I was trying to figure out a way to summarize the 2009-2010 session of the California Legislature when I found a summary upon which I could not improve. In its September 3 edition of "Framing the Issues," the affordable housing advocacy group California Housing Law Project nailed the situation. Under the headline "No Budget … No Money … No Legacy … Failed Policy," was this: "Is it too cynical to state that the only good thing to be said about the 2009-2010 legislative session is that it's mercifully over? The Legislature failed to enact a budget this year (although they enacted three last year, none of which worked), failed to address enormous policy issues, including education, pension reform, health care, housing and environmental issues, while frittering away the final days and hours with legislation to ‘save' horse racing, playing word games and the classic pursuits of revenge and name-calling. Cause for cynicism?" I think we may safely conclude the two-year session was unsatisfactory for affordable housing advocates, although they did win passage of AB 602 with bipartisan support. As amended, the bill would extend the statute of limitations for suing over a housing element from 90 days to five years. The affordable housing lobby is hardly the only group frustrated by the Legislature's inaction. Very little significant land use legislation won approval during 2010. No substantial California Environmental Quality Act bills passed, despite the opinion of some alleged expert that this was the year lawmakers would roll back CEQA . Even the CEQA funny business at session's end on behalf of Wal-Mart failed.  Other than a free pass for a football stadium and massive commercial complex in Industry -- although an exemption for another football stadium turned out to be a rumor -- the most important land use legislation of the two-year session was, in fact, water legislation. Lawmakers approved a package of water bills during the fall of 2009 that, among other things, created a new council to unite all Bay Delta policy. However, the package also included an $11.1 billion water bond for the November 2010 ballot. At Gov. Schwarzenegger's urging, lawmakers in early August agreed to postpone the bond election until 2012. Water policy and investment could have been this Legislature's legacy, but even that has been diluted. So, let's review the Housing Law Project's headline. No budget? Check. No money? Check. No legacy? Not much. Failed policy? More like no policy. I recognize California is in a pickle because of a lingering recession over which the Legislature and the administration have no control. But, as experienced managers are inclined to say, you don't ever want to waste a perfectly good crisis. A crisis provides the cover for reconsidering standard practices and for making hard decisions that individuals and organizations would otherwise avoid. Crisis wasted? Check. – Paul Shigley

Maybe there is reason to hope we can get development right in the future. That's the conclusion I draw after looking over the list of projects that the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) recently named "catalyst projects." It's largely rhetoric, the state has put its seal of approval on -- and given valuable publicity to -- some promising, progressive projects. In general, projects are mixed-use, mixed-income infill projects that attempt – to varying degrees – to de-emphasize the automobile and improve the public realm. It's nice to see the state recognize the planning behind such projects, even if the state isn't willing to attach much money to that recognition. A little background: Early this year, HCD, Caltrans and the Department of Conservation sought applications from cities and counties for the pilot project. The application stated: "Approximately six development projects will be selected as Catalyst Projects in communities throughout California to incentivize sustainable communities and test innovative strategies designed to increase housing supply and affordability; improve jobs and housing relationships; stimulate job creation and retention; enhance transportation modal choices that reflect community values, preserve open space and agricultural resources; promote public health; eliminate toxic threats; address blighted properties; reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy conservation and independence." After a review process that seemed to drag, HCD on August 24 named not just six catalyst projects, but instead  selected 13 projects . A pleasant surprise. The projects are divided up at three different levels: Gold: • City of Emeryville, Emeryville Marketplace • City of San Francisco, Mission Bay • City of Sacramento, Township Nine • City of San Diego, Village at Market Creek • City of Fullerton, Fullerton Transportation Center   Silver: • City of National City, Paradise Creek Revitalization • City of Chico, Meriam Park • Town of Truckee, Truckee Railyard • City of Marina, The Dunes on Monterey Bay • City of Ontario, Downtown Core Catalyst Project   Bronze: • City of Oxnard, North Oxnard Communities • City of San Diego, Quarry Falls • City of Hercules, Bay Front Transit Village Each gold project is eligible for a $1.35 million Proposition 1C affordable housing grant, while the silver projects may receive $500,000 each, according to HCD spokeswoman Panorea Avdis. A source who works in the administration told me that she had been skeptical of the program, but she came away with a positive feeling because of the projects themselves. By demonstrating that some cities and developers are willing to depart from California's tired suburban growth pattern, the projects should serve as models for meeting the state's sustainable growth goals, she told me. In a written statement, HCD Director Lynn Jacobs said as much: "This pilot program will provide valuable insights to allow the State to implement best practices and strategies as we move forward with our sustainable development goals in California. Walkable communities, improved air quality, reduced emissions, less time spent in a car and a strong economy can all become reality through sustainable development, and I look forward to seeing how these projects develop." I, too, am interested in how these projects develop, so I checked in on one of them – Meriam Park in Chico. Planned for about 270 acres on the southeastern edge of town, the project would have about 2,300 housing units, at least 1 million square feet of civic and institutional uses, and about 250,000 square feet of commercial space. The project appears to have just about every new urbanist bell and whistle – a walkable grid, alley-loaded housing, minimal setbacks, neighborhood parks and greens, a wide mix of uses and housing types. Meriam Park is intended to replicate Chico's excellent downtown and delightful older neighborhoods – and to depart from Chico's more recent suburban blandness. Although a full three years has passed since the Chico City Council approved the project, and local developer New Urban Builders has a reputation for completing first-rate projects , the project hasn't gone far because of the economy. Construction is under way on 90 units of affordable housing, and ground should break soon for a new north Butte County courthouse. "We're bullish long-term, but we're not going to put more infrastructure in the ground that we think is prudent," said John Anderson, of Anderson/Kim Architecture + Urban Design and Meriam Park's chief designer. The $500,000 for affordable housing is nice, but it's not going to make much difference. Still, the HCD recognition could open other state funding doors, according to Avdis. "What we were looking for was the designation," explained Chico Assistant City Manager John Rucker. "We see it as a pretty innovative, sustainable project, and we're looking for a number of ways to make it work. We want to position ourselves so that we can take advantage of funding when it does become available." Anderson said the project could be well-positioned to receive federal grants from the interagency partnership of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Let's hope government funding and incentives for Meriam Park and the other catalyst projects emerge quickly. It's one thing for state and federal officials to tell cities and counties they should grow in a more sustainable fashion. It's quite another to provide the money that makes such growth actually happen. – Paul Shigley

My nephew and his wife recently had their second child, and they are following a well-worn path from the city to the suburbs. Four years ago, childless and carless, they lived the urban life in the fashionable Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Cleveland Park. Child No. 1 pushed them four miles out, to the expensive inner Maryland suburb of Bethesda, where they bought a cozy two-bedroom condominium that had been converted from an apartment. Then, a couple of months ago, Child No. 2 pushed them another 12 miles farther out – beyond the Beltway – to Rockville, where they bought a four-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house. Now they are living the suburban life – which means, inevitably, a large yard, two or three cars, and an autobound life for all concerned, including their infant. Right? Well, not exactly. Yes, Eric and Kate have headed for the suburbs. But their life isn't really very autobound at all. Suburbia to them means an end-unit townhome, one car, a daily bus trip to day care, a 10- to 15-minute walk to the library and shopping at Rockville Town Square, and D.C. Metro commutes (13 minutes for him, 30 for her) to work and back. This is America's New Suburban Dream. In a lot of ways, it's just like the old one – the familiar scramble for a great school district, a lot of square footage, distance from urban grittiness, and proximity to schools, parks, and libraries. But in important ways it's different. When they say they live close to the playground, they don't mean it's five blocks to a city park; they mean it's 30 feet from their barbeque, across the common area of the townhome development. When they say they've traded proximity for space, they don't mean they have to drive five miles to the store. They mean that by living 1,000 yards away from the Rockville Metro Stop – instead of 100 yards – they can get a four-bedroom townhome instead of a two-bedroom condominium. It's not an urban life, exactly. Their townhome development – dating from the early 1980s – is not exactly a New Urbanist's dream. It's basically a cul-de-sac development bounded on two sides by strip shopping centers. The streets look a lot like parking lots and it's not all that easy to walk along the sidewalks in and of the development, as Eric and Kate often do. It's more Clarence Stein than Andres Duany. Clearly, it was designed to accommodate people expecting to drive to the Red Line station when it opened in 1984. Yet even with these drawbacks, it has an appealing combination of suburban feel and urban access. And their life is not so urban that they've abandoned their car. The car is an essential component of life on most days – especially to shuttle the kids around, run weekend errands, and, of course, go on vacation. But Eric and Kate use the car differently. The trips are mostly short and it's possible to go a couple of days without using the car at all. But that doesn't necessarily mean their life is devoid of the good things. A walk of about 15 minutes will take them to the center of Rockville – a surprisingly rich and urbane place and becoming more so all the time. Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County – an affluent and politically liberal county of almost 1 million people – so there have long been tall office buildings in the downtown. More recently, the city, the county, and private developers – including Federal Realty – teamed up to transform a former in-town shopping mall into Rockville Town Square , a surprisingly dense downtown development project with a library, an "arts and innovation center," shops, and 6-story mixed-use buildings. Not surprisingly, the upper-floor condos aren't doing well at the moment, but the whole thing is walking distance from the Metro station – and from Eric and Kate's townhome. DuPont Circle or Cleveland Park it's not, but there's enough going on to keep most people – especially most family-oriented people – more than busy. The walk from Rockville Town Center to the townhome is filled with close-up views of parking lots and strip centers along Maryland 355. This is exactly the kind of property that infill developers and planners salivate over as they think of multi-story mixed-use projects, which in turn terrifies most suburbanites, who fear ever-more-frightening traffic infestation. Amazingly enough for suburbanites, however, Eric and Kate don't seem to be afraid of more urban-style development creeping toward their townhome neighborhood. Most smart growth evangelists would say that's because they understand the typical party line – that a walkable neighborhood works better as it gets denser, unlike an auto-oriented neighborhood, which breaks down because of traffic congestion when more development arrives. That's true enough – though it's kind of a nerdy way to put it. I'd guess Eric and Kate would think of it differently. To them, living in the suburbs revolves not around driving but around living. Though it's far from perfect, Rockville allows Eric and Kate and their kids to focus on living. Which, I think, has been the point of suburbs from the beginning.

Overview A development project in Redding that would destroy critical habitat for endangered species may proceed because the affected habitat constitutes a small percentage of habitat available nationwide, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled.  The Ninth Circuit's decision puts a new twist on the debate over what constitutes "adverse modification" to critical habitat by upholding a black and white mathematical percentage formula applied by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Using the formula, a FWS biological opinion determine there would not be adverse modification or destruction of critical habitat of three species native to the Central Valley. "The FWS's determination that critical habitat would be destroyed was not inconsistent with its finding of ‘no adverse modification,'" Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for the court. "After all, the project would affect only a very small percentage of the total critical habitat or vernal pool fairy shrimp, vernal pool tadpole shrimp, and slender Orcutt grass." Formal consultation under Section 7 of the federal Endangered Species Act is required when the property for which a federal permit is sought contains federally listed species or designated critical habitat that may be affected by the permit decision. If formal consultation is required, FWS or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will issue a biological opinion stating whether the permit action is likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the listed species, or adversely modify or destroy its critical habitat. The Case In this case,  Butte Environmental Council v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,  the City of Redding sought a Clean Water Act permit to fill wetlands. In 2005, after years of researching potential sites for development of a business park, the city issued a draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the proposed 678-acre Stillwater Business Park located on wetlands along Stillwater Creek. In December 2006, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a biological opinion on the project. The opinion stated that more than half of the project site contained habitat deemed critical for species that inhabit vernal pools, small ponds that form during the winter rainy season. The project site contained 356.6 acres of critical habitat shared by the vernal pool fairy shrimp (threatened) and the vernal pool tadpole shrimp (endangered). The project would destroy 234.5 acres of this critical habitat. It would also directly affect 0.56 acres and indirectly affect 6.42 acres of the crustaceans' aquatic habitat. The site also contained 500 acres of critical habitat for slender Orcutt grass, 242.2 acres of which would be destroyed. In calculating the loss of each species, the biological opinion applied a percentage comparison to total nationwide critical habitat. For the fairy shrimp, the 234.5-acre destruction amounted to only 0.04% of the total existing 597,821 acres of the nationwide inventory of fairy shrimp critical habitat. As to the tadpole shrimp, the 234.5 acres that would be destroyed amounted to 0.1% of the 228,785 acres of total critical habitat nationwide. The 242.2 acres slender Orcutt grass habitat to be destroyed amounted to 0.26% of the plant's total nationwide critical habitat of 94,213 acres. The FWS's conclusion was that "the proposed project would not result in the adverse modification or destruction of critical habitat for those species." Butte Environmental Council, a nonprofit environmental organization, filed suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issued the Clean Water Act permit, and FWS. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the federal agencies. Butte Environmental Council then appealed to the Ninth Circuit. Arguments & Opinions The council raised four arguments, each of which was rejected by the Ninth Circuit. First, the council argued that FWS applied an improper definition of "adverse modification" that did not account for the recovery needs of the affected species as required under  Gifford Pinchot Task Force v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service , (9th Cir. 2004) 378 F.3d 1059. The court rejected the council's assertions, noting that the biological opinion expressly stated that it "does not rely on the regulatory definition of ‘destruction or adverse modification'," but instead relies on the statute itself and the  Gifford  decision to complete the critical habitat analysis. Second, the council asserted that the finding of "no adverse modification" conflicted with the FWS's finding of acreage to be destroyed as part of the project. In rejecting this argument, the court noted that  Gifford  did not alter the rule that adverse modification occurs only where there is a "direct or indirect alteration that appreciably diminishes the value of critical habitat" (50 C.F.R. § 402.02.). Judge O'Scannlain further opined that "an area of species critical habitat can be destroyed without appreciably diminishing the value of the species' critical habitat overall." The court concluded that FWS's determination that critical habitat would be destroyed was, therefore, not inconsistent with a finding of "no adverse modification." Third, opposing the formula applied by FWS, the council argued that the focus on the project's impact to the species' nationwide inventory of critical habitat "mask the project's localized impact." The court swiftly disposed of this argument, stating that there was nothing in the record to demonstrate that a localized risk was improperly hidden by use the of the large-scale, nationwide comparison and analysis. In its fourth and final argument, the council faulted the FWS for failing to address the rate of loss of critical habitat for each of the species at issue. There is, however, no obligation in either the Environmental Species Act or its implementing regulations for the FWS to calculate a rate of loss. Therefore, the court concluded that FWS's finding of no adverse modification was neither arbitrary nor capricious, where the FWS applied the proper definition of adverse modification and reasonably concluded that the effects of the proposed project would not appreciably diminish the value of the critical habitat. The Case: Butte Environmental Council v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,  No. 09-15363, 2010 DJDAR 8115. Filed June 1, 2010. The Lawyers: For Butte Environmental Council: Donald Mooney, (530) 758-2377. For the Corps of Engineers: Kurt Kastorf, U.S. Department of Justice,  (202) 514-2701. For the City of Redding: Rick Jarvis, Jarvis, Fay, Doporto & Gibson, (510) 238-1400.

