Cliff Graves is special advisor to the chancellor at University of California, Merced. Graves has overseen many aspects of planning the Merced campus, which is the University of California's first new campus since the mid-1960s. The UC Board of Regents approved the Long Range Development Plan for the campus and an adjacent new community about two miles east of Merced in January 2002 (see , February 2002, , April 2001). Construction commenced in November, and the school is scheduled to open to its first 1,000 students in fall of 2004. Despite the state budget shortfall, the university has the funding to complete the first phase of construction. A planner for more than 30 years, Graves previously was the executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. He spoke with Managing Editor Paul Shigley in mid-December. : Where are you in the process right now? GRAVES: The Long Range Development Plan was approved by the regents this past January. The EIR was subject to challenge and was challenged by a small group of environmentalists. The appellate court recently denied their request for an injunction, so we went ahead with construction. They are moving dirt like crazy out there right now. The other point, from a regulatory standpoint, is that the Fish and Wildlife Service gave us a ruling of "no jeopardy" for the entire project, not just for the part of the project we are working on now. Shortly, we will be going out to bid for the buildings themselves and the housing project. The first contract will be let in January. : How much is UC involved in planning the off-campus community? GRAVES: The regents are a 50% owner in the site where the planned community will be. The other partner is the Virginia Smith Trust, which provided the land for the campus itself. There is a joint venture between the two that's called the University Land Company LLC. The university is the managing partner for the project. : It has been a long time since UC built a new campus. Do you have a model for what you are doing? GRAVES: There really isn't a template for what we've done. When we built Irvine and Santa Cruz and San Diego, we didn't have any of the regulations we have today. It was a different time in terms of the fiscal relationships as well; whereas, those campuses had offsite infrastructure requirements, the state was willing to provide support for that. In this case, it's up to the university itself to make those arrangements. So the university has been negotiating, primarily with the city, to work those details out. : So where does money come from for off-site improvements? GRAVES: Eventually, it is going to come out of the campus budget, which is going to further stress the budget of the campus. An agreement has been reached with the city of Merced regarding sewer and water. And we're working with the State Infrastructure Bank. : Is this like planning a new town? GRAVES: In a purely physical sense, it is. But it's planning a town that has to meet the tests of the market. This is not an academic exercise. One of the challenges the LLC will face is coming up with a product that can work in the market that is part of the Central Valley. One the questions it has had to address is of the absorption rate. This new town is on bare land, so all the infrastructure has to be built. Typically, it requires a fairly rapid development rate to offset the costs of that. But the absorption rate is going to be slower than usual. So how they spread those costs out over a period of time is really a challenge. The campus's rate of development will, to some degree, govern the community's rate of development. And there are other areas in the Merced area that are planned for development. : Merced is a town of modest means. How does that influence your approach? GRAVES: It certainly has affected our negotiations with the city, especially regarding the infrastructure and how the city provides services to the campus. I tell people, this is not like BMW coming into Alabama. : The school will have to attract students and faculty. How big a consideration is that in the land use planning? GRAVES: That was a guiding principle of the Long Range Development Plan and something that even the regents insisted upon as they looked at the design of the original buildings. And the same kind of attention has to be given to the community. We want it to be attractive to a really broad, diverse group of people. One of the goals of the Long Range Development Plan was to provide a campus setting that feels comfortable to students who come from families in which no one has gone to college before. : When planning this campus, how far ahead do you look – 20 years? 40 years? GRAVES: The Long Range Development Plan has a window of 25 years. When you start a campus, you don't set everything in concrete for 25 years. You understand technology may change, research may change. So you want something that is usable now but sustainable over time. We're relying on a strong grid system, some fundamental design that is timeless, and we're relying very heavily on landscaping as a unifying factor. We are building the campus two or three buildings at a time, and we definitely expect the buildings 15 years from now to be based on assumptions that we don't have today. Even such things as water treatment we are building in modules to accommodate new technology. : That must be difficult. GRAVES: Yes, it is, because you have to trade off between economies of scale and the realities of changing technology. We are assuming the next wave of buildings will be using fuel cell technology. We considered that for the first phase, but it just wasn't ready. For all we know, by year 15 or 20, another technology for energy production will be available, and we want to be able to adapt to that as well. : Is planning the campus and community enjoyable? GRAVES: Oh, it's enjoyable. How many planners get to do something like this? We're not correcting somebody else's mistakes. We're making the mistakes. I did my thesis eons ago on planning new towns in California. I went back and read it and found out how naïve I was.

A city's erroneous denial of a lot line adjustment application did not qualify as a temporary taking, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. The court ruled that the City of Lafayette had legitimate reasons for handling the application the way it did and that the delay in approval of the application — which eventually was ordered by a trial court — was not unreasonable. The appellate court relied heavily on Landgate, Inc. v. California Coastal Com., (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1006 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, June 1998), in which the state Supreme Court held that the erroneous handling of a development application was not a temporary taking unless the government acted unreasonably. "This case fits like a hand in a glove with the rule established by Landgate," Presiding Justice James Marchiano wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel of the First District, Division One. "Resolution of the threshold issue of the legality of the lot line adjustment was a normal delay in the process of obtaining a permit pertaining to land use." The property owners in this case, Peter and Helen Loewenstein, built a house on a 3-acre parcel in Lafayette during the mid-1980s. A few years later, they investigated ways to build a second unit. The conditions of approval that went with the original four-lot subdivision that created their lot prohibited establishment of another parcel. So in early 1996, the Loewensteins purchased a 4,500-square-foot parcel where the East Bay Municipal Utility District had maintained a water tank. A corner of that parcel touched a corner of the Loewensteins' parcel. Then they reached an agreement to acquire a small portion of a neighbor's parcel so that that tank parcel would share a common boundary with their original lot. In September 1997, the Loewensteins applied for a three-way lot line adjustment to create a 1.07-acre parcel for their home, and a 2.12-acre parcel that included portions of three existing lots. The city's planning manager denied the application, a decision the Planning Commission upheld. The City Council conducted three hearings before adopting a resolution denying the application. The council determined that, by adjusting the lot line to make a fifth developable lot, the Loewensteins triggerred the city's subdivision regulations and the Subdivision Map Act. (The Map Act does not apply ordinarily unless one parcel is being divided into at least five new parcels.) The council reasoned that the fifth lot would be serviced by infrastructure constructed for the original four-lot subdivision. In September 1998, the Loewensteins sued, seeking to overturn the denial and to get damages for inverse condemnation. The case went through lengthy court proceedings overseen by no fewer than three Contra Costa County Superior Court judges. Ultimately, the court ordered the city to rescind its denial of the application, found that the city used the wrong standard to evaluate the proposed lot line adjustment, ruled that the city denied the Loewensteins "substantially all economically viable use of their property," and awarded the applicants $611,000, plus attorneys' fees. In November 2000, the city rescinded its denial. The city also appealed the judgment for damages and attorneys' fees, which the appellate panel reversed in part. The Loewensteins cited two cases: San Dieguito Partnership v. City of San Diego (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 748 (see CP&DR Court Cases, August 1992), and Ali v. City of Los Angeles, (1999) 77 Cal.App.4th 246 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, February 2000). In San Dieguito, the court ruled that the city had used the wrong basis for rejecting a lot line adjustment application that reconfigured five parcels in a nine-lot subdivision. In Ali, the court ruled that a temporary taking had occurred because the city's refusal to grant a demolition permit was arbitrary and unreasonable. Loewensteins further argued the they qualified for the Landgate exception for unreasonable delays, pointing to the fact that the city had approved more than 200 lot line adjustments over 16 years. But the appellate court ruled that San Dieguito and Ali did not apply, that Landgate was the controlling precedent and that the Loewensteins' case did not qualify for the Landgate exception. "The city's reasons for rejecting the lot line revision application, as expressed in the official resolution, were based on concerns that the reduced area of the new parcels would not conform to the minimum lot size requirements for hillside lots, and that the application created a fifth lot in a duly restricted subdivision with improvements and utilities designed for four lots," Justice Marchiano wrote. "Even if the city incorrectly maintained that lot size and subdivision restrictions applied, the monitoring of the density and hillside slope requirements are legitimate government interests." The court also expressed skepticism at the Loewensteins' approach. "To avoid the city's concerns about building a fifth home, the Loewensteins argued they were not merging the tank parcel into the subdivision lot, but were pulling a section of the original lot out of the subdivision and placing it into the tank parcel," Marchiano wrote. "These fine distinctions, although accepted by the trial court's ruling that the city's view was wrong, do not make the city's valid concerns either legally unreasonable nor logically deficient." The Loewensteins argued that under the Penn Central takings criteria (Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, (1978) 438 U.S. 104), the city's action qualified as a compensable taking because the delay interfered with their reasonable investment-backed expectations. But the court ruled that if Landgate applied, Penn Central could not. "A landowner can have no reasonable expectation that there will be no delays or bona fide differences of opinion in the application process for development permits," the court ruled. The court overturned the $611,000 takings judgment but allowed the Loewensteins to keep the attorneys fees awarded by the lower court. The First District did not consider the lower court's order to approve the lot line adjustment. The Case: Loewenstein v. City of Lafayette, No. A093590, 02 C.D.O.S. 11130. Filed November 13, 2002. The Lawyers: For Loewenstein: David Bowie, Bowie & Bruegmann, (925) 939-5300. For the city: E. Clement Shute Jr., Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, (415) 552-7272.

