Landowners who filed a lawsuit contending that Santa Cruz County's second unit ordinance conflicted with state law should have filed suit when the county most recently amended the ordinance, not when the county applied the ordinance to conditional use permits, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The ruling came in a 2-1 decision, with Acting Presiding Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian dissenting. She concluded that a new statute of limitations arose every time the county applied the contested ordinance. The substantive issue in the case was whether Santa Cruz County's ordinance — which limits who may live in second units and what rent can be charged — conflicts with the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act (Civil Code § 1954.50 et seq.). The state law, approved in 1995, limits local rent control efforts. The court hinted that the local ordinance might run afoul of Costa-Hawkins, but neither the majority nor the dissent ever fully addressed the merits of the case. The majority said the lawsuit was too late, and the dissenter urged a remand to the trial court for a decision on the merits. The court also split over the question of whether a potentially invalid ordinance could be challenged anew every time a local government enforced the ordinance. Santa Cruz County first adopted a second unit ordinance in 1981. Over the years, the county has amended the ordinance several times, permitting larger units, reducing the minimum lot size and relaxing occupancy standards. In its most recent form, approved in November 1997, the ordinance restricted second unit occupancy to low-income households, seniors or family members of the landowner. The law also restricted rent based on a sliding scale. In April 1999, Steven Travis applied for a permit to convert a single-family dwelling that was already under construction into a second unit, and to construct a primary dwelling unit on his property in the unincorporated community of Boulder Creek. The county approved the permit subject to the occupancy and rent conditions. Travis appealed the conditions, but he lost. So he filed a lawsuit in September 1999 and was joined by Stanley and Sonya Sokolow. In 1996 and in 1998, the Sokolows had received permits to build second units on two parcels they owned outside the Santa Cruz city limits. They did not administratively appeal the permit conditions but instead protested to the county counsel and the Board of Supervisors that Costa-Hawkins preempted the local ordinance. In their lawsuit, Travis and the Sokolows argued the second unit ordinance was preempted by state law, was discriminatory, violated state planning and zoning law, was an unconstitutional taking and was invalid because of the county's lack of a valid housing element. Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Robert Yonts ruled that the landowners' challenge of the ordinance itself was too late, as was the Sokolows' challenge to their particular permit conditions. Judge Yonts found that Travis's constitutional challenge was timely, but that there had been no taking. Acting as their own lawyers, the landowners appealed. The split appellate panel upheld the trial court's decision, although on slightly different grounds. The first question for the court was whether the lawsuit was a "facial" challenge — meaning the entire ordinance was brought into question — or an "as-applied" challenge — meaning only the county's application of the law to the landowners' particular situations was at issue. The landowners said their lawsuit was both. They argued that the ordinance was unlawful, and each time the county enforced the ordinance, it could be contested again. The court ruled that the lawsuit was strictly a facial challenge. "Petitioners do not contend that the conditions attached to their particular second unit permit applications differed in any way from the conditions imposed on other applicants for such permits," Justice William Wunderlich wrote for the majority. "Petitioners' essential claim is that the Ordinance is invalid no matter how, when or to whom it is applied, because state law preempts it." The court then moved on to the question of which statute of limitations applied. The landowners, of course, argued for the longest statute of limitations possible. They also argued that a new time limit commenced every time the county applied the ordinance — a "continuous accrual." The court, however, said the 90-day statute of limitations in Government Code § 65009, subdivision (c) applied. The state law gives those who seek to "attack, review, set aside, void, or annul the decision of a legislative body to adopt or amend a zoning ordinance" 90 days to commence legal action. That was precisely what Travis and Sokolows sought to do, so they should have sued within 90 days of the Board of Supervisors' decision to amend the ordinance in 1997, the court ruled. "The Legislature has enacted short statutes of limitation for attacks on conditional use permits, and for challenges to zoning ordinances that conflict with the governing general plan, as well as for attacks on the adoption or amendment of zoning ordinances," Wunderlich wrote. " t is clear that the Legislature intended that local land use decisions would be reviewed quickly or not at all." And the majority rejected the idea of continuous accrual: "The case before us is governed by a specific limitation statute, § 65009, subdivision (c)." In her dissent, Bamattre-Manoukian wrote that she "cannot accept the result that a local ordinance that may be void due to the preemptive effect of state law is rendered immune from challenge." Giving the landowners 90 days starting with the county's 1997 decision was wrong, Bamattre-Manoukian wrote. First, the amendments approved in 1997 were not the ones the landowners contested, Bamattre-Manoukian noted. The restrictions in question already existed and the county did not change them in 1997. Second, the challenged restrictions "appear to intrude into the area of landlord/tenant relations," she wrote. "Courts have found similar ordinances regulating the users of property to be ‘suspect' as zoning law." She cited City of Santa Barbara v. Adamson, (1980) 27 Cal.3d 123, and Coalition Advocating Legal Housing Options v. City of Santa Monica, (2001) 88 Cal.App.4th, 451. Moreover, Bamattre-Manoukian accepted the argument of continuous accrual. She pointed to the state Supreme Court's decision in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of La Habra, (2001) 25 Cal.4th 809 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, July 2001), in which the court found that a new statute of limitations arose every time a city collected a tax under an invalid ordinance that was several years old. "I would apply the same reasoning to our case and find that a cause of action arises, and a corresponding statute of limitations begins, each time the county acts to enforce its ordinance by issuing a permit imposing the challenged conditions," Bamattre-Manoukian wrote in her dissent. The Case: Travis v. County of Santa Cruz, No. H021541, 02 C.D.O.S. 6718, 2002 DJDAR 8391. Filed July 25, 2002. The Lawyers: Steven Travis in pro per. For the county: Dwight Herr, assistant county counsel, (831) 423-5800.