Local political and business figures have joined Kinkisharyo International in blaming union-linked complaints, including a CEQA appeal, for deterring an expansion of the company in Palmdale. Kinkisharyo currently assembles light rail cars for LA Metro at a temporary plant. The expansion could have made it a major local manufacturing employer for the longer term. The LA Times reported Kinkisharyo had been prepared to shift some heavy rail car manufacturing work to Palmdale from its main plant in Japan, in a deal worth millions of dollars to the local economy. But a dispute began over a position taken by members and supporters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 11 supporting "card check" unionization for future new hires at the site. The paper reported what happened next was a CEQA appeal against construction of the proposed new plant, filed by activists who included Local 11 members. The Antelope Valley Times reported that Kinkisharyo withdrew its permit application October 10. It described a group called Antelope Valley Residents for Responsible Development (AVRRD) as the filer of the appeal; The Palmdale Council's October 1 agenda also identifies AVRRD as the appellant. In a letter posted by the AV Times site , the company's U.S. general manager, Donald Boss, wrote that the project had become "too risky" because AVRRD and IBEW had "refused to withdraw the various appeals they have filed, and have given no assurances that they would not file a court action to object to any final action by your city council." The letter described AVRRD's CEQA objections as "simply a pretext to gain leverage in their attempt to force us to agree to a card check agreement regarding the unionizing of our workforce." Earlier, on October 7, the AV Times published a statement by AVRRD that in turn linked to a letter by the group's counsel, Tanya Gulesserian of the firm of Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo. The letter, dated October 1, said it sought "to fill the void left" by the City of Palmdale's "failure to perform any environmental review of the Project and thus failing to protect air quality, public health, biological resources and supplies of fresh water." It proposed that Kinkisharyo conduct specified air quality reviews of toxics and Valley Fever hazards; that it either transplant 51 Joshua trees or purchase land in mitigation equal to twice the acreage the project would affect, and that it "acquire a new water entitlement for the Project." The LA Times reported Supervisor Mike Antonovich led a press conference Oct. 20 to cry foul and seek support from Governor Jerry Brown. The AV Times reported the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District board also unanimously appealed to Governor Brown to help prevent Kinkisharyo's departure. Kinkisharyo was reportedly planning to move the expansion elsewhere in the U.S. but Maria Elena Durazo of the LA County Federation of Labor told the Times that to do so would violate the company's contract with Metro. IBEW Local 11 posted a comment on its Facebook page October 14 saying "The company is threatening to leave Los Angeles County as a way to incite elected officials and transit officials into bailing them out." It said the company's contract still required it to create "at least 194 good-quality, full-time jobs in LA County. And it must fully comply with state environmental laws, just like any other company in California." Al Jazeera America reported the Kinkisharyo contract followed an effort for a "U.S. employment provision" by the Jobs to Move America project of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). It described Jobs to Move America as prodding Metro and Kinkisharyo to live up to hiring commitments but did not attribute any role to it in the CEQA complaint.

As if we needed another story about Prop 13's unintended impacts on education, here's a new twist.  The Archer School for Girls inhabits a covetable property – a resplendent 1930s Spanish Revival complex designed by William Mooser – on one of the most unenviable corners in the free world. It's on Sunset Boulevard, about a mile west of the 405 freeway, in Brentwood. It’s the bottleneck through which every single commuter coming from Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades crams in an effort to get to the Valley or wherever. When the evening rush hour gets going (around 3pm) you're lucky if it takes you a half-hour to drive that mile. Needless to say, the traffic was there long before the school, which moved to that campus in 1999. But, if you ask some people, the traffic is the fault of Archer. They'll say that plenty of other things are the school's fault too.  Some background: When Archer acquired the property and applied for its conditional use permit, neighbors raised holy hell. They feared every manner of impact, from noise, to errant soccer balls, to unsightly renovations, to unspecified hooliganism. Despite the arguable importance of educating the city's 600,000 or so school-age children, there's no such thing as "school zoning" in LA. So, the school is, like all other private schools, governed by a conditional use permit. Archer's conditions would make even the most vulturous attorney blush. It has something like 85 restrictions, and most of them are unheard-of for a school. If Archer was a bar, it’d be forced to serve beer out of thimbles. (Disclosure: I taught at Archer in the early 2000s.) Essentially none of the neighbors' fears has come to pass. The girls haven't burned down the neighborhood. Traffic has gotten worse, but it's done so very much of its own accord. Even so, now that Archer is proposing an expansion of its campus – without, mind you, an increase in enrollment  – the forces of neighborhood concern are at it again. Sure, more cars would make traffic worse. But there's worse and then there's imperceptibly worse.  Archer wants all sorts of things that schools tend to want: a performing arts complex, a gym, more evening events, and a parking structure. I don't have a position on exactly what conditions Archer should or shouldn't agree to. That's for the school and the neighbors to work out. I am, however, interested in how we got into this mess in the first place. And here's where it gets ironic.  Many of the homeowners in Brentwood who are anxious about Archer have been there quite a while. That means, they may have voted on Prop 13. If they owned homes at the time, they probably voted for Prop 13. (Who in their right, self-interested mind wouldn't have?) And it certainly means that they've benefited from Prop 13. A home that was worth $100,000 north of Sunset in 1978 might be worth north of $5 million today. And that's just for the lot.  (Check out this map of property taxes in LA County and zoom in on Sunset and the 405. You’ll see plenty of blue lots, indicating tax rates of less than $2 per square foot. Then ask yourself if any of those properties should be taxed at that rate when many others are above $10.) The rest of the story is no secret: Howard Jarvis goes bonkers, Prop 13 passes, local revenues dry up, the state back-fills (sort of), and big urban school districts, like LAUSD, get clobbered while suburban school districts thrive on revenues from new construction and pro-education residents. There is no greater tragedy in modern California than the demise of our urban schools. The well-off families of Los Angeles, many of whom also probably voted for Prop 13, have responded by supporting private schools at up to $30,000 or so per student per year. It's no coincidence that many of LA's private schools didn't exist before 1978. Mind you, there's a public high school about two miles south of Archer. Most Archer students would probably go there (or to their respective neighborhood schools) if their parents were comfortable with the education there. But, who can blame them?  The neighbors won’t know it, because Prop 13 is surely a distant memory for many of them, but they want to have it both ways. They get the estimable tax benefits of Prop 13. But they also don't want to be impacted in the slightest by an institution that owes its very existence to Prop 13 – and that, aside from traffic impacts, costs them nothing. This brings up one of the hidden costs of Prop 13. The neighbors' (grandfathered) property taxes may be low, but now everyone is spending time, money, and energy on yet another CUP battle. Where's Howard Jarvis when we need some simplistic wisdom to sort this all out?   The way the negotiations are going, the neighbors are going to get much of what they want, including further restrictions on car traffic, number of school events, and the size of the new buildings and parking garage. That’s how politics often works in LA. Powerful homeowners' groups are politically galvanized. And planners can’t even use a fiscalization argument to support the school, since the school doesn’t  doesn't enrich the city via sales taxes. So, the conversation naturally turns to traffic and construction noise and the school gets squeezed.  I only wish Archer's neighbors were as concerned about the local public school's utter shortage of facilities as they are about Archer's desire to build new ones.  It's hard not to think that one consequence of an underfunded public school system is that civics goes by the wayside. A little education in the unintended consequences of Howard Jarvis' crusade would have saved the world a lot of pain. Instead, Archer's neighbors get to remain blissfully ignorant while they issue their demands. The worst thing – except, of course, for under-educated children – is that if LA had better schools, it's likely that everyone's property values would rise.  Back when I taught at Archer, my favorite course was  AP Human Geography . It has a chapter on urban form. I regret that even I never touched on Prop 13. The school is certainly learning its lesson now.

