating "super agencies" to supersede local planning authorities in approving and funding projects, and it suggests that the state could expand "by right" approvals in which cities are powerless to block a project if it complies with local zoning and building codes. It also said that the area's 26 transit agencies need to begin coordinating their planning immediately. "The mission of the report isn't to say, 'It must be done this way,'" Jim Wunderman, the council's chief executive officer, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's to start a region-wide conversation. ... We don't, in any way, want to put local governments out of the business of deciding what goes in their neighborhoods." L.A. Earthquake Upgrades to Begin in February As early as February, Los Angeles officials will start instructing some property owners to initiate earthquake retrofits  on thousands of wooden buildings in the city. The orders will apply to "soft-story" wooden apartments with weak first floors that are often held up by slender columns over carports.  An estimated 15,000 buildings -- both wooden and concrete -- across the city will be strengthened under Los Angeles' new landmark retrofitting laws. Owners of the city's largest apartment buildings containing 16 or more units will receive the first wave of orders, after which they have one year either to submit proof that the building doesn't need retrofitting or to submit plans for retrofit or demolition. Property Owners Force Repeal of Rent Control in Richmond The Richmond City Council voted to repeal a rent control ordinance following a successful petition drive by property owners in the area. The ordinance was passed by a City Council vote instead of a voter referendum and was therefore subject to repeal if enough opposing signatures were gathered. It would have prevented landlords from increasing rents more than 2 percent each year and made it more difficult to evict tenants. Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin, who supports rent control, said coalition groups are drafting a new policy with simpler and clearer language to be voted on by the city council in the near future, after which it will be put up for a referendum for Richmond voters. Los Angeles Faces CEQA Suit over Drilling A group of environmental advocates are  suing  the City of Los Angeles, alleging that the city has violated the California Environmental Quality Act by rubber stamping plans involving oil drilling near homes. Officials have exempted most plans related  o oil drilling and extraction from CEQA requirements "under the basis of there being no change in land use," because many sites predate the 1970 passage of CEQA, according to a report prepared last year by the Planning Department. The lawsuit, which comes from Youth for Environmental Justice, the Center for Biological Diversity and the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, could find only one instance when Los Angeles required an Environmental Impact Report for oil drilling, and it came in a largely white neighborhood. The groups are arguing that oil drilling sites should be fitted with much more stringent conditions like taller walls, better sound protection, and less-polluting equipment. Redwood City Approves Affordable Housing Fee The Redwood City City Council approved a new affordable housing fee on development in the city.  The move, which would charge developers $5 to $25 per square foot for commercial projects over 5,000 square feet and residential projects of five or more units to generate $3 million per year., was opposed by business and developers' groups, who argued that the fee would raise housing prices and bring development to a halt. "I think when it comes to the situation that we're in right now, the rules are different," Vice Mayor Rosanne Foust, who supported the ordinance, told the San Jose Mercury News. "And if one housing developer decides, 'you know what, I'm not interested in paying that fee,' my guess is there are four other housing developers that are going to be behind him." Developers who agree to build affordable housing or provide land for such a project could be exempted from the fee. Wind Farm Proposed for Coast off Morro Bay Plans to build the state's first offshore wind farm are gaining steam as a Seattle company released a plan to install 100 floating turbines up to 636 feet tall about 15 miles off Morro Bay. The project would generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity, capable of powering 300,000 homes. However, some environmentalists are already wary of the project. "California places a great deal of value on the Pacific coastline and what it looks like when you travel there. People don't want to look out and see a floating industrial facility," said Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network in Santa Barbara. California currently draws 8 percent of its electricity from its 1,883 wind turbines. It needs to increase that and other renewable sources to follow Gov. Jerry Brown's landmark law requiring state utilities to provide 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Report: San Diego Facies Housing Crisis A new report from the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the London Group finds that San Diego County is building itself up for an affordable housing crisis that could choke economic growth. The report finds that home building has slowed dramatically since the 2008 recession with only 3,153 multifamily units  and 2,272 single family units being built since 2008, respectively corresponding to 44 percent and 64 percent of what SANDAG anticipated. The report predicts that there could be a shortage of 45,000 to 118,000 single family homes by 2050. "Ultimately we pay the price in those companies that are not growing or moving out or expanding elsewhere," economist Gary London said. "The other path is that we become a boutique region where we basically become a region that mostly accommodates the haves and leaves out the have-nots." Restoration Begins on Portion of Salton Sea Officials began work on a $3.5 million project to restore 420 acres of Red Hill Bay on the southeastern shore of the beleaguered Salton Sea, which has been dying for decades. Recently, agricultural runoff, which is crucial to the sea's water levels, has been declining. The modest project, which is slated for completion in early 2017, is a signal that restoration of the 35-mile-long sea is not a lost cause. The Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank, has warned that a loss of water in the sea exposes the sea bottom laden with pesticides and salt, potentially causing an impending disaster to public health, property values, agricultural production, the environment, and the recreation industry. The Salton Sea Authority has set a goal of restoring 12,000 acres of shoreline habitat in the next five years, and another 25,000 acres starting in 2020.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-2 to support a sweeping new mobility plan that would focus on increasing bicycle and pedestrian safety and reducing car usage by reshaping streets with medians, widened sidewalks, and over 300 miles of dedicated bike and bus lanes, at the expense of car lanes. The plan, dubbed " Mobility Plan 2035 ," (PDF) seeks to cut the fatality rate from traffic collisions to zero within 20 years, partly by keeping cars within speed limits by creating road diets, where vehicular lanes are shrunk and things like medians and sidewalks are widened. Opponents have argued that the plan would worsen traffic throughout the city and worsen emergency response times.  OPR Releases Draft CEQA Guidelines Update The Governor's Office of Planning and Research has released its Preliminary Discussion Draft of its updates to the guidelines for implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act. Notably, the draft proposes efficiency improvements including streamlined environmental checklists and enhanced exemptions for things like mixed-use projects near transit, substantive improvements to include energy impacts analysis and water supply impacts, and technical improvements including clarifying using projected future conditions as an environmental baseline. Notably, the draft does not include changes to transportation analysis including the "level of service" metric as required by SB 743 and will release that proposal separately. OPR is seeking comments on the draft until October 12, 2015. Bay Area Counties Collaborate on Proposed Transportation Funding Tax Measure A transportation advocacy group is asking residents of five Bay Area counties to approve a half-cent sales tax to raise $500 million a year for transportation improvements, marking the first time multiple counties have taken a coordinated regional approach to asking voters to improve highways and transit systems. Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group leading the charge, said that having all five counties of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Contra Costa vote in the November 2016 ballot cycle would facilitate regional improvements across counties. In order to be approved as a "special tax," however, the measures would face the difficult task of being approved by two-thirds of voters in each county. "The spending will be primarily focused on state highway system and picking up the ball the state has dropped," Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, told Reuters .  S.D. Airport, Coastal Commission Reach Odd Agreement Over Parking Lot In order to build a new $80 million parking structure at San Diego International Airport, officials there must paradoxically encourage the public not to use it in a compromise with the California Coastal Commission. The move comes as the Coastal Commission had asked the airport authority why the proposed three-story, 3,000 space garage was necessary when the airport authority said in 2009 that it wouldn't build the parking garage in order to encourage passengers to use public transit, rideshare and private parking lots away from the coast. Airport Spokesman Jon Heller said in a statement, "Our passengers' reaction to limited parking over the past six years strongly indicates that limiting parking does not increase transit use at San Diego International Airport and additional parking facilities are, in fact, needed." Parking is one of the airport's three top moneymakers, and brought in nearly $39 million in 2014. The Coastal Commission approved the garage on the condition that the airport increase its efforts to encourage the use of alternative transportation.  Solano County General Plan Update to Emphasize Flood Protection The Solano County Board of Supervisors will update a chapter in the Public Health and Safety portion of the county's General Plan to include comprehensive flood protection measures in line with floodplain mapping prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Water Resources. County staff reported to The Reporter that the update identifies rivers, creeks, streams, flood corridors, riparian habitat, and land that may accommodate floodwater for purposes of groundwater recharge and stormwater management. The updated mapping is consistent with requirements established by the Central Valley Flood Protection Board for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Drainage District. The update will also include updated fire hazard maps including state responsibility areas and an Implementation Program for the update. Grand Jury Faults Kings Co. Supes for Rail Lawsuit A grand jury criticized the Kings County Board of Supervisors for filing lawsuits against the state high-speed rail project, saying that supervisors should not have used public funding for litigation involving privately owned land that the state is seeking. In a 167-page report titled "The Train Has Already Left the Station," the jury questioned the expenditure of $150,000 in public funds on the battle, asserting that the rail line would not take any county-owned land except where it crosses public roads. County Supervisor Doug Verboon said the county elected to fight the project when the state in 2011 refused to provide a detailed plan for taking property, choosing to put the line through the middle of farm fields rather than along existing highways. The county is involved in two lawsuits: one saiys that the state will fail to comply with a 2008 bond act requiring the system to operate without subsidies, while the other asserts that the project failed to comply with California's Environmental Quality Act. San Jose Considers Moratorium on Mobile Home Park Closures San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and four City Council members have proposed a moratorium on closures of mobile home parks in the area as the sizzling real estate market there has made land beneath the parks triple in value and make developers eager to build market-rate housing there. The proposal came about after the announced closure of Winchester Ranch Mobile Home Community, which threatens to displace more than 100 mostly-elderly residents. Hoping to beef up protection for low-income residents, the City Council has requested a revision to a never-used 1986 ordinance outlining the process for closing mobile park homes. In the meantime, however, anyone can apply to close a park unless the city adopts the moratorium. State Wins Federal Grant for Habitat Protection California will receive nearly $16 million of a $37.2 million federal grant to 20 states from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to support conservation planning and acquisition of vital habitat for endangered species. Awarded through the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund and funded in part by the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the grants will benefit species ranging from the California gnatcatcher and the Karner blue butterfly, and it will enable states to work with private landowners, conservation groups and other government agencies to initiate conservation planning efforts and acquire or protect habitat for the conservation of threatened and endangered species. Electronic Billboard Stokes Dispute Between O.C. Cities The cities of Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa are fighting over a 79-foot-tall Clear Channel electronic billboard that would be a financial boon to Fountain Valley -- producing minimum $150,000 a year -- but a potential visual menace to residents of Costa Mesa, who argue that the sign will illuminate their homes at night. Matt Mogensen, Fountain Valley's interim planning and building director, said that the billboard would produce an ongoing revenue stream and allow the city to advertise its events four weeks annually on the dual 672-square-foot screens. However, Costa Mesa Development Services Director Gary Armstrong wrote a letter to Fountain Valley, urging Fountain Valley to consider alternative locations for the billboard, to lower its height to 31 feet, and to restrict hours of operation from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The sign would sit on the border of the two cities, and Fountain Valley city staff recommended its Planning Commission to approve the billboard despite Costa Mesa's pleas. Sacramento Considers Regulations on Short-Term Rentals Sacramento could join a growing list of cities across California seeking to regulate the growing online short-term rental market through websites like Airbnb. An ordinance set to go to the city's Planning and Design Commission would limit the number of days a property owner could rent out a home or room before needing to apply for a $2,600-minimum conditional use permit, and it would require renters to pay the current hotel occupancy tax of 12 percent the price of a nightly stay. Airbnb representatives have asked city officials to extend the proposed cap on service to beyond 30 nights, Joy Patterson, the principal planner with the city, told the Sacramento Business Journal. $50 Million Fund Dedicated to Housing in L.A. Los Angeles will expand its New Generation Fund, a public-private partnership between the city and financial institutions, bringing in $50 million to create, preserve and retrofit affordable housing in the city. The New Generation Fund offers pre-development and acquisition funding, using $10 million in City investment to leverage $50 million in private capital. "Early stage funding is critical in the development of affordable housing, especially in a high-cost city like Los Angeles with great market pressures," said Jeff Schaffer, VP and Southern California market leader, Enterprise. Developments Contribute to Sacramento Revitalization Two developments in Sacramento's urban core are sending signals of the revitalization of the central city as city leaders attempt to meet Mayor Kevin Johnson's "In Downtown" housing initiative goal of adding 10,000 housing units there over the next decade. The Sacramento City Council approved plans to open a new Whole Foods in midtown, also adding 141 apartments in a new six-story building. Additionally, the Sacramento City Unified School District voted unanimously to reopen Washington Elementary School in fall 2016, three years after it was closed due to falling enrollment. "This summer, we've seen a vision become a reality," Johnson told the Sacramento Bee . "With the two votes (Thursday), which will bring a supermarket, over 100 housing units and will reopen a school, we are transforming our downtown into a destination for people to live, work and play."