California does not build many freeways. So as Caltrans has opened segments of the Interstate 210 freeway in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, the road has received an unusual amount of attention — especially regarding how the state actually built the freeway and what impact it will have on traffic congestion. The new segments of Interstate 210 runs parallel to Foothill Boulevard at the base of the San Bernardino from San Dimas, in Eastern Los Angeles County, about 20 miles to Rialto. Completion of the final eight miles to I-215 in San Bernardino is a few years away. But the most interesting, and easiest to overlook, aspect of the 210 Freeway's construction is the fact that it has altered the role of a major arterial street through a series of suburbs. For decades, Foothill Boulevard carried tens of thousands of commuters every day because the 210 dead ended on Foothill in the City of La Verne, and the nearest east-west freeway, I-10, was notoriously slow. When Caltrans completed the 210 freeway from Highway 57 in San Dimas to I-15 and into Fontana in November, much of the commute traffic disappeared from Foothill Boulevard. Most of the cities along the route — from west to east: La Verne, Pomona, Claremont, Upland and Rancho Cucamonga — see the traffic change as an opportunity to remake Foothill Boulevard in a fashion more friendly to businesses, shoppers and residents. Several officials have already noticed trade increasing at Foothill Boulevard establishments because locals can drive to the businesses during commute times without getting stuck in traffic jams. The cities have not coordinated their strategies and each city is approaching the issue a bit differently. La Verne, Upland and Rancho Cucamonga have been the most aggressive so far. La Verne has continued to implement a specific plan, Upland is following up on recommendations in a 2001 economic study, and Rancho Cucamonga is seeing the largest project in town get developed along Foothill. Some officials are also hoping that new freeway interchanges will spur economic growth in their cities. The market needs study and revitalization plan commissioned by Upland made clear the hurdles for overhauling Foothill Boulevard are high. The street is marked by numerous struggling commercial centers, vacant storefronts and, in places, a run-down feel. At the same time, most of the cities have other areas available for retail and office growth; moreover, the cities compete with each other for businesses that generate sales tax. The report by Economic Research Associates and Barrio Planners states, " here is an evident, visually obvious clear need for the transition of Foothill Boulevard property uses based on the presence of more than 200,000 square feet of vacancies, mostly caused by departed supermarkets, and more recently added to by the abrupt decline of tenancies at the east end of the city … where another 100,000 square feet is in the process of becoming vacant." The study predicted a turnaround would take five to seven years. While the study focused on the 4.1 miles of Foothill Boulevard in Upland, the findings apply to stretches of the thoroughfare in other cities, too. Upland undertook the study because the city sees the boulevard as an important asset, said Steven Dukett, Upland redevelopment director. The street's strength, especially now that the commute traffic is gone, is as a center of neighborhood commerce, he said. Since the study was completed in August 2001, Upland has adopted an incentive program, and has taken steps to annex an island of unincorporated territory along Foothill, which Dukett said has not been developed to city standards. The city intends to follow up annexation with creation of a new redevelopment project area. City officials also are working on a general plan amendment that will allow residential uses along Foothill. The general plan amendment should be in place this spring. "We have engaged in some open dialogue with property owners who have shopping centers with major numbers of vacancies," Dukett added. "We certainly didn't have that dialogue before." The city has also had some successes, as both Lowe's Home Improvement Center and Vons have opened new stores on Foothill during the last year. The Lowe's is in the western part of Upland, near Claremont, from which Upland officials hope to draw shoppers. Claremont has not yet developed a strategy for the newly unclogged Foothill Boulevard. "We're going to be doing some pretty extensive testing of traffic flows in January and February," said Scott Miller, Claremont economic development and redevelopment manager. Foothill through Claremont has been in a redevelopment project area since the 1970s. However, the street still sports a large number of underutilized parcels and buildings, and tax increment from the project area is flat, Miller said. Much of the development feels worn, especially on the west end, he said. Like Claremont, neighboring Pomona has done little planning for the new conditions on Foothill Boulevard, instead focusing attention on its downtown several miles to the south. In contrast, La Verne adopted a specific plan for Foothill Boulevard in 1989 and updated the plan 10 years later. For La Verne, Foothill Boulevard is the primary commercial corridor; Claremont and Pomona have shopping malls and commercial centers elsewhere. La Verne's detailed plan addresses everything from land uses and circulation to architecture, landscaping and public art. The latest version permits greater flexibility in commercial and office development, expands the permissible architectural styles, and encourages development closer to the street itself and less on-site parking. Farther east lies Rancho Cucamonga, which has undertaken significant infrastructure improvements along Foothill Boulevard as part of a 20-year-old redevelopment project. Rancho Cucamonga also has approved a huge retail, office and residential development on the north side of Foothill Boulevard at I-15. The 150-acre Victoria Gardens project will feature a "Main Street" shopping and entertainment district, major retailers and extensive multi-family housing. The city is also working with the developer, Forest City Development, on building a library, performing arts theater and events center. For now, the new freeway dumps motorists on the streets of Rialto, a city that lies between the I-15 and I-215 freeways. The city is "just coping" until Caltrans completes frontage roads to handle the through traffic, said Development Services Director Michael Story. Much of Rialto's vacant land lies along the freeway route, and encouraging development in that part of town has been difficult because of poor access, Story said. Four new freeway interchanges will change that. "It's really going to be a benefit," he said. Contacts: Steven Dukett, City of Upland, (909) 931-4103. Scott Miller, City of Claremont, (909) 399-5341. Michael Story, City of Rialto, (909) 820-2535.