Twelve years ago while running for governor against a knowledgeable growth management ex-mayor, Democrat Dianne Feinstein scribbled the word "growth" on her hand so she would not forget to bring it up in her debate with Republican Pete Wilson. No such scribbling is likely in this year's gubernatorial campaign, which pits a powerful Sacramento insider against a business executive who has never run for office before. Incumbent Gray Davis has never comprehensively addressed the growth question — though he has occasionally focused on specific components, especially transportation and open space. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Bill Simon spent a couple of campaign days in August focused on growth and housing, and he did make a few headlines. But with his campaign on the defensive, it is unlikely that we will see a serious discussion of any growth policy issues. That's too bad. California's eternal issues associated with growth have not vanished, and the state's rickety system of land-use planning, environmental review, infrastructure investment, and state-local finance only gets harder to manage each year. Beyond that, however, the difference in approach between the two gubernatorial candidates has the makings of an interesting policy debate. In keeping with his reputation, Davis has used money — in the form of annual appropriations and big bond issues — to promote his objectives on growth-related issues. Simon, on the other hand, has laid out an aggressive and detailed program of regulatory reform designed primarily to stimulate the state's sluggish housing construction levels. At a time when Sacramento is awash in red ink, it is questionable how Davis will continue to promote his agenda and still avoid regulatory reform. So a gubernatorial policy debate on growth issues could actually be a serious and useful discussion — if anybody wanted to have it. During his first term, Davis has assiduously used the state's powers — especially its financial muscle — to court favored constituencies. The result has been a significant flow of dollars into activities that will affect the state's future growth patterns. On open space, he has supported three bond issues, Propositions 12, 13, and 40, all of which passed. When the budget was flush, he promoted a series of innovative housing programs, including programs to reward local governments financially for building more than their fair share of housing. He has also targeted transportation funds to specific large projects with constituencies important to him, such as the BART extension from Fremont to San Jose. Of course, Davis has had to kill or delay virtually all appropriations that depend on general fund revenue because of the budget deficit. And the list of accomplishments provided by his office mentions only three land use-related regulatory reform bills that Davis signed, all from last year: SB 497, Sen. Byron Sher's bill to close a loophole on lot-line adjustments; SB 221, Sen. Sheila Kuehl's bill to strengthen the link between land use planning and water supply; and SB 32, Sen. Martha Escutia's bill to give local governments more power to order cleanup of small brownfields. No major reform of planning or environmental law, or of the state-local fiscal relationship, has been adopted during Davis's term. By contrast, Simon has taken on growth and housing in an aggressive way. As one might expect, he has called for increased infrastructure spending. Simon told the Association of California Water Agencies, for example, that he favors building more reservoirs. He has also continued to advocate the use of private toll lanes despite the state's unfavorable experiments in this area, apparently at the behest of Reason Foundation's Robert Poole, one of his policy advisers. On land use and related issues, however, he has gone far beyond Davis and called for considerable regulatory reform. On August 7, he issued a policy white paper called "Renewing the California Dream By Increasing Home Ownership" and campaigned for two days around the state on the issue of housing cost. First, he gave a speech to the Oakland Chamber of Commerce in which he attacked Davis for signing SB 975, which requires prevailing wages to be paid on affordable housing projects. The following day, he made a campaign swing in Southern California in which he called for regulatory reform on land use. Making stops in Ventura and Corona — both notorious slow-growth towns — he blamed restrictive land-use regulations for high housing prices. "These laws, however well meaning, shrink supply and drive up prices for everyone," he said in Ventura. Virtually the only substantive policy proposal in the Simon arsenal that has received attention is his call for greater use of plastic pipes in home plumbing — an issue he has used to highlight Davis's ties to the construction trade unions. However, in his full position paper -- which is not posted on the campaign website — Simon has laid out a comprehensive, if conservative, approach to regulatory reform. Among other things he is proposing: • A change in state affordable housing policy to discourage inclusionary zoning, which he claims drives up the price of market-rate units. • Reform of the California Environmental Policy Act to exempt small projects, permit streamlined review of larger projects consistent with General Plans, and establish standard significance thresholds. • More flexible brownfield cleanup standards so not all brownfields must meet the highest standard in order to be reused. • Reform of construction defect liability laws. • Providing more money to local governments by reallocating future property tax growth according to formulas in effect prior to the adoption of the Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund (ERAF) reallocation almost a decade ago. • Softening prevailing wage laws on private development projects. No matter what Simon might propose, however, nobody cares. Politically, all bets are on Davis and no significant interest group in the planning and development world dares to take on the sitting governor. For example, city officials around the state have spent most of the last four years complaining that Davis reneged on a promise to solve the ERAF problem. Indeed, the League of California Cities seemed to delight in playing an audiotape of Davis apparently making that commitment at the League's conference in October of 1998, just a few weeks before he was elected. However, in spite of the fact that Davis has neither proposed nor implemented any "structural" reform of ERAF, the League and many city leaders have continued to play ball with him, apparently because they view Davis as the only game in town. Virtually all the high-profile mayors in the state support him. Admittedly, most are Democrats, even though they run for local office on a nonpartisan basis. But the comments of Irvine Mayor Larry Agran at a June press conference supporting Davis are typical. "With Gray Davis at the helm, not only has direct funding for local government increased but, more importantly, he respects that local officials are often the best suited decision makers for their communities," Agran said. Maybe one of these years, the governor's race will serve as a useful forum to discuss how to plan for and manage the state's growth. But not this year.