The Pismo Beach City Council voted to impose a moratorium on all new development in anticipation of a drastic drop in water supply next year. The moratorium, which is the city's first since 1988 and believed to be the first in the state in the current drought cycle,  immediately halts all building permit applications for vacant parcels and requires redevelopment or building changes at existing properties to consume less than or equal to the amount of water currently used. The city did not meet its 24 percent water conservation target set by the state for the months of September and October. State officials have announced that it expects to deliver only 10 percent of the water it allocates to California cities as reservoirs are still well below capacity, contributing to the decision to enact the moratorium. If the city's anticipated water supply falls below two triggers -- 1,130 acre-feet and 850 acre-feet -- two more building restriction tiers will go into effect: one prohibiting any new building permits, and another requiring new commercial use and redevelopment of existing buildings to show that water demand would be at least 30 percent less than the year before the tier was triggered. Fresno to Miss Deadline for 45,000-Home Expansion The city of Fresno's plans to expand development into an area called the Southeast Growth Area have languished, as it appears that the city will miss agreed-upon deadlines with the county to build on the land within 20 years. A decade ago, the county approved an expansion of the city of Fresno by 14 miles to the south and east to build a projected 45,000 homes accommodating 110,000 residents, along with the already-built $23.5 million Clovis Unified elementary school. Now, with none of the area built out and the state calling for more infill development and less sprawl, some members of the Local Agency Formation Commission -- which approves future boundaries for cities -- are calling for a reduction of the size of the growth area. SGC Releases RFP for Technical Assistance Pilot for AHSC The Strategic Growth Council has released a request for proposals to provide direct technical assistance to disadvantaged communities interested in applying for the 2015-16 Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. This Request for Proposal (RFP) is to solicit competitive proposals from experienced and qualified contractors who will be engaged to provide technical assistance and specific services to eligible participants through a contract(s) with the SGC for the 2015-16 AHSC program funding round. Selected contractors for the SGC Technical Assistance Pilot will provide direct grant writing, analytical, and project management support to applicants to ultimately achieve successful AHSC applications for projects benefiting disadvantaged communities that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The RFP can be found by looking for Bid #RFP SGC 15100 - AHSC Technical Assistance Pilot on the  Bid Sync website. Federal Transportation Bill Includes $26 Billion for California California will receive $26 billion in federal funds for a variety of transportation projects as Congress agreed on a long-term transportation bill to raise federal spending on highways by 5 percent and transit by 8 percent in its first year. The bill, pushed through by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), comes just in time to avoid the expiration of the Highway Trust Fund. It lacks a sustainable funding source, all but ensuring that the funding deficit for repairs will be even worse when the bill expires in five years. Instead of securing a sustainable funding source by raising the 18.4 cents a gallon federal gasoline tax, which both parties have shunned, Congressional negotiators scoured the budget for obscure alternatives, raiding the Federal Reserve's cushion against bank losses to revoking the passports of citizens behind on their taxes by $50,000 or more in an effort to get them to pay up.  Newport Beach Bans Marijuana Dispensaries The Newport Beach City Council voted to ban marijuana dispensaries and delivery services in the city in response to the state's Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, effective Jan. 1, which will create California's first statewide rules for growers and retailers. The state act forces cities either to take immediate action to enact rules or bans for medical marijuana, or to allow the state to become the sole authority for licensing and regulation. Newport Beach's municipal code previously did not address medical marijuana, but dispensaries have not been allowed to operate in the city, according to City Manager Dave Kiff. However, online searches found that several services say they deliver marijuana to people in the city. Riverside County Considers Steep Development Fees in Eastvale, Jurupa Valley A new proposal from a Riverside County water district would charge developers more than $5,000 per residential unit to pay the cost of water for homes being built in Eastvale and Jurupa Valley. The proposal from Jurupa Community Services District would first tack on a new $3,557 per-unit water resource fee charged to developers. "The goal of this new fee is to fairly apportion the cost of water supplies and sewer service between existing customers and new development," general manager Todd Corbin told the Press-Enterprise. "If we didn't do this, it's clear that existing customers would be subsidizing the cost of new development." The district is also proposing to hike  existing fees developers pay to connect their projects to water and sewer systems. All in all, the costs to builders would rise from $13,170 to $18,983, an estimated 44 percent increase. The Eastvale City Council adopted a resolution formally declaring its opposition to the increases.  San Francisco Mayor Looks to Another Housing Ballot Measure With San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approving pro-housing ballot measures in November, Mayor Ed Lee is convening a group of developers and affordable-housing advocates with the hopes of crafting a ballot measure for next year's ballot to increase the percentage of below-market units included in new projects. The city currently requires 12 percent affordable housing under 2012's Prop. C, which dropped the requirement from 15 percent. With development booming in the city, Lee said that the goal will be to offer developers benefits, such as raised height limits, higher densities, or fast-tracked approvals, to offset increased affordable housing requirements. While some projects in the city have agreed to go as high as 40 percent below-market-rate units, developers warn that increasing the requirements could halt the smaller projects that make up the bulk of the city's housing production. Los Angeles Housing Authority Loses Section 8 Suit A federal appeals court ruled that the Los Angeles Housing Authority's 2004 reduction in rent subsidies for about 20,000 poor people violated their right to due process. The court's ruling hinged on notifications of the cuts sent by the Housing Authority to Section 8 beneficiaries. Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt said the law requires the Housing Authority to give recipients a year's notice of possible cuts, and the notification fliers were so confusing and inadequate that the authority violated the recipients' rights to due process. The flier "uses the term �payment standards' six times without ever defining or explaining the term's meaning," Reinhardt said in the ruling. "A short and simple explanation, such as �this means that the Housing Authority has reduced the maximum amount it will contribute towards recipients' rent,' would have provided at least a small measure of clarity." The lawsuit came in a class action brought by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.  Santa Ana Loosens Limitations on Accessory Dwelling Units Santa Ana is updating city code to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, or " granny flats ". Current regulations limit second units to 750 square feet or one-third the size of the lot's main house, with at least one parking space per bedroom. Thpse rules don't necessarily match up with the realities of how people live in the city, Hassan Haghani, executive director of the Santa Ana Planning and Building Agency, told KPCC. He imagines "good-sized" granny flats that could house a small family with a bathroom and full kitchen. "We have an awful lot of square footage of unused space in Orange County in the form of single-family homes," he said. A neighborhood not interested in packing in more families could request to be excluded from the ordinance under rules currently being written by City Council staffers. S.F. to Create City Department Dedicated to Homelessness San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced the creation of a city department that will group all of San Francisco's homeless services under one roof to streamline coordination and reduce clogs in the system. The new department, which may have as many as 30 employees, will inherit homelessness tasks currently performed by other city agencies, mainly the Department of Public Health and the Human Services Agency, and will oversee street outreach counseling teams, homeless housing services and mental health programs aimed at indigents. It comes as Lee plans to lay out his goal of spending at least $1 billion over the next four years to help 8,000 people out of homelessness.  "I'm not going to...say I am ending homelessness," the mayor said. "But I will use that phrase to say that everybody who works on this problem has the goal to end homelessness for a single person, a veteran, a child, a family member. I want a department that is dedicated to that outcome every day."  Olympic Valley Withdraws Application to Incorporate Efforts to incorporate the Squaw Valley area of Placer County � also know as Olympic Valley -- have officially come to a halt, with organizers withdrawing their application from the county's Local Agency Formation Commission. Inocorporate Olympic Valley, the group heading the bid, said that it would withdraw because LAFCO's stance has been staunchly negative on the financial viability of incorporation. An analysis from the State Controller's Office agreed with 18 of the 31 concerns of the group and found that the proposed city would net $15 million in revenues over its first 10 years. The effort was largely launched to gain greater say over development proposals in the Squaw Valley area, including one 200-unit housing development for resort employees. San Diego Council Member Proposes Alternative Infrastructure Plan  San Diego City Councilman Mark Kersey unveiled an infrastructure financing plan for the next 30 years to secure $4 to $5 billion for neighborhood infrastructure needs without raising taxes. The plan would dedicate future sales tax growth for the next 30 years and savings from voter-approved pension reform for the next 30 years, and it would preserve half of all new major general fund growth for the next 10 years to finance ongoing infrastructure needs. Kersey, the chairman of the Council's Infrastructure Committee, said that the full council will take up the proposal next year so it can be ready for the primary election ballot, where it would need a simple majority of voters to go into effect. "I think if we look at the past history, city leaders have shown an unwillingness to invest in needed (infrastructure)," Kersey told the Pomerado News. "With a voters mandate, infrastructure will be a top city priority."