In recent California land use news: President Obama designated a new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in a 350,000-acre area of the Angeles National Forest. The LA Times has details at http://lat.ms/1waSn83. The White House announcement, including a map, is at http://1.usa.gov/1qxxFLc. The Sacramento Bee reported Judge Timothy Frawley issued a tentative ruling that would approve most aspects of the Sacramento Kings arena project environmental impact report, but would disapprove aspects of the traffic impact analysis. Traffic impacts were the major subject in a further hearing on the matter Friday, October 10. Frawley has yet to issue his final decision, which will affect two challenges to the arena: the long-running Saltonstall case and the more recent Sacramento Coalition for Shared Prosperity case. The Bee has posted a copy of the tentative ruling . Meanwhile oral argument has been set for November 4 on the Saltonstall parties' appeal of Frawley's refusal to stop the project outright. The League of California Cities noted the announcement of a NOFA for $40 million of Infill Infrastructure Grants from the state Department of Housing and Community Development. The NOFA and other details are at http://www.hcd.ca.gov/fa/iig/ but the League's announcement has information about the application workshops, set for October 20 in Oakland, October 22 in LA and October 30 in San Diego. CalEPA posted an updated version of its August descriptive report on the CalEnviroScreen 2.0 mapping and screening tool. However, it has yet to make the difficult choice of which California census tracts qualify as "disadvantaged." The decision has become inflected by regional politics because the screening tool tends to rate northern and coastal areas as less disadvantaged. The choice of census tracts will have an important influence on grant distribution in the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program . The U-T reported the San Diego City Council gave initial approval to a compromise "linkage fee" ordinance that would raise developer fees to support affordable housing. The measure was expected to return to the Council for final approval October 21. For some types of construction the measure would return the fees to their 1990 dollar amounts. (They were halved in 1996). The paper reported the new fees would be $2.12 per square foot for "new office buildings" and $1.28 per square foot for "hotel and retail space". However, the existing fee would be dropped from construction of new space for manufacturing, warehouse or nonprofit hospital use. The Arts District in downtown Los Angeles was fighting proposals for a Metro maintenance facility to serve the planned Westside Subway Extension. By KCET's account of the dispute, the Metro planners and local Arts District boosters had made detailed plans over the course of some years for uses that turn out to conflict. The Los Angeles River Artists & Business Association has posted a petition against the maintenance yard, which it says is far too close to the city's new Sixth Street Bridge and Arts Plaza project – but KCET reports the Metro yard project completed environmental review in 2012. The "Coast Dairies" property near Davenport on the Central Coast, an inland open space of almost 6,000 acres, was transferred to the Bureau of Land Management as a gift from the Trust for Public Land. The Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz organization reported, " This is a very big deal! " The SPUR planning organization announced plans to open a new Oakland office, to join its founding San Francisco office and its more recent San Jose branch. Capital Public Radio reported that opponents haven't given up fighting the SB 270 plastic bag ban now that Governor Brown has signed it. They've received clearance from the state attorney general to collect signatures on a statewide repeal referendum. For some history on the bill see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3568. The Sacramento Bee reports California will swear in Sen. Kevin deLeón, D-Los Angeles, as Senate President Pro Tem this evening. The LA Times endorsed against the Proposition P measure for a county parks parcel tax, calling it regressive and saying it was placed on the county ballot without enough discussion. Rail carriers filed suit in federal court seeking to block California's SB 861 from taking effect to impose new safety measures for oil trains. And the Center for Biological Diversity alleged that fracking wastewater had been illegally injected into the ground where it could harm Central Valley aquifers. Households with dry wells in East Porterville are now receiving water aid from an international relief charity, according to the local ABC-30 TV station . It reports, "Besides donations and government assistance, there aren't any long-term solutions set up in place for this crisis." Urban history scholar Mark Vallianatos has an op-ed at http://lat.ms/1ttOej2 making a case for the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign, whose steering committee he serves on. The same writer runs an erudite smartmouthed Twitter feed at @markvalli , sometimes with extended daylong series about Los Angeles mid-century urban design and transportation planning. A video dramatizing gentrification tensions went viral in San Francisco this past week. First posted by Uptown Almanac , it depicts an argument in which young men playing pickup soccer on a public playground in the city's Mission District are approached by players from Dropbox who say they have paid a fee to reserve the field. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed legislation October 8 legalizing AirBnB rentals. The San Francisco Chronicle quoted the legislation's sponsor, Board of Supervisors President and Assembly candidate David Chiu, as saying, "We can protect our city's housing units from being converted to hotels, while also allowing short-term rentals on a limited basis to help residents afford to stay in their homes." But the paper quoted Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants' Union as saying the protections against displacement weren't strict enough. In a critical writeup with detailed analysis of the Supervisors' voting choices, the SF Bay Guardian 's Steven T. Jones wrote that the measure, as passed, "effectively limits the rental of entire homes to 90 days per year" but that it didn't similarly limit "hosted rentals, such as spare bedrooms." As of October 13, the landlord-tenant landscape in San Francisco had rather suddenly changed. Ted Gullicksen, aged 61, was unexpectedly found dead at his home . The same day, the Bay Guardian was folded by its owner, San Francisco Media Company. The company took down the Bay Guardian's entire online archive; the link to Jones' article in the previous item of this column is to a cache that may soon disappear. On the other hand, Jones' 2012 news feature on the subject, "The problem with the sharing economy," is permanently available from the Internet Archive . Maven's Notebook has the transcript of a detailed radio interview with attorney Michael Jackson of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance on California water history and his arguments against the Delta Tunnel project and the water bond measure.

From many vantage points, the Monterey Peninsula looks idyllic. But it's always been a mess when it comes to water politics. Throw in a long stalemate on solutions among the stakeholders, along with a disliked private water utility, administrative and judicial orders to cut back existing water supplies, no connections to state water – and a drought – and it's hard to see a clear path out of this morass. Local leaders say they've come up with three possible solutions in the past year: building a large desalination plant, increasing use of recycled wastewater, and using winter overflows from the Carmel River to recharge the nearby Seaside Basin. Still, they've got some tight deadlines to meet in order to escape a dire future with less water. And the desalination plant, arguably the most difficult piece of the puzzle, is the key, as it will produce six times as much water as recapturing winter overflows from the Carmel River. Desalination could be a panacea for the approximately 110,000 residents of the region, which includes Monterey, Carmel, and Seaside, along with unincorporated areas like Pebble Beach and the Carmel Valley. But other than a few small projects, little progress has been made in  the past decade. A proposed $400 million regional saltwater desalination project near Marina (north of the Peninsula), to be run by the local water utility, would offset proposed cutbacks in other water supplies. But it won't be built for at least five years. Already a Sword of Damocles hangs over the region's head, with water cutbacks set to occur between 2015 and 2017. The newest entrant into the race to find a solution was the 2012 formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) by the six cities on the Monterey Peninsula, called the Monterey Peninsula Regional Water Authority. "The challenge has been that there hasn't been a consensus on what the water supply should look like," said Carmel Mayor Jason Burnett, who is on the JPA. Burnett said the consensus has been reached on the three solutions in the past year. California American Water, or Cal-Am, the local water utility, is supposed to cut its water supply from the Carmel River by 70%, according to Henrietta Stern, a project manager with the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District (MPWMD). That should take place by 2017, although local officials are hoping that the state will push back that deadline if progress has been made on local projects. At the same time, the region already has to cut back its water usage to comply with another court ruling that requires it to replenish groundwater in the Seaside basin. In 2010, the region could count on 3,300 acre feet from that source, but has had to pump out less since then. In 2015, it will only be able to pump out 2,300 acre feet of water, and by 2021, it can only take about 1,500 acre feet of water, according to David Stoldt, general manager of the MPWMD. While desalination looks like it could be a savior, desalination proposals in the area have come and gone in recent years. A previous desalination project fell apart in 2012. And other battles have also taken place: residents tried and failed in a June ballot measure to take over privately-owned Cal-Am. Marina, which sits to the north of the Monterey Peninsula, has its own water supply