A POTENTIAL Southern California water crisis reached new heights in December when the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) Board of Directors rejected a plan to sell roughly 6% of its Colorado River water allotment to the San Diego County Water Agency. "Without water, Imperial Valley is nothing," IID Board President Stella Mendoza said during a heated meeting at which the board voted 3-2 to reject a deal that had been months in the making. The deal was seen as key to the state reducing its reliance on Colorado River water that will not be available in the future because other states want to take their full shares of the water (see , December 2002). Interior Department officials said they would reduce California's use of the river starting this month unless last-minute negotiations made substantial progress. "Interior is not bluffing," agency Secretary Gail Norton told a Colorado River Water Users Association meeting in mid-December. "There will be an actual reduction." A reduction could have the biggest immediate impact on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has come to rely on 662,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water that has been "surplus." However, federal, state and some water agency officials said it is IID — which gets about three-fourths of the state's share of Colorado River water — that could feel the pain in the end. To which IID officials said, "See you in court." AFTER three days of testimony, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on December 18 to certify a supplemental environmental impact report and record a master tract map for the Ahmanson Ranch project. In winning tract map approval, developer Washington Mutual agreed to destroy one water well on the site that is contaminated and to cap or destroy other wells. The vote ended the latest chapter in one of the longest and most controversial development sagas in recent Southern California history (see , December 2002). A general plan amendment and development agreement for the 3,000-home project were approved by the board, also on a 4-1 vote, in December of 1992. Since that time, new rare species have been found on the site and opponents have raised concerns about the discovery of perchlorate in at least one well that might serve the project. High-profile Los Angeles environmentalists, such as movie director Rob Reiner and actor Martin Sheen, have continued to oppose the project, rallying high-level opposition nationally. In the most recent round of hearings, former President Bill Clinton placed a call of opposition to Ventura County Board of Supervisors Chairman John Flynn, and Carole Browner, Clinton's environmental protection administrator, testified against the tract map approval. After the vote, project opponents indicated they would probably sue to challenge the approval but also expressed renewed hope that Washington Mutual would sell the property to a state agency for open space. CENTRAL Valley farmers will hang onto their exemption from state water quality regulations for runoff for at least three more years. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in December dropped a regulatory plan that would have ended the agricultural industry's 20-year exemption. Instead, the board backed a plan that calls for voluntary monitoring and reduction of pesticides. The board also said it would revisit the topic this year. The decision angered environmentalists, who threatened litigation. Industry representatives sounded moderately pleased but said they wanted to see the details of the board's plan. FORMER Carson Mayor Pete Fajardo has pleaded not guilty to a charge that he extorted $50,000 from an apartment complex owner who sought the city's assistance in converting the units into low-income senior housing. Fajardo was indicted by federal authorities in late November, as were current Carson Mayor Daryl Sweeney, two Browning-Ferris employees and a bankruptcy trustee. Most of the scandal involves alleged corruption related to waste-hauling contracts. Prosecutors also alleged Fajardo tried to extort $70,000 from a contractor on a city bridge-building project. THE Orange County Planning and Development Services Department decided to lay off 39 employees starting this month because financial troubles have swamped the agency. At least six senior-level planners and one-third of the county's building inspectors will lose their jobs. The job cuts came after county officials revealed the agency spent an $18 million "reserve" during the last three years and had a deficit of at least $2.5 million this fiscal year. Department Director Thomas Mathews, who blamed the deficit on a construction slow-down, proposed raising building permit fees by about 50%. But Orange County supervisors declined to hike fees until they received more answers about the agency's fiscal situation. A STUDY by the National Center for Public Policy Research's Center for Environmental Justice contends that Portland-style "smart growth" restrictions raise the cost of housing, encourage "suburbanization" and do not reduce automobile travel. The study says that more than one million "young and disadvantaged" families would not have been able to buy homes during the last 10 years if Portland's growth policies applied to major metropolitan areas nationwide because prices would have risen an average of $10,000 in 2002 dollars. The study, by Portland-based economist Randall Pozdena, reads like an indictment of the Portland approach, which places an urban growth boundary around the metropolitan area. "Insidiously, the burden of site-supply restrictions will fall disproportionately on poor and minority families," he writes. The study, called "Smart Growth and Its Effects on Housing Markets: The New Segregation," is available at www.nationalcenter.org. The National Center study came on the heels of a report by the Latino Issues Forum that recommends California and its local governments adopt a number of "smart growth" measures that the organization believes would boost Latino homeownership. The report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology urban studies and planning professor Michael Mendez urges establishment of jobs-housing linkage programs, increased redevelopment funding set-aside for affordable housing, laws that require 20% of all developments to be for low- and moderate-income people, a stronger housing element law and state-local fiscal reform. "Smart growth allows for the development of communities where individuals and future generations can achieve economic security, social well-being, and a higher quality of life, while preserving the ecological integrity of the region," the report states. The study, called "Achieving Equity: Reality and Prospects of Latino Homeowners in California," is available at www.lif.org/publications/reports.html. A NEW zoning ordinance that permits developments to have with retail businesses, neighborhood services and child-care facilities on the ground floor, and housing on upper floors, has received approval from the Los Angeles City Council. The mixed-use ordinance, which stemmed from recommendations by a housing task force, eliminates the need for developers to get variances for such projects. The city now must decide where to apply the new zoning. THE Fresno City Council has adopted a general plan that focuses growth in and near the existing city. Although not as aggressive as earlier proposed, the blueprint directs 80% of growth through 2025 inside the city's existing sphere of influence (see , September 2000). A PLAN that would athorize construction of six new gates and allow more passengers and flights at John Wayne Airport in Orange County was approved by the county and the City of Newport Beach in December. The plan essentially would extend a 1985 court settlement regarding airport operations. The plan would allow passenger growth of 25% to 10.8 million annual passengers by 2011. It also would permit an increase in gates from 14 to 20, and allow 16% more flights per day. The plan still needs Federal Aviation Administration approval. A SEAL Beach housing development was shut down by the California Coastal Commission until developer John Laing Homes and American Indians can reach an agreement on how to deal with 22 graves discovered during construction last year. Work on the 70-home project halted in September, when Indians and archaeologists confronted construction workers. Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas quickly issued a cease-and-desist order. Now the project is on hold until the commission approves a mitigation plan.