Some people react almost viscerally to the suggestion of combining schools with shopping centers, and with some reason. Education and retail are fundamentally different activities. Schools — at least our mental picture of them — are protective and cloistered, while shopping centers are bustling places wide open to the entire public. Like chocolate and onions, the two just do not seem to go together. Why, then, should these two very different uses be combined? Land economics is one good reason. Urban school districts, such as Pomona Unified in eastern Los Angeles County, have a growing demand for new school facilities and a shrinking inventory of buildable sites. Aging regional malls with land assemblages of 50 acres or more, obsolete buildings and dwindling customer bases look like good quarries for school sites. And for a failing mall in a secondary market, a new life as a school may well be a "higher and better use." The Village at Indian Hill started life in the 1960s as Moreno Valley Center, one of the earlier enclosed malls in the country. Successive attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to enlarge and modernize the mall were largely futile, as local residents found newer and fancier places to shop. By the mid 1990s, the center, patronizingly renamed "Plaza Azteca," was half empty and had become a liability to its largely Spanish-speaking, working class neighborhood. With one-third of its 31,000 school children in temporary classrooms, Pomona is one of many communities in greater Los Angeles with a big deficit in school facilities. Sensing a school-facilities windfall, the district leased 300,000 square feet of the 550,000-square-foot Plaza Azteca mall in 1995. The district eventually bought the entire mall in 1999, after much of the initial work on education facilities was complete. An interesting twist about the Village at Indian Hills is that this 550,000-square-foot facility operates as a mixed-use school site, teacher-training facility and shopping center. The retail portion of the mall has shrunk to about 250,000 square feet. Pomona Unified has built a new freestanding elementary school, while remodeling a former Zody's department store — an archetypal big box — into a pair of elementary-school villages and teacher-training space. To do so, the architects reinforced the building with steel to meet the state's stringent building code for schools, while adding numerous skylights throughout the project. As a whole, the Village houses about 1,500 children in three elementary schools and one small, magnet high school with 120 students. Eventually, 2,000 students will have seats in Village classrooms. The facility has attracted a slew of teacher-training facilities, including a 2,500-square-foot space operated by Jet Propulsion Laboratory for training science teachers. The Village provides office space for the district's Child Development, Head Start and vocational training programs. The neighborhood also benefits: A mall that was in danger of becoming an eyesore now becomes architecturally interesting — at least in parts — and has become a central institution in the neighborhood, rather than an urban no man's land. Notwithstanding the value of the urban planning and architecture, money is the most interesting part of the Village at Indian Hills. In 1999, Pomona Unified spent a paltry $6.4 million to acquire the entire mall. According to the district's own numbers, that is less than the $8 million to $10 million needed to build a single elementary school, and a fraction of the $40 million needed to build a large high school. So far, school officials have spent at least $10.5 million to create the three elementary schools and the small high school, and may spend another $20 to $40 million to build a middle school and other facilities in the future. The other "beauty part" about money is Pomona Unified's new role as shopping-center landlord. In 1996, the district created the Pomona Valley Educational Foundation to manage the commercial space. Although the school district has declined to release current figures on rental income, our seat-of-the-pants estimate is that the center could yield about $2.5 million when fully occupied, based on 1999 rent levels. (The center, which now contains an eight-screen multi-plex, has only one vacancy.) The many grants that the Village has received from the likes of Sodexho Marriott and others help make twhe Village's operations self-sustaining, according to A.J. Wilson, the foundation's executive director. The Village further benefits from $2.4 million of "in-kind" services contributed by corporations and other benefactors. Pomona Unified is feeling confident enough about the program at the Village at Indian Hill to propose two similar projects. A group of four buildings, currently used as the Credit Union Center California, would become an elementary school and "overflow" facility for a nearby high school. Even more intriguing is the proposal known as Village at Ganesha Hills, a 20-acre site that would include several schools, 100,000 square feet of commercial space, an urgent-care facility, and a child-care center. About 80 townhouses, both for sale and for rent, would be set built as affordable housing for teachers and administrators. What makes this work, I strongly suspect, is that the school is in charge and can dictate to the commercial tenants — not the other way around. Also, the site is a proven retail location, despite its poor performance in recent years. On the other hand, proposals like the Belmont High School in downtown Los Angeles, where Los Angeles Unified had proposed building a retail strip along one edge, seem far riskier, because the retail is located along a minor street with no history of retail and little shopping nearby. In such cases, retail is both unnecessary and foolhardy. For many districts, putting retail and schools together may be forever unpalatable. But growing districts seeking something that they can afford on the pricey menu of school facilities may just acquire the taste for these combinations.

Since the mid-1990s, most new market-rate housing in California has been of the single-family detached (SFD) variety. Under traditional assumptions, these units should be generating school-age children at a predictable rate — because they would be occupied by families with a predictable number of children. But when single-family homes represent the only housing being built, those assumptions might go out the window. All types of households might occupy the new houses. And that raises some obvious questions about student generation rates. Under such circumstances, do K-12 students really live in the new houses? And, conversely, are those students rarer in multi-family dwellings (MF)? A quick comparison we did between the Central Valley towns of Clovis and Fresno and the coastal cities of Ventura and Oxnard found that the traditional assumptions might be faulty. Yes, the new houses have kids. But far more children appear to live in apartment buildings and townhouses these days than in years past. A May 2001 facilities needs assessment by the Clovis Unified School District — a Central Valley district of about 150,000 people with a considerable amount of new housing — follows the traditional assumptions. The district calculated student generation rates of 0.7822 students per single-family home, and of 0.330 students per multi-family dwelling. These rates imply that there are nearly 2 1/2 times more K-12 students in single-family houses than in multi-family units. These rates are not unusual for California, but they are on the high side nationally. We explored the "kid rate" for new housing developments, and we compared current demographics with 20-year-old data to see if the number of students in different types of housing has changed. We also compared inland (Clovis and Fresno) to coastal (Ventura and Oxnard). This is not a rigorous analysis — more of a quick look — and we only looked at the percentage of households with children younger than 18. Our new housing areas are in Census 2000 blocks that were built between 1990 and 2000 and are nearly all single-family and owner-occupied. For the past-versus-present study, we selected Census 2000 tracts that were either at least 90% single-family or at least 60% percent multi-family. The most interesting thing we found is that the percentage of multi-family units with children appears to have jumped significantly. Both the inland and coastal multi-family kid rates increased — nearly doubling inland from 32% to 60%, and increasing from 40% to 53% in the coastal area. The MF population and persons-per-unit number increased accordingly. In the single-family neighborhoods, we found that children are far more likely to live in new houses than in pre-1980 structures. We found that about 60% of households in newly built areas have children younger than 18, whether those areas are coastal or inland. This figure is a bit below Clovis Unified's calculated rate. We also found that coastal households are slightly larger, but, given that this is not a scientific sample, we cannot say for sure. In the established inland neighborhoods, the single-family-dwelling kid rate was 34% in both 1980 and 2000. In the coastal area, the SFD kid rate was lower yet (about 22%) and also unchanged from 20 years earlier. Ours is a quick look at only a few census tracts. But we may be seeing a pattern in which young households first move into multi-family housing (little of which is getting built these days) and remain there longer with their school age children before moving into newly built houses. Meanwhile, older single-family houses remain occupied predominantly by households with no children. This pattern appears to be more pronounced inland. Christopher Williamson is senior research associate at Solimar Research Group. Mivelia Andika is an intern at Solimar.