from the Salinas River basin. That water is not available to the Monterey Peninsula. In the 1990s, Marina built its own desalination plant, designed to produce 300 acre feet of water in a year, That is only enough to provide one-third of the city's water each year. And the project is unused because energy costs were too high to run it, said Marina's Mayor Bruce Delgado. Monterey Peninsula officials are seeking a regional facility that can serve a much larger population. But they are looking to Marina and the area nearby for a large desalination plant because the geology to the north  makes it easier to drill, Delgado explained. The MPWMD is currently backing two desalination proposals: one by Cal-Am one mile from the city of Marina, and another  proposed by private developers in Moss Landing. The Marina  plant would produce 7,000 to 9,000 acre feet of water per year, which is slightly less than the cutbacks expected at the Carmel River by the start of 2017. "The problem is the large desalination project won't be online by then," Stern said. Current estimates are that the Marina project won't be done until 2019. And the 2019 date is a guess, since the city of Marina is refusing to allow Cal-Am to drill a slant well to test if the desalination project is even feasible there. The slant well would test the viability of planned beach well intakes, according to the Monterey Herald . "Those types of delays have plagued the projects," Stern said. Well drilling for the desalination plant is already in dispute at the Superior Court and the state level. In September, Cal-Am filed an eminent domain lawsuit to gain access to a Marina site for slant well drilling. In addition, the California Coastal Commission takes up the matter at its November 12 meeting. Burnett explained that the Coastal Commission has jurisdiction over the portion of the well that will be drilled under the Pacific Ocean. Delgado said that while the actual desalination plant is outside the city limits, the slant wells are proposed for a site within the city of Marina. Delgado said the Marina City Council turned down the slant well drilling on a 3-2 vote because it wanted more environmental documents produced. "The city council majority is in favor of more information before the test slant wells can be drilled," he said. Another proposed desalination plant near Moss Landing might be built first, Stern said. It would rely on deeper water from the ocean that wouldn't have the same impacts on fish and ocean life. Unlike the Marina project, no environmental impact report has been started on the Moss Landing project. Water politics on the Monterey Peninsula have always been complicated. MPWMD was created by state legislation in 1978 to manage water issues, develop additional supplies and oversee agencies that provide water. In 1995, the State Water Resources Control Board ruled that Cal-Am did not have valid rights to 70% of the water it delivered to the area. Most of the water came from the Carmel River. In 2009, the state set a deadline at the start of 2017 to reduce withdrawals from the Carmel River. Stoldt said that two of the species that live in the river, the steelhead trout and the red-legged frog, are both listed as federal endangered species. The presence of both makes it difficult to build new dams on the river. Stoldt said recycling the peninsula region's wastewater may provide an additional 3,000 to 5,000 acre feet to the local area. An EIR on the program, called Pure Water Monterey, should be done in 2015, he said, and the program may be in operation by 2017. Official attempts to get an extension on the 2017 deadline for reducing Carmel River water can be expected in 2015.  Any extensions would come from the State Water Resources Control Board. "The hope is to point to the program being underway and the state providing some relief," Stoldt said. Water conservation efforts have also led to reductions in use in recent years as well, with residents saving over 1,000 acre feet of water a year, Stoldt said, and even more water conservation may be required of local residents. She said there will be economic impacts if the region is left with water cutbacks and few new sources of water. "If there's only enough water for residents, how does a hotel, restaurant or an aquarium stay in business?" "Over the past few decades there is likely no local issue that has been more debated, politicized voted on, and finally, as frustrating," wrote Monterey Mayor Chuck Della Sala, in a recent article on water. "...Desal has to be part of the mix." Proposition 1, the state water bond measure on the November ballot, may provide some financial assistance to Monterey County if it passes. An analysis of the $7.5 billion statewide measure by MPWCD says that it includes $725 million statewide for water recycling, desalination and potable reuse.

About 20 years after the Monterey Agreement sewed up disputes among contractors of the State Water Project (SWP), opponents of the deal have come as close to unstitching it as they've been in many years. In an October 2 ruling on the Kern Water Bank cases, Judge Timothy Frawley ordered the EIR on the "Monterey Plus Project" settlement to be revised and submitted for recertification, but with the revisions to focus only on the environmental impact of the "use and operation" of the Kern Water Bank. The "Monterey Plus Project" is the current implementation of the much-litigated 1994 Monterey Agreement. Named for the site of the negotiations, the agreement settled disputes between the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and SWP water contractors about water deliveries, mainly in Southern California. Disputed effects of the agreement included eliminating the "urban preference," which favored urban populations over agriculture in times of shortage, and transferring the Kern Water Bank to a local joint powers authority, the Kern Water Bank Authority (KWBA). Frawley refused to reopen the question of whether the Kern Water Bank was correctly transferred to the KWBA in 1995-6. Environmental and community groups in the dispute contend the transfer effectively privatized a public resource for the benefit of large landowners – especially Roll Global's Paramount Farms, known for its thousands of acres of almond and pistachio trees. Adam Keats, lead counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an important petitioner in the matter, wrote after the decision: "At this point petitioners are planning on appealing Judge Frawley's ruling, both because we disagree with his remedy that has left the approvals of the transfer in place and because we disagree with other parts of his ruling related to the rest of the Monterey Amendments. It is possible that the new EIR process could proceed alongside any appeal." Although everyone got something in the decision, Frawley ruled petitioners were the prevailing parties for purposes of attorneys' fees. Previously on March 5, Frawley issued a more sweeping decision in the matter, as reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3456. That decision – really, two rulings in parallel consolidated cases – upheld most aspects of the EIR on the Monterey Plus Project but found the EIR's analysis was deficient as to the Kern Water Bank component of the deal. Per the limits of the March ruling, this month's order did not reopen the broader question of whether the Monterey Agreement itself (and the resulting Monterey Amendments to the SWP's contracts) served the public interest. Located at the foot of the Central Valley south of Bakersfield, the Kern Water Bank is the largest of several area water banks: a system of pipes, wells and recharge ponds that allow massive quantities of water – potentially up to 1.5 million acre-feet – to be stored in the loose sandy ground of the Kern Fan Element and drawn out again at need. The water bank's Web site says it now has "about 0.8 million acre-feet in storage." The KWBA issued a statement on Judge Frawley's ruling saying "the Court appropriately rejected the extreme remedy of shut down of the Kern Water Bank as advocated by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other petitioners in the Central Delta case." It quoted Frawley's statements that "shutting down the Bank would result in more environmental harm than allowing it to remain operational" and noted he "ruled it would be 'contrary to the public interest' and 'reckless and irresponsible to suspend Kern Water Bank operations particularly under current severe drought conditions. As the Court's ruling also states, the 'point of having a water bank is primarily to provide water in times of shortage'." On the shutdown issue, Keats wrote: "Petitioners argued that the transfer needed to be reversed and the water bank returned to the state, and we intend to take that  argument up on appeal.  We also argued that the judge should – but was not absolutely required to – shut the water bank down pending future environmental review. As an alternative, recognizing the  economic factors that the judge may consider, we argued that while the law required the judge to return the water bank to the state, it allowed him to permit continued operation and use of the water bank pending future environmental review. He kind of did this, stating that the bank can continue to operate pending future environmental review while also not disturbing the transfer." Frawley wrote in his ruling that the court faced "the fulcrum of a pointed dilemma" created "because DWR approved and completed transfer of the Kern Water Bank lands to KWBA in 1995-96, but did not complete its environmental review of the transfer until approximately fifteen years later, in 2010." The initial transfer of the Kern Water Bank was made under the terms of the original Monterey Agreement; its terms were modified by a 2003 settlement of litigation brought by a prior, separate group of environmental plaintiffs, led by the Planning and Conservation League (PCL). A major question in the current phase of litigation has been what latitude remains to the current set of petitioners since, as Frawley's opinion puts it, they have "arrived late to the party." In the two cases that Frawley considered together, the two sets of petitioners had sought different levels of reopened review. The neighboring water districts that were petitioners in Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District v. DWR , Case No. 34-2010-80000703, had offered to accept an order changing much less of the status quo. Their proposed order would have limited EIR decertification to the Kern Water Bank