The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a new  Climate Action Plan , one of the nation's most ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions by creating legally binding mandates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The plan requires annual emissions be cut in half during the next two decades based on a strategy to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. The plan will also require that the city boost the urban tree canopy by 15 percent by 2020 and 35 percent by 2035, recycle or compost 75 percent of all solid waste by 2020 and 90 percent by 2035, and cut car trips in key transportation areas by 20 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2035. Importantly, since the plan is a legally binding mandate, the city opens itself up to lawsuits from environmental groups and the state attorney general if it doesn't follow through on the plan's promises. The most controversial decision could be whether to implement community choice aggregation, a program that would take control away from the local electric utility when deciding how much renewable energy a city uses. L.A. Approves Sale of Ontario Airport The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a $250 million agreement to return control of Ontario International Airport to the city of Ontario. The move comes in the wake of a 2013 lawsuit that Ontario filed against Los Angeles claiming that the city, Los Angeles World Airports, and the airport's board of commissioners had made administrative moves  since 2007 that cut flight service and cost millions of passengers and billions of dollars to the local economy. Though the Los Angeles vote concludes local government and airport board approvals for the agreement, no transfer can take place without Federal Aviation Administration approval. If the FAA decides to approve the transfer, the city of Ontario will reimburse Los Angeles World Airports about $60 million for all outstanding Ontario bonds. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) U2's The Edge Gets Blessing from Coastal Commission for Five Homes U2 guitarist the Edge received approval from the California Coastal Commission to build five homes atop an undeveloped ridge in an unincorporated area of Malibu despite a decade of protest from environmental groups and residents who say the project would needlessly despoil sensitive habitat and mar the visual landscape. Each house will be more than 10,000 square feet and feature its own swimming pool. However, the approved plan is a step back from original plan. It includes efforts to use exterior colors that help the structures blend in with the environment, won't contain as much glass as originally proposed, and the guitarist will conserve 140 acres of the property as open land and allow a hiking and equestrian easement linking to the Coastal Slope Trail. Construction of the homes, on just over five acres, of the property will require 63,390 cubic yards of grading and disturb 17 acres of habitat classified as environmentally sensitive. Bakersfield Moves Ahead with Station Area Planning The Bakersfield City Council unanimously approved spending $750,000 to hire a Chicago-based urban planning and engineering firm to plan a downtown station for the state high speed train project. The council voted to hire Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, whose projects include the expansion of Denver's historic Union Station into a regional transportation hub; a master plan for Philadelphia's 30th Street Station Precinct; a high-speed rail terminal in Tianjin, China; and three stations for the All Aboard Florida passenger train network. "They impressed us with their planning and urban design experience. The fact that they've worked on some rail and transit-oriented projects," Community Development Director Doug McIsaac told Mass Transit Magazine. "The main premise is how the city can best leverage and take advantage of the station being located here, for the benefit of the surrounding area and the entire downtown." Bakersfield will contribute $200,000 in staff time to help create the station area plan, but most of the $550,000 to hire Skidmore comes from federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.  Los Angeles River Seeks Federal Planning Funds Thirteen Los Angeles-area members of Congress have signed a letter asking President Obama to include $4.2 million in the fiscal 2017 budget for planning and redesigning the proposed 51-mile Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration project. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said last year the federal government would split the cost, putting the the city on the hook for about $500 million, but a report by L.A.'s chief legislative analyst stated that the city's share of the estimated $1.3 billion cost could rise to as much as $1.2 billion. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) were the original signers of the letter, and were joined by 10 colleagues from the Los Angeles area. "The progress of this project is the product of several years of collaborative work by citizens, stakeholders, and elected leaders to reestablish Los Angeles River as a source of Angelino pride and vitality," they wrote to Obama. "Your leadership to move this transformative project forward will not only improve our communities for today, but the world we leave for our children tomorrow." Court Rejects Malibu Anti-Chain Store Measure  The Superior Court of California overturned Malibu's Measure R, which voters approved to enact a 30% cap on the number of chain stores in shopping centers citywide and to create a voter-approval requirement for new commercial centers if they measure over 20,000 sq. ft. After their case against the City of Malibu was declined to be seen by a federal judge, opponents of the measure filed the suit in state court. Carson Considers NFL-Inspired Development Moratorium  In an attempt to entice the National Football League to move both the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders to a shared stadium in Carson, the City of Carson is considering putting a development moratorium on about 600 acres of land adjacent to the proposed stadium. Carson Mayor Albert Robles said the moratorium, affecting land west, north and east of the 157-acre stadium property, will help the city bring appropriate development to the area. Controversial Hollywood Project Gets Boost The Los Angeles City Planning Commission officially backed the proposed Palladium Residences development, which would bring two 30-story residential towers and 731 housing units to Hollywood on a stretch of Sunset Boulevard served by bus routes and the nearby Metro Red Line subway. A spokeswoman for Palladium developer Crescent Heights told the LA Times that the company will restrict rents in 5% of the project's apartments for tenants who earn 120% of the region's median annual income. The neighboring AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has said the project is too big for the neighborhood and will accelerate the gentrification of Hollywood, promises to keep fighting as it heads to a City Council vote next year. Mixed-Use Transit Center Proposed for N. San Diego County The North County Transit District heard four developers present competing plans to build a mixture of parking, retail, shopping, and residential buildings with the upcoming renovation of the Solana Beach Transit Center. All developers agreed on the basic outline of the project, which includes preserving the hut-shaped train station, expanding parking, adding new uses and fitting in with nearby architecture and activities. Chestnut Properties of Solana Beach proposed The