A state appellate court has invalidated a City of Upland redevelopment plan because the city improperly manipulated the base tax year for one parcel, and because the area was neither predominately urbanized nor blighted. The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, was the latest in a string of published rulings against redevelopment agencies since 1998. Courts have also ruled against redevelopment plans in Murrieta, Mammoth Lakes and Diamond Bar. "It's important that redevelopment agencies do their jobs correctly to begin with," said Kathryn Reimann, an attorney who represented San Bernardino County in the lawsuit against Upland. "And they can't avoid the base year requirements." The court held that Upland could not move 77 acres from one redevelopment project area to a newly created project area simply to change the base year from which tax increment would be derived. The city moved the property out of the older project area because the property value had actually decreased, meaning there was no tax increment to fund renewal. The city "did what was legally permitted for an improper reason," Justice Thomas Hollenhorst wrote for the court. " he reason was improper because the City was attempting to do indirectly what it could not do directly, i.e., change the base year assessment of the subject parcel and the time it was in redevelopment. Such a change would certainly upset the tax distribution balance between the redevelopment agency and other taxing jurisdictions." In 1999, the Upland City Council approved ordinances 1683 and 1684. The former amended the Town Center redevelopment plan by deleting 77 acres from the project area, while the latter established a new redevelopment plan incorporating the 77 acres and 15 other noncontiguous parcels. The county and a citizen filed separate lawsuits challenging the validity of the city's two ordinances. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Peter Norell ruled against the city, and the Fourth District upheld the decision. The city did not hide the reasons for its actions. Properties in the Town Center redevelopment project area, established during the early 1990s, had lost value, stymieing redevelopment efforts. The city wanted to reassign the properties with the lowest assessed values to a new project area to reflect the decline. In redevelopment, the lower the base year value, the greater the tax increment that redevelopment agencies receive. The county argued that the city was improperly manipulating the base year and that by moving land from one project area to another, the city was avoiding the 40-year sunset date for redevelopment activity for that land. "Although the issue is a close one," Justice Hollenhorst wrote, "the City's candid statement of its reasons for adopting ordinance 1683 makes it clear to us that the sole purpose of the ordinance was to avoid the base year limitations for the 77-acre parcel. We agree with the trial court that this is an improper purpose which conflicts with the statutory scheme." The court then reviewed the new redevelopment project area and found it did not meet the legal requirements of being "predominately urbanized" and blighted. At issue was "Subarea O" — 380 acres that included 171 acres used previously for a garbage dump, a rock quarry, and a flood control and siltation basin. The quarry closed in 1985, and there had been almost no use of the land since then. Redevelopment law requires at least 80% of a project area to be developed for urban uses. Subarea O amounted to more than 20% of the project area. So if Subarea O were not considered urbanized, the entire project area would be invalid. The city argued that the dump, mine and flood control project qualified as urban uses because those sites were located within a large urban area, and proximity to urban uses is a factor that can be considered in making the urbanization determination. The court, however, was not persuaded. " t seems that the question we must consider should be whether the rock mine and dump were developed for urban uses in the early 1980s," Hollenhorst wrote. "We therefore disagree with the City's argument that we must consider the current built-out condition of the City as showing the area is predominately urban. Indeed, it appears from the aerial photograph that the area was primarily vacant land which was surrounded by vacant land in the early 1980s. The area was also vacant at the time of a field survey in May 1998." Moreover, a quarry and dump are not inherently urban uses, the court ruled. Because Subarea O was not predominately urbanized, only 77.65% of the project area qualified as urbanized. Thus, the court ruled the whole project area invalid. Reimann, the county's attorney, said, "Courts understand there is no bright line between what's an urban use and what's a rural use. … Just because it's a rock quarry that produces materials for a building 100 miles away does not make the rock quarry an urban use per se." The court also ruled that a city survey failed to provide substantial evidence that the new project area was blighted. The survey found that 85.5% of buildings were "deficient," meaning they at least had peeling paint or cracked fascia. That definition was too broad for the court, which instead pointed to the 0.2% of buildings that fell into the more serious category of "dilapidated." And 0.2% was not enough blight for the court, which cited County of Riverside v. City of Murrieta, (1998) 65 Cal.App. 4th 616 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, August 1998). In that case, the court ruled that a report identifying less than 5% of a project area's buildings as unsafe or unhealthy did not constitute substantial evidence of blight. The Case: Graber v. City of Upland, No. E029769, 02 C.D.O.S. 5416, 2002 DJDAR 6811. Filed June 18, 2002. The Lawyers: For Graber: C. Robert Ferguson, (909) 482-0782. For San Bernardino County: Kathryn Reimann, (831) 647-1430. For Upland: James Markman, Richards, Watson & Gershon, (714) 990-0901.

A City of Salinas fee to finance stormwater drainage facilities and system maintenance has been ruled unconstitutional by the Sixth District Court of Appeal. The court found that the fee was subject to the voter-approval requirements of Proposition 218, which amended the state constitution in 1996. The court rejected the city's argument that the charge was a user fee that qualified for the exemption afforded to utility fees. Instead, the court ruled that it was an assessment related to property ownership. In 1999, the Salinas City Council approved two ordinances to fund and maintain a program intended to clean up the water in the city's storm drainage system. The city imposed an annual "storm water management utility fee" on owners of developed property to pay for facilities and maintenance. The city based the level of the fee on the amount of impervious surface on a parcel, with the single-family home rate set at $18.66 per year. Property owners with their own stormwater management systems could reduce or eliminate their fee. Owners of undeveloped parcels were exempt. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which wrote Proposition 218, and some Salinas property owners filed suit. They argued that the fee was a property-related assessment, so it required approval of the majority of affected property owners or of two-thirds of the residents. Monterey County Superior Court Judge Richard Silver ruled that the charge was not a property-related fee, and that it met the exemption requirements for sewer and water service fees. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Sixth Appellate District, however, reversed the lower court. Article XIIID, § 6, subdivision (c), of the state constitution provides an exception to Proposition 218's voter-approval requirements "for fees or charges for sewer, water, and refuse collection services." The city argued that the stormwater fee was a utility fee like these. The city also argued that the charge was a user fee — and not a "property-related fee" — because a property owner could avoid the fee by maintaining a private stormwater management system. The appellate panel rejected both arguments. Storm drains are often referred to as "sewers," the court conceded. But storm drains are not sanitary sewers, the court ruled, and Proposition 218 should be read liberally to encourage voter-approval of fees. "We conclude that the term ‘sewer services' is ambiguous in the context of both § 6(c) and Proposition 218 as a whole," Justice Franklin Elia wrote for the court. "We must keep in mind, however, the voters' intent that the constitutional provision be construed liberally to curb the rise in ‘excessive' taxes, assessments, and fees exacted by local governments without taxpayer consent. Accordingly, we are compelled to resort to the principles that exceptions to a general rule of an enactment must be strictly construed, thereby giving ‘sewer services' its narrower, more common meaning applicable to sanitary sewerage." And, the court ruled, the storm drainage system clearly is not what a voter would envision as "water service." The court also concluded that the fee was in fact a property-related assessment, and not a charge based on measured use or metered service. The fact that the city would reduce or waive the fee if the property owner had private facilities was not enough for the appellate panel. "A property owner's operation of a private storm drain system reduces the amount owed to the City to the extent that runoff into the City's system is reduced. The fee nonetheless is a fee for a public service having a direct relationship to the ownership of developed property," Justice Elia wrote. Thus, the storm drainage fee "burdens landowners as landowners," Elia wrote, citing Apartment Assn. of Los Angeles County, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, (2001) 24 Cal. 4th 830 (see CP&DR Legal Digest, February 2001). Because of this, the fee required voter approval. The Case: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. City of Salinas, No. H022665, 02 C.D.O.S. 4853, 2002 DJDAR 6161. Filed June 3, 2002. The Lawyers: For Jarvis: Timothy J. Morgan, (831) 429-9841. For Salinas, James Sanchez, city attorney, (831) 758-7256.