As 2002 was drawing to a close, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that warming of the western Pacific heralded the arrival of an El Niño weather pattern. The influence of this periodically recurring phenomenon usually means heavier-than-usual winter rains for California. But even if California gets more than its average precipitation this winter, water scarcity — or at least the possibility of it — will dominate the state's environmental agenda during the next 12 months. Also high on California's agenda this year will be renewed conflict in the state's forests, and a debate over protections for wilderness and rivers. California's policymakers always obsess about water. It is the inevitable consequence of the state's mismatch between demography and geography. Still, several events coincide this year to give water policy even more prominence than usual. In the immediate future, water planners have to confront fallout from the December debacle in El Centro, where three members of the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) board left 17 million Southern Californians in limbo by rejecting a tortuously negotiated deal — endorsed by many of the valley's farmers — to sell water to the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) and thereby enable the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) to continue receiving temporarily surplus Colorado River flows (see Page 1, , December 2002). Whether or not the IID-SDCWA deal goes through, and regardless of whether the federal government makes good on its threat to turn off the surplus tap, the high-stakes game of chicken between the IID board and the urban water agencies that covet IID's water foreshadows a troubled future. Similar conflicts will likely spread statewide in coming months as growing cities and suburbs try to slake their thirst by purchasing agricultural water in the problem-plagued transfer market. Even as MWD and SDCWA were getting stung by the IID, for example, the Met was hedging its bets by negotiating a contract to buy 205,000 acre-feet of water from Sacramento Valley irrigation districts. Several districts appear interested, and one — the Western Canal District of Richvale, which serves mainly rice growers in Butte County — has tentatively agreed to sell 26,060 acre-feet. That deal could be finalized this month, but there are rumblings of discontent similar to those that proved decisive in Imperial County and which will inevitably accompany any effort to move water from farms to cities. Agriculture-dependent communities fear that selling water means fallowing land, and reduced farm activity means less money flowing into the local economy in the form of wages and expenditures on equipment, fertilizer, pesticides and other products. The focus on water during the coming year is likely to intensify for two other reasons. One is the demise in the waning days of the 2002 congressional session of a Cal-Fed re-authorization and funding bill (the Senate approved the bill, but the House did not). The Cal-Fed failure leaves uncertain the federal commitment to the mammoth multi-agency effort, which is intended to revitalize the ailing San Francisco Bay-Delta complex — source of two-thirds of California's water supply. That issue will be back on the table this year. The other event likely to focus attention on water is the scheduled 2003 release of the latest update to the California Water Plan, the state's comprehensive forecast of supply and demand. Revised every five years and intended to serve as a framework for decisions by the state's water managers, the plan this time will include a major component focusing on the effect of global climate change on California's water supply. That evaluation is expected to offer little comfort to planners already unnerved by population projections, urban-rural squabbling and the infirmities of the state's aging plumbing system. A preview of sorts was provided in late November by a team of researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the University of Washington, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Geological Survey. Their modeling, which used temperature data to predict likely changes in precipitation and runoff patterns for three major river systems in the West — the Columbia, Colorado and Sacramento — suggests a dramatic reduction in winter snowpack and an increase in winter rainfall. That will mean less water flowing into reservoirs from snowmelt during dry months, but more pouring in during flood-prone winter months when there is no room to store it. Rivers are the centerpiece of another issue affecting California during the next 12 months, as U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer seeks support for a major wilderness bill. Her California Wild Heritage Act, S. 2535, would designate 43 new federal wilderness areas in the state totaling 1.2 million acres, add 1.2 million acres to existing wilderness areas, bring another 473 miles of streams under protection as "wild and scenic" rivers, and establish several other conservation and study areas. Companion measures were introduced in the House by Reps. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte) and Mike Thompson (D-Napa). Only one piece of legislation in state history has encompassed more wilderness acreage: Sen. Dianne Feinstein's California Desert Protection Act of 1994. When the wild and scenic rivers component is added, Boxer's bill ranks as the most far-reaching California wilderness bill ever introduced. Although the state Legislature and numerous environmental organizations have endorsed the bill, many rural counties oppose it. More importantly, Boxer's proposal will face scrutiny from a Congress in which key committees are dominated by Republican lawmakers unsympathetic to environmental legislation; even if the bill should leap that substantial hurdle it would land on the desk of a president who is unlikely to sign it. California also is likely to be among the first states to feel the effects of the Bush administration's move to speed "thinning" operations in national forests to reduce wildfire danger. Announced in early December — just two weeks after the administration proposed new regulations allowing individual forest managers to adopt long-term management plans without subjecting them to lengthy public environmental reviews — the proposed thinning regulation would exempt brush and tree removal from environmental review and challenge if undertaken to reduce fire danger. Both proposed sets of forest regulations could be in place by summer. The National Forest Service has identified 10 sites nationwide for pilot thinning projects, two of which are in California's Mendocino and El Dorado national forests. The proposals have been denounced by environmental groups, which say the Bush Administration is using an exaggerated threat of fire as an excuse to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act and open national forests to commercial logging without proper evaluation or public input.

I have a cranky thesis about housing: Working-class people should not be forced to live in projects that advertise the poverty of the residents. "Welcome to Casa Pobreza! We Have Pride in Ourselves — Even if Nobody Else Does!" Instead, low-income housing should be indistinguishable from the full-price product, including the same level of design and construction. And that means that developers should probably spend as much to build affordable housing as the market-rate stuff — possibly more, because low-income housing tends to receive less maintenance over the long-term than fancier units, whose owners can afford to repaint and re-roof them periodically. That thesis is one reason why North Beach Place provides a powerful dose of reality. This development near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf delivers pretty much everything I could wish for in affordable housing: An attractive project in a desirable part of town, good architecture and urban design, and even high-quality retail. The price of this project, on the other hand, knocks the wind out of me: $106 million of which $93 million is the construction cost of 341 housing units. According to my arithmetic, that means each unit costs an average of $272,000. The price of affordable housing units varies widely by city and neighborhood, but many nonprofit organizations try to budget individual units at slightly more than $100,000. The high price of the North Beach units seems especially pertinent because the project has received tax credits worth $55 million, reportedly the largest amount ever awarded to a single project in California. Given the scarcity of tax credits, is this the best possible use of this money? Designed in the storefront style that puts retail at the street level and apartments on upper stories, the new complex is built on a two-block site formerly occupied by an aging, bunker-style type of public housing that had become a neighborhood eyesore. North Beach Place replaces the 229 units of public housing contained in the former complex, while adding another 112 units of low- and moderate-income housing, including units for seniors, others that are accessible to people in wheelchairs, and still others for people with sight and hearing problems. The new units charge rents on a sliding scale, depending on the income of the renters, who will pay one-third of their monthly income in rent. (That will range from $250 a month up to $1,500.) The developers are The BRIDGE Housing Corporation, the Stewart Company and E.M. Johnson Interests, all of San Francisco. From the point of view of architecture and urban design, North Beach Place is a model of how to integrate low-income housing seamlessly into an affluent community. This project is a mixed-use complex that combines public housing units with low-and moderate-rate units, including several dozen units designed for seniors. At the center of the two-block project is a turnaround for trolley cars, qualifying North Beach Place as transit-oriented. And the building provides 34,000 square feet of retail space, including an outlet of Trader Joe's, the discount/gourmet grocery store. The presence of a popular retail anchor like Trader Joe's means residents of the entire neighborhood will use the building, which helps weave the project into the fabric of the neighborhood. The project also contains 3,000 square feet of "incubator" space in which residents can start their own businesses. All of these urban planning and social aspects are commendable. But, again, what about the money? Ironically, the financing scheme for North Beach Place is actually less complicated than those of many smaller low-income housing projects, which often require eight or nine different funding sources. North Beach Place has "only" five: HUD has contributed $23.2 million, which includes a $3.2 million demolition loan and a $1.45 million loan for counseling and other services to displaced residents (which represent about two-thirds of the renters in the prior project). The Mayor's Housing Office contributed $10 million to the project. Citibank provided a construction loan of $81 million for the housing, and a separate $4 million loan for the commercial space. The affordable housing program of Federal Home Loan Bank provided a $1 million grant. Those loans will be paid off, in part, by the proceeds of selling the low-income housing tax credits to investors, for an expected $48.5 million. The federal tax credits, worth $38.5 million, will be paid out in equal installments during a 10-year period, while the state credits, worth about $17 million, will paid over four years. On average, the developers expect to receive about 86 cents on the dollar for the tax credits — a surprisingly slim discount that attests to the growing appeal of the credits to investors: In 1993, the sale of tax credits yielded 54 cents on the dollar. Why is so much money being spent on a single project? Barbara Smith, a project manager with the San Francisco Housing Authority, has heard the question before. "That is the cost of doing business in San Francisco," she told me. Fortunately, the San Francisco Housing Authority already owned the 4.9-acre site, which would have been unthinkably expensive in the high-rent North Beach district. The site, however, was costly in different ways. The site is located on fill—a type of soil notorious for liquefying during earthquakes. To keep the building safe, construction workers must drive piles about 60 feet deep. Other costs include remediation of lead traces in the soil, and the removal of underground fuel-storage tanks. Smith sounded ambivalent about the project costs. "We wanted to maximize the density of the site, and there are not a lot of opportunities to build affordable housing in San Francisco," she said. It is not news to anybody in the affordable-housing industry that building housing in dense urban areas — especially housing that a crank like me can love — is expensive. But in a state that needs thousands of affordable housing units, the budget of North Beach Place is a reminder that our housing dollars only go so far. You remember the old joke in which the bartender observes that he does not see many kangaroos in his tavern. "At these prices," the kangaroo replies, "you may not see many more."