portion of the Monterey Plus Project while providing for only a "supplemental, geographically-limited EIR focused on the potential impacts (particularly as to groundwater and water quality)... in the immediate vicinity of the Kern Water Bank lands." But CBD and other activist petitioners held out for more in the larger, more political case of Central Delta Water Agency v. DWR , Sacramento Superior Court Case No. 34-2010-80000561. In his decision, to the environmental groups' delight, Frawley went farther than the Rosedale group had asked. KWBA recounted Frawley's order that operation continue during DWR's work to revise the EIR, "subject to certain conditions including the interim operating plan jointly developed by and between KWBA and neighboring Rosedale-Rio Bravo and Buena Vista Water Storage Districts for protection of local groundwater. KWBA is committed as a responsible agency to diligently assisting DWR with timely completion of its supplemental review as required by CEQA and the Court and bringing closure to 19 years of litigation." EIR could need to consider far-flung effects The new EIR review is limited only by subject matter, not geography, so arguably the analysis could extend to any site served by the SWP if the Kern Water Bank is involved. Keats wrote: "Anything in the EIR that deals with the Kern Water Bank in any way needs to be revisited in the new EIR. At this point it is hard to say how much the analysis will change, but anything related to the KWB is on the table." Carolee Krieger of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) , which was also a petitioner, praised Frawley's decision not to limit the new EIR review geographically. Krieger cited her own home town of Montecito as an example of physically distant effects from current priorities at the Kern Water Bank. She said on joining the State Water Project, Santa Barbara County agreed to build 144 miles of pipeline and pumping facilities from the main State Water Project line in Kettleman City over the hills to Lake Cachuma. She said the county was paying down $1.76 billion in costs for the pipeline, far more than voters had been led to expect, and Montecito's share of that came close to $6 million out of an $11.4 million revenue stream, "whether we get any water or not." And she noted the State Water Project is delivering only 5% of the amounts in its contracts this year. "Now what galls me," she said, "is, if the Kern Water Bank were a public asset as DWR had planned and if the urban preference were in place as DWR had planned, Montecito would never have gotten to this place." Montecito's water shortage has been especially severe. Krieger said city water users have cut back by 45% and the city has had to purchase water on the open market. As she noted, Politico reported in August that celebrities in the area, including Oprah Winfrey, were hauling water by tanker truck to their estates. Allegations of private benefit As of 1995, the future Kern Water Bank, which DWR had begun to create but had not finished, was transferred in exchange for the receiving entities' retirement of 45,000 acre-feet in annual water rights. The Kern Water Bank writes on its Web site , "The KWBA had to construct significant infrastructure to turn the lands into a functioning water bank" including "approximately 7,000 acres of recharge ponds, 85 recovery wells, 36 miles of pipeline, and a six-mile-long canal." But AP's Garance Burke writes that the Department of Water Resources previously put $74 million of its own and $23 milllion of bond proceeds into earlier stages of the project. Critics have focused on benefits to Paramount Farming Co., a company in the Roll Global holding company of investors Stewart and Lynda Resnick. Paramount reportedly owns the Westside Mutual Water Co., which as of 2011 owned 48.06% of the base shares in the KWBA. Critics say Paramount and the neighboring Tejon Ranch Co. also have significant influence with other large shareholders in the KWBA. Krieger noted the judge's words that the water bank exists "to provide water in times of shortage," but said, "the way the Kern water bank is operated with the Resnicks controlling 58%, they do not sell to the public without getting a huge profit. They are a private company." She said it was the DWR's intention "to have a place to store surplus water" south of the Delta, with the urban preference in place, to serve the public. "It's people who need the water in times of severe drought. Crops can be fallowed." She said Frawley "just doesn't get it" when it comes to objections about private profit from the sale of Kern Water Bank water and about the loss of the urban preference in the Monterey Agreements. Potential effects on both sides of the Tehachapis Although the Kern Water Bank case is discussed most frequently as benefiting Paramount, it also affects water districts that work with the Tejon Ranch Company on both sides of the Tejon Pass, and even the Newhall Land and Farming Company, whose proposed Newhall Ranch development at the north edge of Los Angeles suburbia is currently before the State Supreme Court. The Newhall Land and Farming Company holds a right to store 55,000 acre feet of water with the Semitropic Water Storage District, which in turn owns 6.67% of the Kern Water Bank . The Semitropic Water Storage District has been named as a real party in interest in the Kern Water Bank suit. As for the Tejon Ranch Co., a detailed 2011 California Lawyer article on the litigation reported CBD's Adam Keats first turned his attention to the Kern Water Bank because it was listed as a possible water source for the company's upscale Tejon Mountain Village development in the Tejon Pass highlands, which has since won initial approvals. Bakersfield Californian columnist Lois Henry tangled with the Tejon Ranch Co. in March 2014 when she suggested Judge Frawley's initial ruling might affect the Tejon Mountain Village project; she reported that the company's Barry Zoeller wrote to her then, "It's not a concern" and that the project also had other water sources. Henry has also reported that the Tejon Ranch Co. has been making purchases of water rights in recent years. She reported based on a November 2013 SEC filing that Tejon Ranch has contracted for a right to purchase Kern River water from Nickel Family LLC. (Henry's local water coverage also includes a more recent comment on the impending Kern Water Bank decision as of this September that offers some insights into the Rosedale-Rio Bravo water district parties' perspectives.) It is uncertain how or whether the Kern Water Bank decision may affect the proposed planned town of Centennial, whose proponent is a joint venture by the Tejon Ranch Co. and others, known as Centennial Founders, LLC. Centennial would place some 23,000 units of housing on land at the south edge of Tejon Ranch, around Quail Lake on Highway 138 east of I-5, in unincorporated Los Angeles County. The west branch of the California Aqueduct runs through the proposed site. But in a recent public comment on the Draft EIR for the Antelope Valley Area Plan, which affects the Centennial site's zoning, the Tri-County Watchdogs activist group mentioned the Kern Water Bank decision in calling on Los Angeles County planners to scrutinize water sources for new Antelope Valley development. It's likewise unclear how the Kern Water Bank might affect the portion of Tejon Ranch real estate development that is physically closest to the water bank area: the existing industrial, travel and outlet-mall complex near the junction of the I-5 and 99 highways south of Bakersfield, and, next to it, a proposed new development with 12,000 residential units to be known as Grapevine . Henry's reporting has suggested the purchase of the "Nickel water" may have been with Grapevine in mind. The Tejon Ranch Company, Tejon-Castac Water District (TCWD), and, on some court papers, the Wheeler Ridge - Maricopa Water Storage District (WRMWSD), have been described as real parties in interest in the Kern Water Bank case. The Tejon Ranch Company has large water delivery contracts with TCWD, which as of 2011 owned 2% of the Kern Water Bank, and WRMWSD, which as of then owned 24.03% of the Kern Water Bank. The company's profile of Dennis Atkinson , Senior Vice President, Agriculture and Water Resources, states he is "president of the Tejon Castac Water Agency, vice president of the Wheeler Ridge Water Agency and is also a member of the Kern County Water Bank Authority board of directors." The Tejon Ranch Co. gives its own accounts of its real estate projects and water holdings in its initial and amended 10-K reports for 2013. An old public argument The Monterey Agreements, the Kern Water Bank, and land development between Bakersfield and Los Angeles are long-established matters of entrenched political conflict. The Kern Water Bank's 1995 transfer from the Department of Water Resources to the Kern County Water Agency, and thence within days to the Kern Water Bank Authority, can be viewed either as privatization or as devolution to local control. The question whether the water became privatized depends on the view taken of water districts that are public entities but governed by and for large private water users, i.e. major landowners. Background on the arguments that a public resource was transferred for private enrichment appears in the 2011 California Lawyer article and in a paper titled, "Water Heist" published in 2003 by Public Citizen at http://www.citizen.org/documents/water_heist_lo-res.pdf . The Public Policy Institute of California has taken a more favorable view. Key papers by senior water scholar Ellen Hanak and others include Hanak's 2003 "Who Should Be Allowed To Sell Water in California?..." at http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/r_703ehr.pdf and its 2012 update at http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/r_1112ehr.pdf . The 2012 PPIC report, in characterizing effects of the 1994 Monterey Agreement, wrote, "This agreement also led to the transfer from state to local ownership of a part of the Kern Fan, near Bakersfield, where the state had unsuccessfully attempted to launch a groundwater bank. This area, now known as the Kern Water Bank, has become one of the leading examples of groundwater banking." The Kern Water Bank's own account of its history is at http://www.kwb.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Pages.Page/id/360 . It maintains a "Myth and Reality" page offering rebuttals to the Center for Biological Diversity's allegations as of a time when the lawsuit's filing was "recent".