Santa Cruz County has adopted an ordinance that discourages development of housing projects at less than general plan density. The law, which took effect in July, requires residential project applications to undergo an expedited review process when the proponents submit applications for developments that are less dense than allowed by the general plan. Only if the reduced-density proposal passes that separate review will the county accept the application for normal processing. A panel with representatives of several agencies will review the proposal and decide whether the county should accept it for normal processing, County Planning Director Alvin James said. The county could still approve less dense projects, but it would have to make findings based on existing county policies, "rather than a developer reducing the number of units, essentially because he is tired of fighting neighborhood opposition," he said. James said a project the county approved earlier this year exemplifies the issue. The general plan designated the site of the Atherton Place project for about 80 housing units. The developer proposed about 60. Neighborhood opposition and environmental concerns resulted in the developer whittling the project to 26 units, which the county approved. So much of this sort of thing has happened that the county has recognized an inconsistency with its general plan, James said. Santa Cruz County will need all the density it can get to meet its share of the regional housing need. After lengthy talks among members of the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments and with state Housing and Community Development officials, the AMBAG board directed Santa Cruz County and its cities to plan for 9,715 housing units from 2003 through 2008 — including 3,441 units in unincorporated Santa Cruz County. The board directed 13,414 units to Monterey County and its cities. The housing allocation decision pitted county against county. All AMBAG representatives from Monterey County voted for the housing allocation, while all representatives from north of the Pajaro River voted against it. An appeal is likely, and there is even talk in Santa Cruz County of seceding from AMBAG. State housing officials have given mixed signals about the AMBAG allocations, said Kate McKenna, AMBAG principal planner. State officials first said they wanted the majority of new units built in Santa Cruz County. In May, they complained about low numbers for Monterey County. "It has been very frustrating, and we're not there yet," McKenna said. "We hope HCD will accept this latest plan." The San Luis Obispo Council of Governments appears not to care what HCD thinks. In July, the SLOCOG board voted to allocate among its member jurisdictions 13,892 housing units — 5,000 fewer than HCD had directed to the county. The state has rejected the SLOCOG figure and may not certify a housing element that relies on the lower number. Working-class families now consider the lack of affordable housing to be as big a problem as the shortage of affordable health care, according to the Fannie Mae Foundation. In a report released in June, 41% of respondents listed affordable housing as a problem. Half of people in the West, including 55% living on the Pacific Coast, said affordable housing was a problem. "What's surprising about our results is that the lack of affordable homes is seen as a bigger problem than many of the top issues on the public agenda today, including employment," said Geoffrey Garin, president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which helped conduct the survey. An analysis of a Nevada County property rights initiative makes clear that most aspects of the ballot measure are unclear. The Property Owner Claims Reimbursement Process Initiative qualified for the November ballot (see CP&DR, June 2002). Supporters say the measure would require the county to pay compensation to landowners when regulations prevent development at currently zoned levels. But the ballot measure's actual language is difficult to interpret, concluded Seifel Consulting and Clifford Associates, which the county Board of Supervisors hired to analyze the initiative. What regulatory measures would be subject to the compensation requirement is uncertain, and many of measure's key terms are ambiguous, says the report, which was released in July. "County staff and the consultants retained to help prepare this report have concluded that it is impossible to determine the meaning of the measure with any certainty," the report states. Using many assumptions, the consultants estimated the initiative, if approved, could cost the county $3.5 million to $10.6 million annually from fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2007. They also found the measure could "have far-reaching effects on land use conditions in the county." The report is available at http://docs.co.nevada.ca.us/dscgi/ds.py/View/Collection-3907 Napa Valley grape growers have voted to tax themselves $7.76 per acre to pay for operation of the county's 177-bed farmworker housing system and to build more units for farm laborers. About 80% of the vineyard owners who participated in the mail-in balloting voted for the tax. State legislation approved last year allowed the county to pursue the tax (see CP&DR, September 2001). The assessment will appear on property tax bills beginning this fall. The county set the amount by dividing the shortfall in the county farmworker housing budget ($340,000) by the number of acres planted with grapes (44,000). West Coast Homebuilders President Albert Seeno Jr. has agreed to pay a $1 million fine and provide a 630-acre preserve for endangered red-legged frogs — all as part of pleading guilty to violating the federal Endangered Species Act. Last year, Seeno's company drained and filled two ponds that provided frog habitat at the site of the 2,900-unit San Marco subdivision in Pittsburg. In June, federal officials filed two criminal charges against West Coast Homebuilders. One month later, Seeno agreed to pay $300,000 apiece to the federal government, Contra Costa County and the environmental group Save Mount Diablo. He will pay another $100,000 to the state Department of Fish and Game. And Seeno agreed to dedicate 630 acres he owns near Mount Diablo as a preserve for red-legged frogs. But not all the news for the red-legged frog is good. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&WS) has rescinded designation of nearly 4 million acres of critical habitat for the species. To settle a lawsuit filed by the Home Builders Association of Northern California, the agency removed nearly all the land from last year's designation of 4.1 million acres (see CP&DR Environment Watch, December 2000). Federal officials made the decision to settle the lawsuit in light of some recent court rulings that said federal officials had not adequately considered economic impacts of Endangered Species Act decisions. A federal judge in San Diego has given USF&WS three years to reconsider designating critical habitat for eight threatened or endangered plant species. The agency had earlier decided that it was not prudent to designate critical habitat for the desert plants, which cover various areas from the Mexican border to Mono County. Environmentalists sued, and U.S. District Court Judge Irma Gonzalez ruled for them. Developers of a proposed 1,400-unit project in Contra Costa's Tassajara Valley received approved from the county in early July after agreeing to pay $8,000 per home to a new county housing trust fund. The Alamo Creek project will provide about $8.5 million for affordable housing projects, redevelopment and innovative land uses. The $8,000-per-unit fee will not apply to Alamo Creek's 340 affordable units. The fee broke the log-jam that had stalled approval of Tassajara Valley, in the hills east of Interstate 680. However, the Danville Town Council voted to sue over the project's EIR. Traffic congestion, water availability and grading are the major concerns. San Francisco supervisors slashed the budget for planning of, and environmental reviews for, a runway expansion at San Francisco International Airport. Supervisors gave the airport only about $6 million. They placed $5 million of the proposed budget into a reserve. Supervisors said they were angry about the hiring of high-priced lobbyists, public relations experts and other consultants. If the $5 million cut remains, it would effectively kill the project, Airport Director John Martin wrote to supervisors in June. A petition drive aimed at splitting Santa Barbara County into two counties kicked off in July. The mayors of the north county cities of Santa Maria, Lompoc and Guadalupe were among the first people to sign the petition, which asks the governor to appoint a study commission and put the matter on the ballot. Backers of the new county — proposed be called Mission County — have been pressing their case since last year to split off the fast-growing and more conservative northern part of the county from the Santa Barbara area, which has long dominated county politics. A proposed $9 billion bond measure to begin building a California high-speed rail system has been shelved. The measure's chief backer, state Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), said he would pursue a bond in November 2004, when officials are scheduled to have decided on routes and to have completed environmental studies. The development of Indian casinos in recent years has worried some county officials. But in economically depressed Yuba County, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in July to support the Enterprise Rancheria's proposal to build a casino south of Marysville. The 40-acre casino would be next to a two-year-old Bill Graham Presents amphitheater and on the site of a proposed auto race track, development of which appears in doubt (see CP&DR Local Watch, April 1999). However, the Enterprise Rancheria still needs the Interior Department to accept the 40-acre site into trust for the tribe. Environmentalists have filed a lawsuit over the City of Irvine's approval of a general plan amendment that could allow construction of 12,350 housing units and 7.3 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space on about 3,100 acres. The group Defend the Bay of Newport Beach claims the environmental impact report on the Northern Sphere plan was inadequate.