The California Coastal Commission has the authority to review an extension of offshore oil drilling leases that the federal government granted to oil companies, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The unanimous three-judge panel upheld a district court decision that said the extension of oil drilling leases was subject to review by the state under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act (16 U.S.C. Sections 1451-1465) and that the federal government did not adequately document that the extensions were exempt from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The case was seen as an important one in determining the state's ability to regulate drilling in coastal waters outside the three-mile-wide coastal zone that is directly under state control. At issue were 36 leases for oil and gas drilling several miles off the coast of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Federal regulators granted the leases between 1968 and 1984. All the leases have been extended ("suspended" in federal parlance) in the past or the leases would have expired years ago because the four companies that own the leases have not produced paying quantities of gas and oil. The latest round of suspension was approved in 1999 and was the subject of the litigation. When the lessees requested suspension of all 36 leases in May 1999, the state Coastal Commission said it intended to review the suspensions for consistency with the California Coastal Management Plan. Federal agencies said the state had no authority to intervene and approved the suspensions. California then filed suit against the Interior Department and the four energy companies, arguing that the United States had violated the federal Coastal Zone Management Act and NEPA. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled for the state. The Interior Department and the lessees appealed, but the Ninth Circuit upheld the lower court. The Interior Department argued that allowing the state to review lease suspensions would be duplicative because the state would get to review exploration or production activities that take place under the leases. Congress explicitly barred repeated review of activities described in exploration, development or production plans, the federal agency argued. But the Ninth Circuit ruled that Congress itself had rejected the Interior Department's line of reasoning. In 1990, Congress passed a bill overturning the decision in Sec'y of the Interior v. California, 464 U.S. 312 (1984), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that a lease sale was not subject to consistency review by the state. "Congress has made it clear that the statute does not prohibit consistency review of federal agency activities that are not subsidiary to exploration, and development and production plans," Chief Judge Dorothy Nelson wrote for the court. "The exploration plan and development and production plan are not the only opportunities for review afforded to states under the statutory scheme." Nelson noted that the state and its counties have never had the chance to review the leases, all but one of which predate adoption of the state Coastal Management Plan. The court also rejected the Interior Department's contention that no environmental documentation was required because the lease suspensions were categorically exempt, and none of the exceptions to the exemption applied. Instead, the court sided with the state and environmental groups. They argued that the lease suspensions were not exempt from review because of changed conditions, including the expansion of territory toward the lease areas by the threatened sea otter, and the designation of the Monterey Bay and Channel Islands national marine sanctuaries. "In many instances," Nelson wrote, "a brief statement that a categorical exclusion is being invoked will suffice. Here, concern for adequate justification of the categorical exclusion is heightened because there is substantial evidence in the record that exceptions to the categorical exemption are applicable. … he agency must at the very lease explain why the action does not fall within one of the exceptions." The court pointed to regulatory provisions for endangered or threatened species and for ecologically significant or critical areas. The court also noted that Gov. Gray Davis and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein have expressed reservations about the lease suspensions because of the infamous 1969 offshore oil spill near Santa Barbara. The court did not order preparation of an environmental impact statement. The court only required the Interior Department to provide a "reasoned explanation for its reliance on the categorical exclusion." The Case: State of California v. Norton, No. 01-16637, 02 C.D.O.S. 11546. Filed December 2, 2002. The Lawyers: For California: Jamee Jordan Patterson, supervising deputy attorney general, (619) 645-2001. For Norton: Thomas Sansonetti, assistant attorney general, (202) 514-2000.

Following a meager five-point victory against a bumbling opponent and facing an 18-month budget deficit estimated at $35 billion, Gray Davis will be sworn in this month for his second term as governor. He will govern a state whose voters are perfectly happy with a suburban lifestyle, at least according to the polls. So it would not seem likely that Davis is in a position to do anything innovative or trailblazing in the area of land use planning and growth policy during his second term. Yet there is probably more second-tier scuttlebutt about growth going on in Sacramento these days than at any time in recent history. Sacramento is overwhelmingly Democratic, which increases the chances that growth policy will be substantially altered. And as a lame-duck politician — he's termed-out as governor and has already announced that he will not run for president in 2004 — Davis may well be tempted by that dangerous political phenomenon known as "legacy time." In other words, something might happen on growth policy during the second Davis Administration in spite of the circumstances. Success in other states Davis is neither a visionary nor a policy wonk, and he is one of the most risk-averse politicians in recent American history. These characteristics are almost exactly the opposite of most governors during the last 30 years who have taken on growth as an issue. Maryland's Parris Glendening, for example, was a true policy wonk. A former government professor at the University of Maryland who had won narrowly the first time out, Glendening fully expected his "smart growth" effort the further weaken his chances for re-election. In the end, it did not and he won re-election easily. Furthermore, Davis's administration has never made growth per se a major issue — at least, the governor has never framed the growth issue in a comprehensive and coherent way. His predecessor, Pete Wilson, who was regarded as a growth management guru during his mayoral days in San Diego, tried hard to frame the growth issues coherently and comprehensively, though he proved unable (or unwilling) to do much about it before he left office four years ago. And even Davis's opponent Bill Simon, who ran probably the worst gubernatorial campaign in recent California history, put out a coherent position paper that took on the issues in a sweeping fashion. As the first Democratic governor in 16 years, Davis was able to bring a collection of interesting growth policy thinkers into his administration. Caltrans chief Jeff Morales has reoriented the transportation agency around urban planning. Julie Bornstein, the director of the Department of Housing and Community Development, is a strong advocate who has been innovative. Resources Secretary Mary Nichols is an experienced urban environmentalist who understands growth issues well. Even the Health and Human Services Secretary, Grantland Johnson, is an experienced and knowledgeable growth policymaker because of his long experience as a Sacramento city council member and county supervisor. How many welfare czars know what a lot split is? The fact that all these Davis appointees are interested in growth is one of the reasons that the issue won't go away. Another is the fact that the Democratic legislature won't let go of it either. The Smart Growth Caucus is not overpowering politically, but it has gained enough strength to get some bills to Davis's desk. And a final factor is that the voters — even though they are happy with suburban living, according to the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll — keep approving big bond issues that are sure to shape the state's future growth patterns. The net result of all these forces is that Gray Davis has been handed two potentially strong and powerful tools to shape growth policy in the state no matter how big the state budget deficit is. The first is AB 857, the bill that requires state agencies to integrate their capital spending consistently around a set of "smart growth" principles (see , October 2002). The second is the tens of billions of dollars in state bond funds that voters have approved for schools, open space, housing, and other facilities important to future growth. Conceptually, the new law and all the bond money form the outlines of a California version of the Maryland smart growth strategy — a coherent policy of state investments to direct future growth that does not step on local land-use decision-making powers. More practically, they are ultimately about the use of power and money at the state level. For whatever he may lack in vision, wonkiness, and guts, Gray Davis understands how to use power and money in Sacramento to accomplish goals that are important to him. So far, the Davis administration has talked an impressive line about implementing AB 857, which calls for the state to make infrastructure investments based on promoting infill, encouraging compact development, and protecting environmental and agricultural resources. The Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) has been on the conference circuit since fall telling local planners and electeds that the administration is serious about the bill. (AB 857 also dovetails with an ongoing General Plan guidelines revision that OPR is preparing.) At this point, Davis has put OPR in the hands of Tal Finney, a high-energy, high-level political operative who is close to Davis and his inner circle. A home run for bonds? Using the bond funds to effect change in state growth policy will be trickier. The vast majority of the money is earmarked for schools, and as Glendening discovered in Maryland, the school bureaucracy is more resistant to attaching smart growth strings than even the pavement crowd. Some of the other bond money — open space, for example — is already earmarked for specific projects or will go to local governments on a formula basis. Further, the bonds came out of the Legislature with certain rules and expectations that were shaped largely by Senate leader John Burton, who is the most powerful legislator in Sacramento, but not one particularly interested in growth policy. But to an extent, bond funds can be used to leverage a certain growth pattern. Bond money could even reinforce the policy choices created by AB 857. Davis appears perfectly capable of using these levers if he wants to. The question is whether he wants to. During his second term, Davis will almost certainly be obsessed by two things that would seem to be in contradiction to one another: The budget deficit and his legacy. It is difficult to imagine how a strong growth policy fits into either one of these obsessions. There is always the argument that smarter growth policy will reduce infrastructure expense and, therefore, cost the state less money. But recent experience suggests that during bad budget times, California fiscal conservatives would rather not spend infrastructure money at all. Given the fact that he will be out of office by 2007, Davis will almost certainly choose not to build things, rather than decide to build them smarter or most cost-effectively. Put another way, Davis likely will implement short-term solutions rather than address the long-term problem. He would not be the first governor to follow this path. As far as the legacy goes, the recent open space bonds provide the governor with an opportunity. It will be very tempting to build the legacy with a few high-profile open space purchases, such as Ahmanson Ranch adjacent to Los Angeles (see , December 2002). It's more difficult for a lame-duck governor whose general fund is evaporating to make strategic open space decisions that protect habitat or farmland and guide growth in a reasoned manner — especially when those decisions fail to generate headlines, and might even anger people. So, can we expect to see a comprehensive growth strategy emerge during the next four years? Maybe. But it is more likely that we will see a lot of muddling through. A few bills here and there will inch things forward, and smart growth moles in the administration will embed smart growth values in a bunch of small programs or bond criteria. Given a governor who received less than half the vote and a $30 billion-plus deficit, maybe that is the best we can expect.