California's state housing finance administrators published a long-delayed study October 13 on the cost of building affordable housing. It found no single factor to blame for California's high costs per unit. But it said economies of scale tend to help, and multiple layers of restrictions don't help, and that perhaps cost containment should be a more important factor in awarding housing tax credits. The study found per-unit new construction costs averaged about $288,000 across the period from 2001 through 2011, for all units financed by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC). Those units would have been financed primarily with state and federal low-income housing tax credits, but with other funding sources layered in as well, especially where deep affordability subsidies were used to house people living on public benefits or minimum-wage incomes. Overall, costs increased when projects involved community opposition, local design-review requirements, underground or podium parking, or funding from redevelopment agencies. Smaller units cost less; higher construction or energy-efficiency standards cost more. Economies of scale were possible when a big developer, a big project, or a general contractor was involved: "for each 10 percent increase in the number of units, the cost per unit declines by 1.7 percent." Among other findings, the study said high land costs tended to raise per-unit costs even when the price of the building site wasn't part of the calculation, because expensive building sites tended to be used for taller structures that were more expensive to build. In general the study concluded that developers' own choices can influence costs, and costs rise when requirements are added by the demands of a particular location or cooperating funding source. It suggested adding "a greater emphasis placed on cost containment or cost efficiency" in the competitive application process for tax credit allocations. The authors reported they attempted to gather market-rate project costs as a basis for comparison but received few sufficiently complete responses from developers so the results were unscientific. In general they found market-rate construction costs averaged higher. The cosponsors of the study were four state agencies: the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD); the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC), which distributes state and federal LIHTC credit allocations; the California Housing Finance Agency; and the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee. The full text of the report as posted this month is on the HCD Web site at http://bit.ly/1rtNZN6. Although the project was described as prepared "over the course of a year," it appeared to be the institutional descendant of a September 2011 hearing on affordable housing costs before the TCAC. Materials from that initial discussion are still posted under the heading, "Affordable Housing Cost Study" at http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/tax.asp. The September 14, 2011 hearing transcript contains extended testimony by leading subsidized-housing developers, housing administrators and affordability activists about the reasons why it is expensive and difficult to build new affordable housing in California. See http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/staff/2011/20110914/transcript.pdf. The RFP for a study that followed the hearing set a timetable entirely within 2012. It is still posted at http://www.hcd.ca.gov/2012_affordable_housing/Final_AH_cost_study_RFP.pdf. Both the 2012 RFP and the final study included a section interpreting the notion of cost containment more broadly. In the final study, this section sets out a case for affordable housing as a means to reduce greenhouse gases, improve local economies, educate children into employable, manageable adults, and reduce the costs of police, medical and social programs that are commonly applied to lives disrupted by the lack of adequate housing. A Los Angeles Times report that includes further summaries of the final study results is posted at http://lat.ms/1wDBSBz. Highlights as viewed by the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association are here .

The California Supreme Court agreed on October 1 to review a major CEQA case, Sierra Club v. County of Fresno , (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 704, in which the Fifth District Court of Appeal blocked the "Friant Ranch," a large planned development focused on seniors' housing. (See prior coverage at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3504.) The ruling walks through several forms of CEQA analysis, so it's difficult to interpret the court's review announcement, which reads in substantive part: "This case presents issues concerning the standard and scope of judicial review under the California Environmental Quality Act." The online docket with the grant of review and links to the original opinion is at http://bit.ly/1vuOrji. The case was cited by conservationist petitioners in their important appeal of the challenge to the Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy (RTP/SCS) adopted by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). As explained last week at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3584, the SANDAG case has been awaiting decision since August 27. To the SANDAG petitioners, who have been alleging insufficient analysis in the RTP/SCS, the importance of the Fresno case is that it found an EIR for a project wasn't finished when it quantified projected air pollution effects numerically. The ruling said the EIR should also inform readers about the expected public health impacts of the emission tonnages that it mentions. Enforcement letter issued on Laguna Beach resort expansion The Coastal Commission issued an enforcement letter September 24 to stop part of the disputed renovation and upscaling work on The Ranch at Laguna Beach. The letter says project proponent Mark Christy engaged in improper unpermitted development in the form of landscaping, paving and construction of a 7000-square-foot dance floor in the property's eucalyptus grove. Construction, renovation and landscaping work on The Ranch at Laguna Beach was a subject of Coastal Commission arguments all summer. Part of the work has been allowed to continue as authorized remodeling of existing buildings, while other parts of the work have been ordered suspended pending Commission review. The enforcement letter distinguishes the outdoor work from the remodeling work on buildings that the Commission has been allowing to proceed. It asks Christy to "incorporate removal or modifications" to the unpermitted work into the description of the Ranch at Laguna Beach project that is already on appeal before the Commission. Jurisdiction argument fails to stop Graton casino The First District Court of Appeal on October 3 rejected a challenge to the Graton Tribe's planned casino at the edge of Rohnert Park. Opponents of the project, Stop the Casino 101 Coalition, alleged that, although the planned casino site was accepted into federal trust by the Department of the Interior, the tribe still lacked jurisdiction over the land. The project's opponents argued that, when the tribe reacquired the land from private owners and placed it into trust, the federal government did not specify that the tribe should also have jurisdiction over the land, and the state of California did not cede such jurisdiction to the tribe. The court rejected the jurisdiction argument, holding primarily that federally recognized tribes exercise jurisdiction over their reservations, and that even if state consent is required, "such consent is implicit in the compact signed by the Governor and ratified by the Legislature." The case is Stop the Casino 101 Coalition v. Brown , at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A140203.PDF. In other news - The City of Los Angeles issued a "Great Streets for Los Angeles" transportation plan with emphasis on improving safety for bicyclists and pedestrians. The Los Angeles Daily News has details at http://bit.ly/1yLZjOL. For the report itself and a statement from the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, see http://www.lamayor.org/mayor_garcetti_and_ladot_strategic_plan_transportation. The City of Fresno finally accepted a million-dollar grant to start plans for a station of the locally vilified High-Speed Rail project. See http://bit.ly/1CTYEte for recent Fresno Bee coverage and see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3568 for links to coverage of prior rejections of the grant. The Monterey County Weekly reports that Sean Parker of Napster has indirectly funded a big handful of grants to Central Coast conservation groups. Parker agreed to contribute $2.5 million to conservation after the Coastal Commission pursued him over environmental damage from preparations for his 2013 wedding. The Commission has now announced the grant recipients. See http://bit.ly/1y50GXx. The Sacramento Bee reported California's Democratic leadership may be waiting for the 2016 Presidential election turnout to try and pass extensions of temporary taxes first passed in 2012. For details see http://bit.ly/1nXXLwH.