Station Solana Beach, based on "lifestyles and beach culture"; the Strategic Assets Group led by two local businessmen proposed three levels of underground parking and an additional bridge across the below-grade railroad tracks; the Creative Housing Associates of Los Angeles proposed a boutique hotel, which the community currently lacks, and automated parking; the Dahlin Group of Solana Beach proposed an iconic restaurant, 96 apartments, and a park-like area for the community. Anaheim Streetcar Plan in Jeopardy Dealing a significant blow to Anaheim's beleaguered streetcar project, a committee of the Orange County Transportation Authority Board of Directors is recommending that Anaheim officials drop their plans for a 3.2-mile streetcar system. Citing the over $300 million cost and the likelihood that federal funding won't materialize, the ad-hoc committee is recommending that the city quit the streetcar project and instead explore alternatives, like enhanced bus services. "This is not a project that's in the best interest of Orange County taxpayers, who are ultimately going to be asked to pay for the entire project, which will be, including operations and maintenance, $400 million to $500 million,"  board Chairman Jeffrey Lalloway said, according to Voice of OC.  Rents in San Francisco See Rare Decline For the first time in eight months, San Francisco's rental market saw a decline in prices, as the city's rent fell by 4.6 percent to $3,500 per month for a one-bedroom in November, according to research from Zumper. Oakland, on the other hand, jumped to become to the fourth-most expensive city,  as one-bedroom rents surged to $2,190, a 19 percent increase over the past year, which is the biggest jump anywhere in the country. "East Bay migration is definitely a compelling argument � the fact that Oakland rents continue to outpace San Francisco. in percentage terms shows there's a healthy appetite for property there, even as prices are now ahead of Washington, D.C. and San Jose," said Devin O'Brien, head of strategic marketing at Zumper. "I think there's also a certain threshold at which it doesn't make sense for people anymore. Once rents hit a certain percentage of income, people just will refuse to pay and look for alternate options, perhaps with a commute." One caveat of the data is that it focuses on one- and two-bedroom units, and San Francisco and Oakland both have a large percentage of their stock as single-family homes, which are often rented out to multiple tenants. $11 Million at Stake for Oakland Transit Village Oakland may finally realize its long-awaited transit village next to the Coliseum BART Station, but not before contributing an $11.6 million subsidy to the project with no guarantee of ever getting it back. The Oakland City Council's Community and Economic Development Committee will vote on Dec. 22 on whether to sign a development agreement with Oakland Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit corporation that has consisted of a transient cast of businessmen and whose non-profit tax status was earlier revoked for failing to file tax forms for at least three consecutive years. Until recently, the development was planned as a market-rate project, but now the developers say that half of the apartments on the 1.3-acre lot would be affordable.  The plan requires Oakland to provide public funds via an $11.6 million loan with a 55-year term and a stipulation that Oakland Economic Development Corp. won't have to pay a cent back if half the apartments remain affordable. BART would have to agree to lease the parking lot to the developer. Riverside Considers Streetcar Line Riverside officials are looking to Arizona for evidence that a long-awaited 12-mile streetcar line could revitalize the city's ailing downtown area through an influx of development and college-aged students into the area. Several Riverside officials, including Mayor Rusty Bailey and three City Councilmembers, took a trip to Arizona to see the cities of Tucson, Tempe, and Phoenix, all of which have thrived with new streetcar lines near millennial hubs, which helped convince them that a new streetcar would be directly followed by private building projects. The trip could help sway the opinion of several officials that have been on the fence about Riverside's project. The city's study is six to eight months behind schedule because city planners aren't satisfied with the estimates of how many people might ride a streetcar, and officials acknowledge that  laying tracks would be years away and cost hundreds of millions. Kings Seek EB-5 Funds for Development Around Arena The Sacramento Kings are utilizing a federal program that trades green cards for hefty investments that create jobs to lure Chinese investment dollars to finance redevelopment of the site around the new Sacramento Kings downtown arena. The Kings and their development partner, JMA Ventures of San Francisco, are planning to build more than $300 million of development in the Downtown Commons, including a hotel-office tower and a shopping and dining district. The EB-5 program, which provides permanent U.S. residence to foreigners who provide investments of at least $1 million, is a source of controversy, with many members of Congress seeking reforms to the program after it sunsets on Dec. 11. The program has produced $11.2 billion in investments in the United States since its launch in 1990 and has provided investors with as many as 10,000 green cards a year, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Developers in California may have a more difficult time creating mitigation plans in wetland areas as of this year. The US Army Corps of Engineers released a new set of guidelines adding more rigorous requirements to mitigation plans, which "will undoubtedly complicate and significantly increase the cost of preparing and implementing mitigation plans for new development." The guidelines are intended to keep up with 25 years of research since the last update, placing greater emphasis on preservation of California's wetlands. San Francisco Loses $1 Million of Impact Fee Funds Officials in San Francisco  are puzzling  over the disappearance of $1 million of public funds intended for park and pedestrian developments- possibly ending up in the hands of a developer. Officials in the mayor's office argue that a portion of the city's Market Community Stabilization Fund was incorrectly given to the developer of One Rincon Hill without permission from the mayor's office. However, an Association of Bay Area Governments official said that the developer was entitled to the money as a reimbursement for bonds sold to a special tax district designed to improve public spaces. HCD Invites Applications for $120 Million in GHG Reduction Funds The Department of Housing and Community Development announced the availability of approximately $120 million in funding for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program. The AHSC Program furthers the purposes of AB 32 and SB 375 by investing in projects that reduce GHG emissions by supporting more compact, infill development patterns, encouraging active transportation and transit usage, and protecting agricultural land from sprawl development. Funding for the AHSC Program is provided from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, an account established to receive cap-and-trade auction proceeds. A complete original concept proposal must be submitted to HCD using the Financial Assistance Application Submittal Tool (FAAST) system no later than 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 19, 2015. The AHSC Program's full application forms, workshop details, and related program information, will