Urban transportation panacea or mobility-oriented snake oil? The Segway Human Transporter is either, depending upon whom you ask. The device either will change the way we get around in cities, or it will be the pedestrian-version of the Edsel. No matter, we should gird ourselves for statewide debates during coming months regarding regulation of the Segway HT (or simply "the Segway"). For those who missed the heavily orchestrated publicity events — most recently a video press release including the device's inventor Dean Kamen and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos — the Segway is a personal transportation device that looks like a pogo stick with Frisbee-sized wheels. With the aid of gyroscopes and other technology, the device can purportedly stop and turn on a dime. The invention travels up to 12 miles per hour. That speed is faster than many people ride a bicycle and four times faster than the average pedestrian's pace. Segway retails on Amazon.com (the exclusive distributor) for $5,000. Segway entrepreneurs have claimed that it will revolutionize urban mobility by extending the range of "walking trips," thus getting more people out of cars. The specific selling point seems to be the device's usefulness in highly urban settings, which should draw interest from urban planners dealing with transportation, recreation, or the land-use and transportation connection. New Hampshire-based Segway has captured the imagination of many a high-tech devotee, and the company has cleverly worked 32 state legislatures into rewriting vehicle codes to accommodate the Segway. In addition to gee-whiz lobbying in which lawmakers got to ride on the provocative device, Segway has been busy with loaner and limited sales programs to government and industry to gain broader acceptance — notably with law enforcement agencies. Though the blitzkrieg lobbying has met with resounding success before the public has had a chance to understand what the Segway is, concerns are already surfacing. Within weeks of an April launch of a loan and limited-sale program in Atlanta, a downtown safety officer was injured using the device on a driveway. The lobbying activity reached California earlier this year, and Gov. Davis signed SB 1918 in September. Carried by East Bay Democratic Sen. Tom Torlakson, the law actually classifies a user of the 84-pound mechanized transporter as a pedestrian. This means that use on sidewalks is granted statewide unless otherwise prohibited by a local agency. According to the law, Segway riders are not allowed in places where pedestrians are not permitted, such as streets and bike lanes. It is up to local government to disagree formally through prohibition ordinances. The law takes effect in March 2003. Not so fast, say the state's most organized pedestrian advocacy groups. Despite the Legislature and governor's stamp of approval, cities and counties own and maintain most of the state's sidewalks. Walk San Francisco, and the Senior Action Network stand firmly opposed to Segway use on sidewalks. With the help of San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, they successfully lobbied for passage of the first Segway ban in the country in San Francisco in late November. "We are not against the Segway," said Michael Smith, President of Walk San Francisco. "But since 1940, San Francisco has prohibited vehicles on public walkways. The Segway is a vehicle. We see it as a pedestrian SUV. Its riders will be able to muscle over walkers. Segways belong in the street with other wheeled vehicles, like bicycles. To allow Segway's promoters to elbow onto pedestrian walkways is to invite major safety problems." Smith said a host of other Northern California cities, including Berkeley, San Jose, and Santa Cruz, are currently looking at San Francisco's ordinance banning the Segway. Other alternative transportation groups are equally skeptical. "The Segway invention is an exciting thing," said Christy Kimball, Northern California campaign manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project. "It holds an incredible potential to replace short car trips. However, we need to be realistic about where it belongs on our streets. The widespread use of Segway will require a new type of street design that better accommodates slow vehicles. Rather than restricting Segways to sidewalks, as the state law does, it would make a lot more sense to allow Segways to use bikeways or slow streets or shoulders of all streets. The transportation opportunities and constraints have not been properly thought through." Torlakson's bill essentially shifted the debate to the local level. The grass-roots protest and subsequent ordinance in San Francisco are likely precursors to discussions in council chambers and supervisor hearing rooms across the state. And the dearth of data on market acceptance, pedestrian safety, sidewalk capacity, and potential Segway/automobile/pedestrian conflicts, promises to make for a debate that will be short on information and long on speculation. If Kamen's invention does not end up really changing the way we move through cities, it will certainly raise the level of discussion about how we ought to move through them. And it provides a startling lesson in how a quirky invention coupled with a slick lobbying campaign can sway politicians desperate to be a part of the next trend – whether well thought out or not.

In an election with the typical mix of results, the pro-growth side won 19 of 32 easily classifiable local land use ballot measures on November 5. However, in votes regarding large, well-defined projects, the slow-growth side prevailed most often. The 59% pro-growth winning percentage contrasts with the past two major election cycles. In November 2000, the slow-growth side won 62% of 55 election contests. In November 1998, the slow-growth side won 18 of 35 ballot measures. In an election closely watched around the nation, Nevada County voters said no to a property rights initiative. Measure D would have required the county to compensate landowners for regulations that inhibit development. Slow-growth advocates lost in some surprising places, including the Town of Windsor in Sonoma County and the Town of Tiburon in Marin County, both places where slow-growth sentiments hold strong. Windsor voters rejected a proposed housing permit limit, while Tiburon voters narrowly said no to additional restrictions on undeveloped parcels. Slow-growth advocates also lost in Berkeley, where voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure to limit building height. But, truer to form, Berkeley voters agreed to let the City Council amend a waterfront specific plan, probably in a way that blocks a major hotel and restaurant development proposal. In the Central Valley towns of Galt and West Sacramento, initiatives that aimed to slow or alter growth failed. Voters in Galt, one of the state's fastest growing towns, rejected a building permit cap. In West Sacramento, an initiative that would have rezoned much of the city's extensive industrial land failed to receive even one-third of the vote. Yet development backers lost some significant elections. City of Ventura voters rejected a proposal to build 1,390 housing units in the hills above town. And in nearby Santa Paula, voters refused to expand the urban restriction boundary they approved two years ago to accommodate a large housing and hotel development proposal. Election day was good to affordable housing advocates. Not only did state voters approve a $2 billion bond for affordable housing projects, voters in San Francisco approved that city's own $250 million bond to build or rehabilitate low- and moderate-income housing. In San Diego, voters approved a city plan to develop or acquire up to 5,000 units of affordable housing. And in Santa Rosa, the electorate backed a city proposal to double the number of subsidized units in town. Sales tax increases for transportation projects did not fare well. Voters in Fresno County declined to extend that county's existing half-cent tax for transportation, while voters in Merced and Solano counties did not provide the two-thirds majority required to pass new half-cent taxes. However, in Riverside County, an extension of a half-cent tax won 70% approval. As for municipal organization, voters created a new city in Rancho Cordova, rejected incorporation of Castro Valley, and kept Los Angeles whole. Takings initiative fails The failure of the Nevada County's Measure D property rights initiative surprised many observers, and allayed the fears of planners who thought passage might presage similar initiatives in other counties. The seven-sentence initiative would have required the county to compensate property owners for regulations that inhibit development. A rural county in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Nevada County has a long history of defending property rights (see CP&DR, June 2002). So when property rights