It was cool and foggy along the Santa Barbara Channel coast in early June. So the delicate layer of ash coating everything outside and the faint smell of burnt sage seemed a bit incongruous. In fact, the coastal fog season arrives at the same time as sweltering inland temperatures. And in the middle of what will probably be the driest year since the 19th Century in southern California, the fact that the Wolf Fire was busy consuming 23,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest, only 15 miles inland from the cool waters of the Pacific came as no surprise to Ventura County residents. Thankfully, no urban area was directly affected � other than the temporary closure of Ojai's largest park so that it could serve as a firefighter encampment. As it has turned out, the Wolf Fire and its Colorado cousin the Hayman Fire � which consumed 138,000 acres � were the first in a rash of headline-grabbing blazes plaguing the drought-stricken West this year. With development spreading up the slopes of California's mountains and foothills, land use conflicts associated with wildfire hazard must be growing, right? Not necessary, says Rich Schell, Staff Chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF). Fire suppression infrastructure and techniques � such as high-pressure water pipelines and brush clearance practices � have moved along with development into the "wildfire urban interaction zone," fire professional jargon for the urban edge. Local government has long addressed wildfire planning, primarily through the general plan's safety element, which requires delineation of wildfire areas within an agency's planning area. Through the years, fire protection of structures has become more and more codified. Requirements for fire-resistant roofing and siding materials, interior sprinkler systems, water pressure thresholds, and brush clearance specifications have all combined to blunt the effect of fire cycles within the urbanized edge. Currently, the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) is revamping the safety element guidelines, and has invited Schell and other state fire officials to the table to assist in the rewrite. As part of CDF's input, Schell plans to introduce the Wildland Fire Template, a fire protection policy document put together by the Regional Council of Rural Counties, an organization that represents more than half of California's counties and whose land receives primary fire protection from CDF. But the excellent ongoing work on fire protection and safety planning may be forcing California's wildlands into a corner � in effect, competing with natural resource management trends on BLM and Forest Service lands. First, by building solidifying the perception that fire protection techniques make it safe to build structures and reside in forested areas, government officials foster the relentless march of exurban sprawl into wildfire zones continues. The burden on firefighting agencies then increases, at least in part because of a necessary shift in firefighting techniques from fire management to protection of lives and structures. This then leads to more out-and-out fire suppression in nearby wildlands, thereby interrupting the natural cycle of burning that the forests and the grasslands of the west need to remain healthy and diverse. According to the University of Northern Arizona's Land Use History of North America project, the U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies are entering their sixth decade of fire suppression to respond to omnipresent fire threat in the West. These efforts have resulted in far less frequent fires, disrupting the natural cycles of the region's forests and resulting in many damaging ecological effects. The practice has led to an increase in trees as a proportion of the forest botanical community. Therefore, when wildfires start, the fuel is more potent. As with any planning endeavor dealing with natural hazards, balance is the goal. The latest season of wildfires reminds us that, like with earthquakes, floods, and other cyclical environmental phenomena, wildfire should be part of our thinking when planning for the exurban fringe. And with the integration CDF expertise into the general plan guidelines rewrite process, the opportunity to achieve balance has improved. At the same time, however, the fate of wildlands as natural areas in California may be placed further in question. Stephen Svete, AICP, is president of Rincon Consultants, Inc., a Ventura-based consulting firm.

Spurred by a 1999 ballot initiative to find new revenue sources, San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency is examining some of its real estate holdings with an eye toward development opportunities. Muni has a development agreement with a hotel builder for one piece of prime property near the Ferry Building. Other properties could be developed with housing, stores and offices � possibly above ground-level transit facilities. In 2001, the Muni Board of Director approved an updated Short-Range Transit Plan, which includes a section on asset development. The plan identifies six sites ranging from less than 1 acre to 11 acres for potential development. Implementation has been too slow for some of Muni's critics. But most people acknowledge the process requires new thinking by Muni staff members and leaders, who have never before tried to capitalize on the transit system's real estate assets. "We decided to go ahead when we received more leeway with Proposition E," said Kerstin Magary, Muni senior project manager. The proposition made Muni a more independent agency by changing the Board of Directors selection process and mandating a number of performance standards for the new transit agency. "We need to seek new sources of revenue," Magary said "Land values and land uses in certain neighborhoods have changed over time," she said. So the agency is taking "a citywide look at how Muni should operate in the 21st century." And that means Muni's reliance on 100-year-old facilities that have been repeatedly retrofitted as transit technology evolved may need to change. The project farthest along is a proposed 200-room hotel at the foot of Mission Street. The 0.72-acre site has served as a terminal and layover site for buses and trolleys. Muni plans to relocate the buses and trolleys one to four blocks away and develop the prime Mission Street real estate, which is only one block from the waterfront and Justin Herman Plaza. Muni has signed a development and lease agreement with Emerald Fund Inc., a San Francisco developer. Construction, now scheduled to begin later this year, was delayed by the post-9/11 downturn in the San Francisco hotel trade, Magary said. The hotel will serve as a demonstration project and could prove a great deal about Muni's capabilities, said James Chappell, president of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and co-author of Measure E. Advancing the hotel project "took a lot of work to convince some people at Muni to do business a different way, and to convince the public, which in San Francisco tends to be very anti-development," Chappell said. Muni expects to receive about $300 million during the 65-year lease with Emerald Fund and a hotel operator. After the lease expires, Muni will own the hotel outright. Another Muni site with obvious potential is at Geary Boulevard and Presidio Avenue, near the University of San Francisco campus. According to the Short-Range Transit Plan, the 5.4-acre site "commands a stunning view of downtown to the east; affords a short, convenient downtown commute along Geary Boulevard; and is surrounded by stable, and to a large extent highly desirable, residential neighborhoods, and considerable retail uses, as well." Muni uses the site to store, maintain and dispatch about 170 trolleys, so it cannot give up the land. (Muni does plan to move out of an office building there in a few years.) Muni is conducting a site needs assessment and will issue a request for qualifications from developers, Magary said. Development could involve building residential units on a platform above the trolley facilities. The Muni office building could be refurbished or replaced with a larger office or apartment building. While developers salivate over the Presidio Division site, Muni might have to work harder to drum up interest in property in the south part of town, near City College of San Francisco. One site is the 1.4-acre Phelan Loop, an off-street terminal for trolleys and buses that serve City College. Interstate 280 separates the Phelan Loop from the other site � 11 acres next to a BART station where Muni has its light rail yard and keeps a fleet of historic streetcars. Exactly