be posted on its website at http://www.hcd.ca.gov/fa/ahsc . Inglewood One Step Closer to a Pro Football Stadium The City of Inglewood  cleared its first hurdle  to building a new 80,000-seat football stadium for a possible move by the St. Louis Rams. Backers of the stadium plan gained over 20,000 signatures in a petition drive to put a question about rezoning the proposed stadium site on an upcoming city ballot. By going through the initiative process, developers are hoping to avoid doing a costly and time-consuming environmental review for the 238-acre site, which is the location of the shuttered Hollywood Park race track. Much of the Hollywood Park site is already being redeveloped as a residential community. Veterans Administration to Dedicate West Los Angeles Campus to Homeless The US Department of Veterans Affairs will provide permanent housing for homeless veterans on its 387-acre campus in west Los Angeles a result of a legal settlement . A suit alleged that the VA was misusing its property by giving leases to private corporations and non-veteran related companies. The ACLU Foundation of Southern California sued in 2011, alleging that "the VA was misusing the campus while failing to care for veterans" by neglecting to provide adequate housing and to use the campus for the direct benefit of veterans. As a result of the settlement, the VA will hire a homelessness expert to craft a master plan for the campus. The parcel, which was deeded to the VA in 1888, has long been coveted by developers. Oil Project Abandoned in Carson Oil company California Resources Corp.  abandoned a huge drilling project  in Carson in the wake of community opposition and a drop in oil prices. Residents near the proposed site had expressed concerns that the company, a recently spun-off subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, would use controversial drilling methods in its operations. The City Council went as far as to issue a moratorium on all oil drilling in the city last year as lawmakers studied the effects of fracking and acidization. With depleting capital budgets because of the fall in oil prices, the company abandoned the project for now. Glendale Sues State Over Redevelopment Agency The city of Glendale  sued the state for over $30 million  in lost funds from its now-defunct redevelopment agency. The redevelopment program was shut down in 2011 as part of Gov. Jerry Brown's efforts to return tax increment monies to state coffers, and Glendale was still owed millions of dollars for loans it had given for revitalization projects. However, the city alleges that also it should have received payment of interest based on a rate that existed at the time of the origination of the loan. The state claims that Glendale is only entitled to a 0.28% interest rate, cutting the amount they would receive from outstanding loans by over $30 million. Report: State Parks System Needs Overhaul California's parks  are deteriorating and need a new source of funding  to be fixed, according to a report by the California Parks Forward Commission. The report links the failing conditions of the parks system � denoted by increasing fees to hikers, outdated technology, and a lack of accountability � to shrinking budgets, a backlog of $1.3 billion, and money source of the parks. Right now, funds for the parks system come from the state's general fund, making the budget subject to the whims of the state budget. To fix the system, the state needs to allocate a specific funding source outside of the general fund, according to the report. SPUR Opens Oakland Office The urban policy think tank and advocacy group San Francisco Planning and Urban Research has extended its reach further by opening an office in Oakland. Based in San Francisco's Financial District,  SPUR  also has a location in San Jose. According to a statement, SPUR is committed to both regional and local planning in the Bay Area and will use the Oakland office to focus on issues specific to the East Bay.

Plans to build a $5 billion, 6.3-mile tunnel to close the "gap" of the 710 freeway are gaining headway as both the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments  recommended that project as the best option. The tunnel, which would have two lanes in either direction and would be completely underground for 4.2 miles. It would shave 7-14 minutes off commute times, providing a benefit of $1.5 to 1.6 billion over 20 years at a cost of $3.15 billion to build. Additionally, the SGVCOG voted to support the tunnel plan over surface-street alternatives, saying that the plan is in line with the Southern California Association of Governments Regional Transportation Plan of 2012. A recently released draft environmental impact report describes five alternatives for closing the gap, considered by some to be a crucial link between the ports and the warehouses of the Inland Empire. A previous version of this brief incorrectly stated that the California Transportation Commission had endorsed the tunnel; the CTC, in fact, has issued no comments on the DEIR.  Tribes Sue to Block Solar Plant A group of Native American tribes filed a lawsuit to stop construction of the Blythe Mesa Solar Project in the Mojave Desert, saying that the 3,660-acre project's Environmental Impact Report failed to take into account the project's impact on traditional tribal lands. The suit comes after Riverside County Supervisors approved the project, which covers nearly six square miles of developer land. "The project is located in the ancestral homelands of the Colorado River Indian Tribes' Mohave and Chemeheuvi members, in a region rich in cultural resources that have been used since time immemorial," tribal Councilwoman Amanda Barrera told the Press-Enterprise . L.A. Study Seeks to Promote Manufacturing Economy Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti along with Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and Dun & Bradstreet have partnered to form a survey contacting Los Angeles businesses to identify the businesses that support the design, manufacture, and retail sales of physical goods in the greater Los Angeles area. The results of the survey, called " Make it in L.A. " will be used to determine the ways that City Hall can support the manufacturing ecosystem. "Producing physical goods is essential for the health of our economy and for creating quality skilled jobs," Garcetti said in a press release. "For the City of Los Angeles and its partners to make a positive impact, we have to know which businesses play a part in turning an idea into a product that consumers and corporations want and need. Having this information will help L.A. hold its position as king of the nation's manufacturing mountain." Grand Jury Finds S.F. at Risk of Rising Tides San Francisco faces risks of rising tides in the San Francisco Bay due to climate change, and efforts to stanch the problem before it worsens have been hampered by a lack of coordination to find a regional solution, according to two grand jury reports . Measurements at the Golden Gate show that San Francisco Bay rose eight inches over the past century and could rise another 16 to 55 inches by 2100. Experts at a conference on the subjet agreed that the most damage won't be done by incremental encroachment of water, but by major storms and extraordinary "king tides," and that San Francisco authorities should coordinate and begin constructing or modifying levees, elevating structures, changing building codes, restoring wetlands and abandoning low-lying areas to prepare for a catastrophe. L.A. Identifies 660 Acres for Urban Agriculture The Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan -- a plan to develop mixed-use, modern