This week the Strategic Growth Council (SGC) came back to some questions on distributing cap-and-trade proceeds that were asked but not conclusively answered this summer -- and hinted that maybe these are the tough ones. The occasion was a public airing at the Council's October 6 meeting for a recently circulated draft of proposed guidelines for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. The Council took no formal vote on the program, and is not expected to do so until December 11. But in an extended public discussion at the meeting, new official thinking emerged on public comment themes that had seemed uncertain of getting traction during the August and September workshops on possible AHSC rules. Major topics included the fairness of a proposed funding set-aside for transit-oriented development; whether disadvantaged areas with public health hazards should be preferred affordable housing sites; geographic distribution concerns, and the role of regional government. Out of the $130 million allocation for fiscal 2014-15, $120 million would be offered in AHSC's main point-based competition for grants and loans. The program's smaller agricultural land preservation component, using $5 million in 2014-15, would provide ten $100,000 planning grants and a small fund for agricultural easements. That's not much money from a statewide point of view. But for 2015-16 and beyond, the program has been promised a continuous appropriation thereafter of 20% of the annual Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reduction Fund created by cap-and-trade proceeds. Under the proposed SGC guidelines for the funding competition, at least 40% of that funding would be reserved for projects that meet the program's own definition of transit-oriented development (TOD). At least 30% would be reserved for less housing-oriented and smaller Integrated Connectivity Projects (ICP). (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3578 for a detailed initial review of the draft.) Staff at the meeting described the TOD and ICP competition areas as mutually exclusive "doors" or "buckets". Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would be the primary measure of GHG reduction. There were critics of the recommendation to reserve 40% of the money for projects that by definition must be on or near dense transit routes. Natural Resources Secretary John Laird questioned how the proportions were chosen, raised the possibility that a "complete streets" program might fall between the two "buckets", and asked, "Why divide them at all? Why not see what comes on through the door?" In public comment, Rob Wiener of the California Coalition for Rural Housing, who has been vocal at every AHSC public meeting, alleged in public comment that restrictions in the eligibility rules for TOD projects meant they "will not benefit rural communities, and in fact will not benefit most communities in the state." The housing part of the discussion was already affected by a new "public member" attending her first formal SGC meeting: Gail Goldberg, executive director of the Urban Land Institute - Los Angeles, appointed by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins. Goldberg has been Planning Director in San Diego and in Los Angeles, and has served on the Statewide Coordinating Committee for the Urban Land Institute's California Smart Growth Initiative. She is one of two "public members" added by SB 862, the June 2014 budget bill that created the AHSC program. (See http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3589 for details.) (The other public member is to be chosen by the State Senate Rules Committee. A staff member at Sen. Steinberg's office said the appointment will be made when the Senate reconvenes in December or later, and is for the new Senate President Pro Tem, Sen. Kevin deLeon, to consider alongside his appointees to the Rules Committee.) At the SGC meeting, Goldberg elicited staff explanations that every TOD project must have an affordable housing component, whereas ICP projects needn't -- but that, since half the funding block must go to affordable housing, most projects would be likely to have some affordable housing. Later she spelled out a distinction that not all housing drafters make: between "displacement and replacement, which are two separate issues." One public commenter asked the Council to make anti-displacement measures a threshold requirement for all projects rather than only granting extra points for such measures, as the current draft guidelines would. Pressure from Bay Area and other northern and coastal areas was evident in a staff report posted with the AHSC agenda item. On geographic distribution of funds, it said, "SGC and the implementing state agency and department staff see merit in designing the AHSC Program to account for the distribution of funds statewide. California's cities and communities statewide are diverse and vary in market dynamics, community need, capacity to manage and deliver projects, track greenhouse gas emissions, population density and size, and the availability of local resources. The method to account for geographic distribution of funds is still undetermined." The phrases about "geographic distribution" may refer to controversy over perceived slighting of the Bay Area in CalEPA's CalEnviroScreen 2.0 mapping tool for environmental, public health and socioeconomic factors. CalEPA has proposed to use CalEnviroScreen in defining "disadvantaged communities" under SB 535. The AHSC program must use 50% of its grant money to benefit communities that fit the SB 535 definition. Bay Area legislators and others have protested that the CalEnviroScreen map tends to favor inland areas of the Central Valley and Southern California. (See http://lat.ms/1sq0Qao and detailed discussion, including CalEPA officials' responses, at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3570.) Laird warned that geographic distribution requirements could be "an absolute nightmare," where an arbitrary line drawn across a map could mean "you always had applications that weren't a hundred percent in the right place." The staff report for the meeting reopened a question that has been raised in SGC and ARB/CalEPA workshops and written public comments about the distinction between disadvantaged physical locations and disadvantaged people. The report invited discussion of whether "disadvantaged communities" -- meaning census tracts identified by CalEPA as facing exceptional burdens -- may be served by improving affordable housing in "high opportunity areas". A similar question was raised in past workshops by the East Bay Housing Organizations among other advocacy groups. Several housing advocates have expressed a similar notion in negative form: that it may not help disadvantaged people to place affordable housing in areas that are defined as "disadvantaged" for being environmentally hazardous places to live. At least one Council member echoed that thought at the meeting. The Air Resources Board adopted guidelines September 18 on defining benefit to disadvantaged communities under SB 535. Those guidelines will affect the AHSC program in common with other programs for cap-and-trade auction proceeds. The CalEPA designations of "disadvantaged" census tracts had been expected by Tuesday, September 30 but had not yet appeared as of October 7. The Air Resources Board Web page for cap-and-trade auction proceeds, which has been tracking both the ARB and the CalEPA processes on disadvantaged communities, was revised as of October 2 to reflect the September 18 ARB action, but it did not provide any new material on census tract designations. See http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/upcomingevents.htm. At the meeting, in public comment, a speaker from the Infill Builders Federation said some members who develop affordable housing "are trying to get away from gentrification," hence were hoping to serve disadvantaged communities with affordable housing without necessarily siting projects in the heavily polluted and impoverished neighborhoods identified as "disadvantaged" by CalEnviroScreen. She noted that many neighborhoods, especially in the Bay Area, have varied income levels, and it can be a goal to avoid neighborhoods that have single income levels. At least one Council member called for serious attention to technical assistance for potential grant applicants who may be less prepared to file successful applications, such as towns whose planning departments have been cut back. There was a definite sense of unfinished business on the role of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in selecting and coordinating projects. The staff report describes an "initial concept for coordinated review... currently being developed" that is largely new since the September 23 guidelines. It "would allow for MPO technical review of program thresholds, specifically GHG quantification and SCS application in Phase 1. In the Phase 2 Full Application, MPOs would concurrently review applications in conjunction with the State to identify priority projects within their respective region ." Discussion at the meeting was actually less specific on how strongly the MPOs' recommendations would be allowed to affect outcomes. Laird said the Legislature had rejected a provision that would have given the MPOs a formal role and he didn't want to see that issue "re-litigated" in the guidelines. The staff report for the meeting also invited discussion on "a more precise measure" for each project's effect on GHG reduction and on vehicle trips, suggesting a retreat from the draft guidelines' suggestion to express GHG reduction "relative to scale and cost of the project." Some Council members called for more specific measurement approaches to GHG reduction. Materials from the October 6 SGC meeting, including a link to the staff report, are at http://sgc.ca.gov/s_100614meetingmaterials.php. That link is also where the video of the meeting is most likely to appear. The AHSC portion begins about an hour and 15 minutes into the session and runs almost two hours. Comments on SGC's proposed AHSC guidelines are due October 31. Workshops to take public comment on the main guidelines are scheduled for October 23-28 around the state, in all cases by means of pre-reserved free tickets available via http://www.sgc.ca.gov/docs/AHSC_October_Workshop_Notice.pdf. Separate workshops on the agricultural guidelines will be October 24 in Oroville, October 29 in Bakersfield, and October 30 in Watsonville. The announcement, posted October 7, is at http://www.sgc.ca.gov/docs/SALC_October_Workshop_Notice_FINAL.pdf. The SGC is scheduled to approve final guidelines at its next meeting December 11.