what the sites might become is partly tied up in a city planning effort called Better Neighborhoods 2002, which involves preparation of community plans for three neighborhoods. The Muni properties are in the Balboa Park Station Area Plan, a draft of which is due within two months. "Transit-based housing is absolutely the reason we are doing this," said Ken Rich, an associate planner in charge of the Balboa Park plan. Besides Muni, BART, Caltrans and the city's Water Department own property in the neighborhood, including nearly all of the "opportunity sites," Rich said. He foresees development of about 500 housing units on several sites within one-half mile of the BART station. The community plan, however, will not address in detail the 25-acre site of the long-proposed Balboa Reservoir � which might be the largest chunk of undeveloped real estate in the city � because fights over use of the reservoir site could bog down the community planning effort, Rich said. Muni is considering development on two-thirds of the Phelan Loop, leaving the rest as a green space and grand entrance to the neighborhood, said Jim Nelson, of Muni's real estate office. "The Phelan Loop is ugly, it's windswept, it's barren," Nelson said. "We're not in this one to make a huge profit. We're in it to be a good neighbor and to make a transit hub that works." Nelson sees tremendous redevelopment potential for parts of the rail yard site. "What it is now is a freeway offramp, and a bunch of people getting on and off buses and trains. � There clearly is a market for some level of retail activity, bolstered by residential above the retail area," he said. Chappell, of SPUR, said the Balboa Park plan is really a long-range proposal because it will require substantial public investment. He would like to see the city more strongly consider "platform" development above those transit facilities. But the city's Rich is not convinced. "The land values would have to be a lot higher than they are now, or we would need a lot more density, like a 20-story structure, before it would be worth it," he said. Elsewhere in the city, Muni officials are reviewing potential uses for a 2.6-acre bus yard near Fisherman's Wharf that Muni plans to vacate in 2004. However, preliminary plans for a parking garage and housing development at a trolley yard in the Potrero District have been abandoned for now because the dot-com crash changed the neighborhood's dynamics, Muni's Magary said. Contacts: Kerstin Magary, San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, (415) 554-1789. Jim Nelson, San Francisco Muni, (415) 934-3934. Ken Rich, San Francisco Planning Department, (415) 558-6345. James Chappell, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, (415) 781-8726.

This is the soundtrack of a person walking across a bridge above a busy street. The first sound we hear is the Doppler effect of a car approaching, then disappearing beneath the bridge, making a noise roughly like "eeee-UURRHH!!" A moment later, the same car emerges from beneath the bridge. "WHIFFF-urrrrh!" In addition to the sound, the motion of the speeding car seems to create a vacuum in its wake. Nearly stationary in comparison, the pedestrian has the sensation that he is at risk of being sucked off the bridge by the wake of the departing car and falling into the busy roadway below. That the danger is illusory does not make the experience more pleasant. A second, and possibly greater, problem is the sheer awkwardness of using pedestrian bridges. In most cases, pedestrians must mount a set of stairs, or an exceedingly long spiral ramp, then walk across the bridge ("eeee-UURRHH!!" "WHIFF-urrrrh!"), and finally walk down a second set of stairs or a ramp on the opposite end. These issues help explain why pedestrian bridges have failed to gain popularity. Although it is understandable that bridges would be attractive in concept as a way of creating convenient footpaths across wide and dangerous thoroughfares, they rarely work in urban planning. A downtown area might be able to span a river or a valley, but a bridge over a busy street might strike planners as a bridge too far. For that reason, I confess to some initial skepticism when I heard that the City Council of Yorba Linda, a city of 60,000 people in north Orange County, recently approved a new master plan for the city‚s downtown area with a bridge as a central feature. The basic goal of the plan is to bring visibility and new pedestrian activity to the city's miniscule Main Street, which is so small that some Yorba Linda residents do not know it exists. The problem, however, is that some of the most active areas of tiny downtown Yorba Linda are found on the opposite side of Imperial Highway, a six-lane thoroughfare with a median. Here are Mimi's Restaurant, one of the strongest local draws, the Station Shopping Center (named for the former Red Line station, still standing) and Nixon Park, the largest downtown green space and the place most capable of holding crowds. Located a few blocks southwest (not visible on our maps), the Nixon Library is by far the biggest regional draw, and the city eventually wants to strengthen the pedestrian link between the Nixon Library and Main Street. Fortunately, downtown Yorba Linda is "almost all right," to borrow a phrase from Robert Venturi. The area is rich in historic buildings to lend scale and texture to new development. And with some help, the streets can approximate a more-or-less regular grid. Master plan architect David Denton, a contractor of the city's primary downtown consultant, Downtown/Main Street Visions, has centered his efforts on Main Street. The modest, two-block-long downtown stretch comprises mostly two-story buildings, with some vacant lots intervening. Denton proposes to fill in what he calls the "missing teeth" on Main Street with compatible new construction. To create a uniform retail strip, Denton would like to reconfigure some buildings that are currently in use as professional offices, with retail at street level and offices above. To the south, he proposes extending the two-story scale of Main Street into "large floor plate" retail space capable of accommodating big retailers. The scale of these new buildings would echo the scale of the packing plants that formerly occupied the site, according to Denton. Fronting on Imperial Highway, the new retail buildings would be a kind of billboard for Main Street, which is otherwise invisible from the thoroughfare. Historic buildings line the streets both east and west of Main Street: To the west is the existing public library, where Denton would like to remove the surface parking and replace it with structured parking. An existing historic house on the site would be remade as a historic museum or a children's museum. (I vote for the latter, which would be more of a draw and has the potential of repeat business.) To the east is School Street, with a row of historic houses, and further still is Valencia Avenue, where the master plan envisions multifamily buildings. The bridge would be located between Main Street and the new retail buildings. Although Denton said he is normally a skeptic about pedestrian bridges — and he actually advised another city against just such a solution — he said Yorba Linda's special conditions will make the bridge acceptable to pedestrians. To start with, the Main Street side of the bridge starts on the second level of the new retail building. In other words, people on foot are not obliged to climb a set of stairs to an isolated bridge. On the park side, the bridge ends in a stepped ramp. Popular in Europe but rare here, the stepped ramp is a wonderful urban-design device: With an individual step every few feet, the ramp creates a steeper slope than a conventional ramp in an unobtrusive way. And rather than being only a corridor, the master plan sees the ramp as a destination in itself, with a sculpture garden on permanent display. The bridge is essential for the choreography for downtown festivals: Starting on Main Street, the processional would move south through the new retail buildings and cross the bridge, which is wide enough to line with booths. The parade ends up at Nixon Park, which would be fitted with a bandstand and fountains. If those conditions do not entirely take away the discomfort of the pedestrian bridge, they may provide the incentive to make the trip in the first place. And if Yorba Linda's gambit succeeds, the city will have accomplished the rare feat of extending its downtown across a busy road packed with through traffic. Noise aside, it may turn out that what lies on either side of a bridge is more important than what happens in between.