neighborhoods in a 660-acre sector along the Los Angeles River -- would be a prime location for urban agriculture, according to a study by the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation. KCET describes the CASP area as a "food desert," or an area without access to fresh produce and other food, making the area ripe for community-based agriculture. The LARRC study suggested dividing the neighborhood into nodes for specific agricultural activities, and then working around the infrastructure of the area by implementing creative solutions like renovating areas like the Lincoln Heights Jail into a community hub, aquaponics facility, and brewery/restaurant. Survey: Bay Area Residents Warm Up to Housing Half of residents in the Bay Area now support building more housing in the area, even if it means increasing density and building more affordable housing in their own neighborhoods, according to a new poll by the Bay Area Council. With San Francisco's jobs sector booming and seeing an historic housing shortage, 76 percent of resident also want policy makers and developers to direct their efforts toward the creation of housing for low- and middle-income people. "Water isn't the only thing that is in short supply in the Bay Area," Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, told Inside Bay Area . "Our region is growing, our economy is humming, but the housing shortage could be our Achilles heel." Los Gatos Approves Specific Plan The Los Gatos Town Council approved its North 40 Specific Plan to guide development of 44 acres between highways 85 and 17, the last large undeveloped parcel of land in the town. The plan includes a 35 foot height limit for most buildings, a 30 percent open space requirement, and 501,000 square feet of commercial, retail, and office space. Vice Mayor Barbara Spector, who voted no on the plan, wanted more information on conditional-use permit requirements for businesses. "Show us how uses--i.e. a super drugstore--are controlled in other parts of town," she said at the council meeting, according to the  San Jose Mercury-News . National Trust Identifies Two Endangered Places in California Two structures in urban California are listed on a list of "11 Most Endangered Historic Places," released by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. They are The Factory in West Hollywood and the Old U.S. Mint in San Francisco. The Factory, which famously became a pioneering gay disco in 1974, is in danger of demolition for a large-scale hotel project. The Old U.S. Mint, which was one of the few downtown buildings to survive San Francisco's 1906 earthquake, "stands shuttered, deteriorating, and at risk of being forgotten," according to the Trust's website. L.A. Reveals Master Plan to Capture Stormwater The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officially presented its Stormwater Capture Master Plan , an initiative to collect stormwater runoff on a wide scale for city use. Among other, smaller-scale initiatives, the plan would include three large aquifer recharges in the San Fernando Valley to collect rainfall in basins and then slowly feed it into the city's primary underground water source. Under the plan, the city could collect 100,000 to 200,000 acre-feet of water by 2035 at a cost of $600 to $1,100 for each acre-foot of water captured. That would come in addition to the 27,000 acre-feet it already collects in flood control dams and spreading grounds. Bike Share to Finally Arrive in L.A. The board of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority  approved an $11 million contract with Bicycle Transit Systems, Inc. (BTS) to bring a bike share program to Downtown Los Angeles. Part of a planned countywide system, the first phase will bring in nearly 1,100 bikes at 65 stations by next Spring. Following the downtown launch, plans are to expand the program into Pasadena in 2017, and then to eight more communities to bring the total number of bicycles to 4,000. In the first phase, bicycles will be available at of downtown locations such as Union Station, L.A. Convention Center, Staples Center, Grand Park/Music Center, 7th Street/Metro Center , Grand Central Market, Pershing Square, and the Arts District. BTS recently launched a bike share system in Philadelphia. Bike share in Los Angeles has been long-awaited by delayed by problems with previously considered vendors.  Anaheim Anticipates Major Development at Stadium Chinese development company LT Global formally filed an application for a $500 million mixed-use development adjacent to the Anaheim Angels stadium. The proposal, which would build 600 condos and apartments, 65,000 square feet of office space, 387,000 square feet of retail space, and 250 hotel rooms, is reliant on using 1,300 parking spaces at Angels Stadium -- parking spaces which the team has nevertheless repeatedly refused to hand over for the development. "It is unclear how a project could file an application relying on land and parking they do not have the right to use," Angels spokeswoman Marie Garvey told the Orange County Register . "The stadium parking is a critical part of the fan experience and our operations, and is legally bound to the Angels as part of the lease with the city." Los Angeles Streetcar Plan Loses Speed Two years after downtown Los Angeles residents overwhelmingly approved a new property tax to fund a streetcar line through their neighborhood, progress on the project has stalled . The estimated cost of the line has increased to $282 million, far exceeding the $62.5 million secured and possibly forcing officials to cut part of the route. Additionally, new estimates that the trains would only go 3.5 mph in rush hour and 4.5 mph overall has caused politicians to hesitate, with City Councilman Mike Bonin asking "Doesn't the average person walk 3 or 4 mph?" at a City Hall committee meeting. Officials in charge of the project hope to secure a $75 million federal grant, but to do that they must keep the project below $250 million. To close the $32 million gap, planners could eliminate the portion that passes the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Grand Avenue, reduce the costs of utility work, or seek a private company to build and operate the line. The setback follows Sacramento's recent decision to pull back on its plans for a streetcar .  Manhattan Beach Considers Curbs on Short-Term Rentals The City of Manhattan Beach has joined a growing number of municipalities throughout California in opting to restrict its short term rental market. Citing quality of life issues in the wealthy community of 35,000, the City Council there voted 4-1 to outright ban short-term rentals of 30 days or less in residential areas -- one of the strictest bans passed yet. "The residential nature of our community, the peace and quiet of our residents � that rules over someone's profits," Mayor Wayne Powell said at the City Council meeting. Billboard Companies Sue L.A. Two Southern California companies have filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging that the city's billboard laws allow big companies like Clear Channel Outdoor to maintain billboards while permits are denied to other firms. Federal judges have previously upheld the city's right to enforce its 2002 ban on outdoor billboards, though in one recent case with Louisiana-based company Lamar Outdoor currently in the Court of Appeals, a judge ruled that the ban violates the state constitution. The lawsuit states that the city allowed CBS Outdoor, now Outfront Media, and Clear Channel to put up signs following a 2006 agreement but denied permits to other companies, thus discriminating against smaller companies with less financial resources.