advocates presented an initiative that mimicked one approved by Oregon voters in 2000, it looked like a sure thing. During the campaign, backers of Measure D outspent opponents 10 to 1. And two supervisor candidates who supported Measure D defeated two incumbents who opposed the initiative. Yet Measure D attracted only 43% of the vote. The loss appears to be at least partly to blame on a campaign that never presented a clear message and might have had too many spokespersons from too many perspectives. "The voters perceived that there was an enormous uncertainty both on the fiscal side and on the planning side," said Supervisor Peter Van Zant, who ran the anti-D campaign. Proponents were further hurt when councils in all three Nevada County cities — Nevada City, Grass Valley and Truckee — adopted resolutions opposing Measure D, Van Zant said. Plus, advocates never presented a financial analysis. That meant the only financial information available to voters was a study prepared by the county that said the initiative could cost taxpayers $10 million a year. Sharon Boivin, a planning commissioner and former county planner who opposed the initiative, said pro-D literature was confusing to the average person. Plus, she said, opponents were easily able to convince voters that Measure D could hurt their property values by permitting the landowner next door to build whatever he wanted. But why did the supervisor candidates who supported Measure D still win? Boivin thinks most people simply voted the party line, even though supervisorial races technically are nonpartisan. The two winners, Drew Bedwell and Robin Sutherland, are conservative Republicans, and the majority of people in their districts are registered Republicans. Plus, their supporters had spent three years painting incumbents Bruce Conklin and Elizabeth Martin as "lunatic fringe liberals who want to take away your property rights," said Boivin, who has been Conklin's planning commissioner. Permit caps lose Initiatives to cap the number of building permits in Galt — a fast-growing city between Sacramento and Stockton — and in Windsor — a 10-year-old city just north of Santa Rosa — failed to win voter approval. The Galt measure would have limited single-family housing permits to a maximum of about 300 a year, depending on general plan revenue. Under the initiative's formula that figured growth was good financially, the city could limit permits to as few as 123 annually if city finances were healthy. With a population of about 21,500, Galt has grown by nearly 10% a year during the last decade, transitioning from a farm town to a bedroom community for Sacramento. And plenty more growth is proposed, including a 2,500-unit retirement development. The measure split the City Council. But with 55% of voters against Measure R, pro-growth councilman Darryl Clare winning re-election, and slow-growth mayor Bob Kraude losing, voters sent a clear message. "The voters felt that best way to control growth is at the council level," Clare told the Sacramento Bee. While the Galt election was a fairly black-and-white decision on growth, the Windsor election was more complicated. Measure X would have limited residential permits to a three-year average of 75 per year, with limited exemptions for affordable housing projects. The City Council unanimously opposed the initiative, but Sonoma County environmental groups were divided. Proponents argued that the initiative was necessary because the city has not enforced a growth management ordinance that limits new homes to 150 per year. But other potential backers of the initiative stayed away because the initiative made no distinction between 75 apartments and 75 large-lot, single-family houses. "It really did split some traditional allies," said Kelly Brown, Marin-Sonoma field representative for Greenbelt Alliance, which opposed the initiative. "They had the right goal in mind. Controlling growth within the urban growth boundary is a concern in Sonoma County. But we felt like Measure X was a regressive policy." No one expects the growth wars in Windsor, which has roughly tripled in population to about 23,000 during the last two decades, to abate because of the Measure X defeat. Ventura County says no As has become the norm during the last several elections, Ventura County was a center of ballot-box planning. In November, there were four initiatives in four cities. Two were backed by development interests, and two by slow-growth proponents. All four initiatives failed by wide margins. The slow-growth side won in Ventura and Santa Paula. In Ventura, 70% of voters rejected a complex initiative known as the "Open 80 Plan." The intent was to let property owners build 1,390 houses on 800 acres in the undeveloped hills above town. In exchange, the property owners would dedicate about 3,000 acres as open space. The vote was the second in two years that protects the hillsides. Last year, Ventura voters approved a measure that requires voter approval of any proposal to extend sewer and water services to the hillside territory. Santa Paula was the scene of the first true test of a Save Our Agricultural and Open Space (SOAR) boundary. Voters have approved SOAR boundaries in seven Ventura County cities since 1995. The SOAR initiatives require voter approval of development on land designated for agricultural or open space. Three previous subsequent votes under SOAR have been for a church, an assisted living center and a sports park, and all received voter approval. But this year, developer Pinnacle Corporation of Arizona put forth an initiative in Santa Paula that would have expanded the SOAR growth boundary by 5,200 acres in an area known as Adams Canyon. Proposed was a development of about 2,200 housing units, a hotel, a golf course and retail uses, although the exact project was not defined for voters. Opponents said Santa Paula already has ample room to grow and would be better off revitalizing neglected parts of town. Pro-growth forces won in Simi Valley and Ojai. In Simi Valley, voters rejected an initiative to shrink the SOAR boundary by 2,800 acres. The initiative would have blocked a development proposed by Tosco of a 400-acre industrial park, 1,600 housing units and a 42-acre cemetery. Instead, voters stuck by the SOAR boundary they approved four years earlier. In Ojai, voters said no to an initiative that would have required every project to mitigate its traffic impacts fully. The measure appeared to prohibit any project that would add even one vehicle to Ojai's clogged streets. The City Council contended the initiative was unconstitutional and sued to keep it off the ballot. A Ventura County judge and the Second District Court of Appeal decided to keep the measure before voters, but they rejected the plan by nearly a two-to-one ratio. State gets 478th city Voters in the Sacramento County community of Rancho Cordova approved incorporation of that county's third new city since 1997. However, voters in the Alameda County community of Castro Valley rejected an incorporation proposal. Both votes were lopsided. The contrasting votes might be the result of two different approaches. In Rancho Cordova, a group of community leaders had been working steadily on incorporation since the 1980s. They persisted despite stiff resistance from the county and even got Assemblyman Anthony Pescetti, a Rancho Cordova resident, to carry a bill that prevented the county from dragging its feet any longer. Rancho Cordova, a community of about 55,000 people along Highway 50, a few miles east of Sacramento, will officially become a city in July 2003. In Castro Valley, however, there was no grass roots campaign behind incorporation. At the behest of Supervisor Nate Miley, who promised during his 2000 election campaign to pursue incorporation, Alameda County served as the applicant for incorporation. There was no built-in constituency of incorporation supporters who had signed petitions. In fact, the initiative got about half as many votes as a typical petition would have required signatures simply to qualify incorporation for the ballot. Diana Hanna, co-founder of an incorporation opposition group called Castro Valley Truth, said she and others opposed incorporation because a new city would not be bound by an urban growth boundary for unincorporated areas that Alameda County voters approved in 2000. The urban growth boundary initiative protected the undeveloped hills of Castro Valley. Plus, she said, feasibility studies made it clear that a new city could survive financially only if it approved substantial new commercial development. With a population of 58,000 Castro Valley is mostly a residential area. Proposals to carve up the City of Los Angeles into three cities failed miserably. The proposed secession of the 1.6 million-person San Fernando Valley lost 2-to-1 citywide. In fact, only half of voters in the Valley backed secession. The proposed Hollywood secession faired even worse.

An exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act for construction of a sea wall below two houses has been upheld by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The court ruled that the potential collapse of a bluff could threaten public safety and qualified for an emergency exemption under CEQA. The City of Solana Beach, in San Diego County, was the locale for the case. In early 2000, the ocean began eating into a bluff between two sea walls. In February, a 10-foot overhang north of the site collapsed, fracturing the sandstone bluff. Over the following several months, the ocean created a 12-foot deep notch at the base of the bluff. In January 2000, the owners of two houses on the top of the bluff filed an application for a permit to fill the notch. On February 29, 2000, the Solana Beach Planning Department issued a director's use permit with conditions. In June, however, the homeowners requested a permit modification to allow them to construct a steel-reinforced wall. The city determined a steel wall would need a special use permit. As permit processing continued, the homeowners requested an emergency exemption to CEQA review. On December 19, the City Council approved the special use permit based on an emergency exemption to CEQA. The group CalBeach Advocates sued, arguing that the project did not qualify for an exemption. San Diego County Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell (since elevated to the Fourth District bench) granted summary judgment for the city. CalBeach appealed, but a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth District, Division One, upheld the ruling. CalBeach contended that beach erosion was an ongoing condition, and not a sudden, unexpected occurrence. Even collapse of the bluff below the two homes would not be unexpected. CEQA limits the emergency exemption to occurrences involving clear and imminent danger. There was no need for immediate action, CalBeach argued. The group pointed to the length of time between the bluff fracture in February, and the approval of an emergency exemption in December. "We agree the failure of the bluff below Real Parties' homes is not unexpected," Justice Terry O'Rourke wrote for the court. "However, the anticipation of a collapse does not prevent it from being an emergency. Section 21080, subdivision (b)(4) exempts not only projects that mitigate the effects of an emergency, but also projects that prevent emergencies." The court pointed to two reports from civil engineers in late 2000 that said the bluff collapse was imminent, probably within a few weeks. "Real parties' residences are situated a mere eight feet from the edge of the bluff. For that reason, any collapse of the bluff would place both properties in danger," Justice O'Rourke wrote. "Further, the bluff collapse could threaten the safety of members of the public if it occurred when members of the public were near the bluff." The court also rejected CalBeach's argument that Solana Beach's CEQA findings were inadequate. Public Resources Code § 21168.5 governed the decision, and that section does not require any findings, the court held. The Case: CalBeach Advocates v. City of Solana Beach, No. D038885, 02 C.D.O.S. 10976, 2002 DJDAR 12731. Filed October 9, 2002. Ordered published November 6, 2002. The Lawyers: For CalBeach: Donald Wayne Brechtel, Worden, Williams, Richmond, Brechtel & Kilpatrick, (858) 755-6604. For Solana Beach: James Moose, Remy, Thomas & Moose, (916) 443-2745.

By any measure, a great deal has happened in San Marcos lately, and the city is feeling both the benefits and pressures of the growth and change. A city of 58,000 in northern San Diego County, San Marcos is the scene of a new 3,400-unit housing development, aggressive redevelopment by the city, extensive construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing units, and a growing California State University campus. City officials have worked to get control of their town's destiny. Capitalizing on a CSU campus that opened in 1990 and Palomar College, a huge community college across town, San Marcos leaders decided to fill the north county's "educational niche," City Manager Rick Gittings said. San Marcos is not a "college town," but CSU San Marcos is building its first dormitories. And apartments, condominiums, retail development and institutional uses such as health care facilities are part of a master plan for the university area approved in 1989. Development in the master plan area has quickened of late. "The last several years, we seem to have done a number of things right," said Mayor Corky Smith, who won a third, four-year term as mayor in November. But there are traces of discontent. Backers of an initiative that would require voter approval of zoning changes submitted petition signatures in October. Supporters came up about 30 valid signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, but they vow to return. The recent election could pose a problem for the huge San Elijo Hills development. Smith will now command a council majority that many people believe will not be as friendly toward the project. And traffic congestion remains a problem on city boulevards despite more than $100 million in improvements to surface streets and freeway ramps. Located on Highway 78 between Escondido on the east and Carlsbad and Vista on the west, San Marcos remained a rural backwater into the 1980s. The city incorporated in 1963, growing slowly and somewhat haphazardly for more than two decades. The lack of infrastructure became an issue during the 1970s, and voters eventually approved an initiative requiring development to pay its fair share of infrastructure capital costs, as well as operations and maintenance. But the city is still trying to catch up, Gittings said. Since the late 1980s, however, the city has seen a different approach to development. Larger projects based on specific plans or master plans have become common. The largest of these is San Elijo Hills. Approved three years ago, San Elijo Hills encompasses 3,400 single-family houses and condominiums, a school site and a 19-acre commercial center on 1,920 acres in the grassy hills between San Marcos and Carlsbad. About one quarter of the housing units — but none of the commercial amenities — have been built. Partially designed by New Urbanist architect Peter Calthorpe, San Elijo Hills was named "Master Planned Community of the Year" by the National Homebuilders Association earlier this year. The project has proven popular with buyers, too, as reflected by a price escalation. Currently, condominiums start at about $280,000, while most of the single-family homes — all of which are at least 2,300 square feet — run from nearly $500,000 to more than $700,000. These prices were unknown in San Marcos until very recently. Still, San Elijo Hills has its detractors. Cynthia Skovgard, an unsuccessful City Council candidate who headed the rezoning initiative, called the project "horrid, appalling and abusive" because it fills open space with houses. Access to San Elijo Hills and to a neighboring housing development is limited, with one two-lane road (now being widened to four) serving as the only route — and it provides a better link to Carlsbad and Encinitas than to the rest of San Marcos. An extension of one of the San Marcos's main boulevards to San Elijo Hills is planned, but money is lacking, Development Services Director Charles Schaffer said. The poor access is a sticking point with Mayor Smith, who earlier this year was on the short end of a vote to limit San Elijo Hills building permits until a new road is in place. The more immediate controversy has shifted to a golf course proposed for a ridgeline above town. Although it was empty land at the time, the city placed the San Elijo Hills site in a redevelopment project. In fact, most of the city lies in one of three project areas created from 1983 to 1989. As those areas grow, the city's tax increment grows. The city expects to get about $17 million in tax increment this fiscal year. Gittings conceded the city could not draw the same redevelopment boundaries under the 1993 reform of redevelopment law (see CP&DR, December 1993, May 1993). "I'm not so sure that ‘reform' was a good thing," Gittings said. San Marcos receives only 7.5% of property taxes — roughly half what many cities get — so it needs to be creative. "You can't do anything with 7.5 cents," he said "What we've done with the redevelopment areas is balance that a little bit." The city has indeed used its redevelopment agency to revitalize older areas, and the affordable housing program is ahead of most cities'. Since 1995, the city has added 1,500 deed-restricted units to its affordable housing inventory, Assistant City Manager Paul Malone said. New development, rehabilitation and conversion of existing mobile homes each account for about one-third of the total. About 1,000 more units are pending. That is a substantial turnaround from 10 years ago, when the city had an affordable housing deficit and was the target of a housing advocates' lawsuit. The city has also served as a developer to generate revenue. The city developed a recreational vehicle mall, and then invited tenants. A three-year-old civic center — half of which is leased to other public entities and private enterprise — is surrounded by about 50 acres that is available for site leases. Already, developers have constructed restaurants and two office buildings on the city-owned property. This approach has angered some. "They should sell out all of their real estate holdings and do what a city is supposed to do," said James Eubank, developer of a collection of eateries on San Marcos Boulevard called Old California Restaurant Row. "Take that money from all their real estate holdings and put it into some infrastructure," Eubank urged. Gittings defended the city's strategy and pointed to a voter-approved charter amendment that allows the city to develop land. The city is constantly searching for "revenue streams we can generate that the state can't get its hands on," he said. Contacts: Mayor Corky Smith, City Manager Rick Gittings, Development Services Director Charles Schaffer, City of San Marcos, (760) 744-1050. Cynthia Skovgard, initiative proponent, (760) 744-8380. Jim Eubank, Old California Restaurant Row developer, (760) 744-0550.