Another group has arisen in the long-running battle to challenge Proposition 13. A coalition of several public employees unions and other interest groups, the Make it Fair organization seeks to place a measure that would upend Prop. 13 on the 2016 statewide ballot. The proposed measure would seek a "split-roll" solution, taxing commercial properties at market rates while leaving residential tax rates frozen according to purchase prices. Prop. 13's freeze on property taxes has long been cited as a complicating factor in local government finance, particularly for school districts. Supporters of the measure say that its passage could result in an additional $9 billion in annual tax revenue. "California is losing billions of dollars every year thanks to problems in the law that allow some big corporations and wealthy commercial property owners to avoid paying their fair share," campaign spokesman Anthony Thigpenn said in a statement quoted by the Sacramento Bee . "By continuing to raise taxes, the state is forcing businesses out of California, and they're taking our jobs with them," Rex Hine of California Business Properties Association told the Bee.  L.A. Metro May Seek to Raise $120 Billion Via Ballot Measure The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is exploring another ballot measure to raise billions of dollars for the county's transportation system. Dubbed by non-profit Move L.A. as "Measure R2," the new sales tax would require two-thirds voter approval to pass and would likely go on the 2016 presidential ballot, hoping to get a better turnout to reach the needed supermajority. Metro's wish list totals about $300 billion; the agency estimates that Measure R2 could raise as much as $120 billion over 40 years by raising the county sales tax to 9.5 percent and extending the expiration of the 2008 Measure R sales tax by an extra two decades. The funds could be used for major transit projects such as a rail and automobile tunnel under the Sepulveda Pass, a rail link to LAX airport, and the extension of the subway to Santa Monica. According to the Los Angeles Times, a recent Metro poll suggests that the proposal has considerable support - as much as 79 percent depending on how the question was posed and how much information the respondents had.  Audit Finds Improved Richmond Housing Authority Three years after employees were implicated in illegal activities and a federal audit wrote a scathing report calling its leader "ineffective," the Richmond Housing Authority has made improvements. It is now considered "adequate," according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The agency implemented procedures to keep proper records, follow reporting requirements, and have the finance staff work directly under the city's finance department, all designed to help catch fraud that previously ran rampant in the department. The Richmond Authority came under fire when an audit flagged it for lacking internal controls resulting in ineligible expenses, poor record keeping and debt the reached $6.8 million.  Water Company Cadiz Hit with Suit over Groundwater Pumping In an attempt to block a Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. from shipping Mojave Desert groundwater out of San Bernardino County to Orange County residents, three conservation groups have filed opening briefs in an appeal of a Superior Court decision upholding the project. The project would involve pumping 16 million gallons of Mojave groundwater through a 43-mile pipeline for up to 50 years, averaging about 50,000-75,000 acre-feet per year. Critics said the Santa Margarita Water District improperly seized control of the environmental review process, which San Bernardino County officials should have overseen. They also state that the pumping would eliminate crucial desert habitats like springs and lower the water table, potentially having disastrous environmental consequences. "Let's call this what it is: a water-privatization scheme that will ship San Bernardino's water resources, essential to the health of the ecosystem, off to fuel suburban sprawl in Orange County," Adam Keats, head of the Center for Biological Diversity's California Water Project, told the San Bernardino Sun . S.F. Mayor Asks for $1 Billion for Muni Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco unveiled a $1 billion budget for the Municipal Transportation Agency in the coming fiscal year, giving it a $48.1 million boost to the previous budget. With the goal of adding 18 new buses and 40 new Muni Metro cars, bike and pedestrian signal improvements, and hiring 244 new employees, the mayor wants to bring in $31.4 million from the city's general fund and $16.7 million in developer fees to modernize the nation's eighth-largest transit system. Ruling Complicates Efforts to Build A's Stadium in San Jose Another roadblock has come up against San Jose in its bid to lure the Oakland A's to a downtown ballpark. A judge recently ruled that under local laws the city should have gone to voters first before entering into a land-purchase agreement with the team for a site, thus invalidating the latest version of the deal between the city and the team. The San Jose City Council voted to appeal the court's decision, but the setback is just one of several for the planned move to Silicon Valley: the San Francisco Giants also have protested the move, asserting territorial rights to the South Bay, and a federal appeals court sided with the Giants in an antitrust case.  State Adopts Guidelines for Desalination Plants California became the first state last week to adopt environmental guidelines for building and operating desalination plants, hoping to make seawater potable without killing fish or emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases. The rules represent a significant move in trying to monitor environmental impacts while heading off the water crisis, as construction of the state's first desalination plant is now underway in Carlsbad with seventeen more plants in the planning stages. The new rules seek to regulate the downsides to the desalination plants: that they kill fish as they suck in briny water and use too much energy to run, spewing greenhouse gases into the air. The rules will require plant operators to use screens if open ocean intakes are necessary to keep from killing fish, and water salinity of areas near discharge sites may not increase by more than 2 parts per 1,000. Lemon Grove Votes to Dissolve Planning Commission The Lemon Grove City Council voted 3-2 to dissolve its city's planning commission and to transfer its duties to the City Council, with the possibility of forming an advisory group that would act as a quasi planning commission without the official title or responsibilities. The city said that the move was provoked by cost-saving considerations, estimating that the planning commission meets four to seven times per year at a nonrecoverable cost of $7,500 for staff time and work. "Lemon Grove is a small town, and we just don't have the size or resources to support the commissions and committees larger cities do," City Councilman Jerry Jones told the U-T San Diego . The dissenting votes came from City Councilors who were both former planning commissioners. Sacramento to Dispose of 77 Redevelopment Properties The City of Sacramento is offering up for sale several high-profile parcels of land near the construction site of the new Kings basketball arena, taking its first step to sell off its 77 properties that were formerly part of its redevelopment agency. The sales will bring cash to the city and county, and will benefit Sacramento in the development of land that has long been underutilized. However, complicating matters, the Sacramento Kings have a right of first refusal on the downtown properties as a part of the city's subsidy of the arena project, allowing the Kings to match any offer in kind. Mixed-Use Development to Complement AT&T Park The San Francisco Giants' ownership revised its plans to build a massive new mixed-use development across the street from AT&T Park, opting for shorter buildings and more affordable housing at the development in response to changing winds in California land-use politics. Voters recently passed Proposition B, a ballot measure requiring voter approval of any development on port property exceeding height limits, and Mayor Ed Lee has set goals for affordable housing in the city. Sensing these changes, the Giants decided to lower the building heights from 380 feet to 240 feet, and to increase the percentage of below-market-rate units from 15 percent to 33 percent. The proposal, known as Mission Rock, would be a 28-acre redevelopment including 1,500 units of housing, eight acres of parkland, and 1.5 million square feet of commercial space. S.F. Arena Backers Fend Off Criticism Developers of a new Warriors basketball arena in Mission Bay are standing firm amid new criticism that the development could have significant impact on hospital traffic and parking. The group Mission Bay Alliance recently cited concerns that traffic for the development will impede emergency access to UCSF's hospitals, and that shared use of 950 parking garage spaces with two 16-story office towers that will also be built on the site. Officials with the Warriors, however, said that they have been studying these effects for the past year and have determined that their project won't have any significant effect on traffic or parking, as most sporting events take place at night, while the office towers will be used during the day. Report: Sprawl Costs U.S. $1 Trillion Annually A new report  (pdf)  from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute and LSE Cities states that urban sprawl costs the U.S. economy over $1 trillion each year, with people living in sprawled communities bearing $625 billion in direct incremental costs and the governments, businesses, and other households bearing an extra $400 billion in external costs. The study, coming from the New Climate Economy, a global commission on economy and climate, said that providing public infrastructure and services costs $750 annually per capita in the most sprawled fifth of American cities, 50 percent more than in the least sprawled cities. The report also stated that residents in compact communities save more money and have greater economic mobility, spending on average $5,000 less per year on transportation expenses, and that children who grow up in these communities tend to be much more economically successful in the future. Los Angeles Seeks to Figure Out New Transportation Technologies Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a new fellowship at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to create a citywide strategy that outlines the future of road safety, traffic regulation, and traffic enforcement, and will, supporters say, create a policy plan for a sustainable future for Los Angeles. The technology advisor, serving in a one-year fellowship, will work with city staff to mold Los Angeles as a model in sustainable, tech-enabled transportation. "It's about time the car capital of the world planned for the future of transportation in the digital age -- moving beyond the car to bikes, ride shares, and autonomous vehicles," said Garcetti. Recent discussions in the city have centered on the potential for ride-hailing services and even self-driving cars to relieve traffic congestion and reduce the need for parking in the city.