Movies, music and television have created a global image of California as the land of sunshine and surf. Like many caricatures, the mystique has a nugget of truth at its core: Californians do love their beaches. Eighty percent of the state's 34 million residents live within an hour's drive of the shore, according to the California Coastal Commission. A few years ago, the Public Research Institute of San Francisco State University reported that the average family makes 15 beach trips a year. The government's "California Coastal Access Guide" is now in its fifth edition. Some California beach lovers enjoy the experience so much, however, that they want to keep those of lesser financial means from intruding on their private patches of paradise. This summer, that classic struggle between the proletariat and the privileged is being played out quietly in the Legislature and loudly in gossipy newspaper stories. By law, the state owns everything on the beach below the mean high tide line, and the public has an unfettered right to use that damp strip of real estate. Getting to it, however, is another matter. About 42% of the coastline is publicly owned and accessible, while the other 58% is owned privately, or is held by local, state or federal agencies and closed to entry. The state is obligated by law to maintain and expand public access to the beach. The 1976 Coastal Act prohibits new development from blocking established access routes, whether they are on public land or private property. In areas where no public access exists, the Coastal Act requires that new routes from the nearest road to the shoreline be provided as part of any new project. In the first decade of its existence, the Coastal Commission commonly carried out this mandate by exacting Offers to Dedicate (OTD) public easements. In exchange for approval of a coastal development permit, the commission required the private landowner to offer an easement, generally 10 to 25 feet wide, to a government agency or nonprofit organization. Once a recipient accepts the offer — contingent on its acceptance of liability and responsibility for maintenance — it obtains title to the easement. If no public or private entity accepts the OTD, it expires, usually after 21 years. The Coastal Commission curtailed this practice after 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825, that such a requirement was an unconstitutional taking of private property unless there was a clear "nexus," or connection, between the project's impact and the condition for the easement. In 1981, 4.9% of all coastal development permits had OTDs attached to them, said Linda Locklin, the Coastal Commission's manager of coastal access programs. In the year after Nollan, the figure fell to 1.2%. By 1995, it was only 0.5%. Since 1976, the Coastal Commission has obtained 1,363 OTDs. Fifteen have expired, Locklin said, and about 750 have been accepted. The remaining offers are outstanding, and scores will expire during the next five years if a recipient does not step forward. The Coastal Commission has given highest priority to "vertical OTDs" — those providing access perpendicular to the ocean, generally from the first public road (Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1) to the shoreline. During the next five years, 44 of these could expire. The Coastal Commission cannot accept the easements, but the California Coastal Conservancy and local agencies can and do. Many communities are reluctant, however, arguing that the cost of providing parking, restrooms, maintenance and liability insurance is prohibitive. Several bills are working their way through the Legislature this summer to address the pending expiration of OTDs: o SB 1962 by Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) would require the Coastal Conservancy to accept any outstanding OTD if it has not been accepted by another public agency or nonprofit organization within 90 days of the OTD's expiration. o AB 2162 by Assemblywoman Gloria Negrete McLoud (D-Chino) would earmark half the revenue from sale of the state's "Whale's Tail" vanity license plates for deposit into a special coastal access fund to pay for maintenance and other costs associated with easements. o SB 1966 by Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) would require that public agencies and nonprofit organizations prepare a study analyzing the public safety impacts before they open an access route obtained through an OTD, including the need for maintenance, parking, lifeguards, and police and fire access. The Coastal Commission has endorsed SB 1962 and AB 2162, but opposes SB 1966, viewing it as an impediment to public access. Meanwhile, California's rich and famous continue to battle the state and each other over access to public beaches near their multimillion-dollar estates. In June, entertainment mogul David Geffen sued the Coastal Commission and a nonprofit group, Access for All, which the commission authorized to accept an OTD that Geffen provided in 1983 as a condition of expanding his Malibu beach house. Nancy Daly Riordan, wife of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, billionaire developer Eli Broad and cartoon producer Haim Saban won permission to build huge Malibu mansions that blocked the ocean by spending $1 million to buy land for public access near actor Ryan O'Neal's home at the La Costa Beach Club. The La Costa Beach Homeowners Association and the Malibu La Costa Owners Association sued the state and last year won at trial, persuading a judge that the Coastal Commission had illegally allowed the trio to circumvent beachfront building restrictions. The state has appealed. In 1991, singer and actress Julie Andrews and her husband, movie director Blake Edwards, gave the state $338,000 to move a public-access route from their Malibu property and instead build a staircase to the beach near the home of former MGM studio head Frank Mancuso. More recently, Mancuso offered to pay for a program to bus school children to other beaches if the state would relinquish that easement. The state refused. Malibu is not the only wealthy enclave where private residents are trying in court to curtail public access (see CP&DR Legal Digest, May 2002). At exclusive Hope Ranch just north of Santa Barbara, Wendy McCaw — the billionaire owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press who inherited an OTD when she bought her home — sued the Coastal Commission over an easement granting public access to 500 feet of beach below her 25-acre, bluff-top estate. The Coastal Commission countersued; McCaw settled earlier this year by paying $460,000 in fines. McCaw also sued Santa Barbara County over the easement. She lost at both the trial and appellate court levels. Contacts: Linda Locklin, California Coastal Commission: (831) 427-4875. Bill information: www.leginfo.ca.gov Coastal Commission's OTD program: www.coastal.ca.gov/web/access/otd-access.html

As suburban-era cities have become "land poor," both planners and developers have advocated the recycling of underutilized commercial property for high-density housing. In particular, this solution has been under discussion throughout California and especially in Los Angeles, where housing production has been low and the supply of available raw land is dwindling. A new analysis by Solimar Research Group shows that multi-family residential development is, in fact, occurring on commercial strips in L.A. Our analysis reveals that residential construction on commercially zoned properties is commonplace in the city of Los Angeles. We also found that commercial areas get larger projects than residential areas, and that poor parts of town see minimal multi-family construction. Our findings: o In the last two years, 44% of multi-family permits issued in the City of Los Angeles were for projects located in commercial areas. In 2000 and 2001, the city issued 6,548 multi-family residential building permits. Of these, 2,944 (44.3%) were issued for projects located on commercially zoned parcels. In some parts of the city this figure is much higher, including South-Central L.A. (68%), East L.A. (98%), and the "Metro" planning area, which includes Hollywood and the Wilshire Corridor (68%). In two areas of the city, the North Valley and the Harbor area, all multi-family permits were issued in residential areas and none in commercial areas. o The vast majority of multi-family projects — in either residential or commercial areas — are located in affluent sections of the city. Of those 6,548 units, 2,629 (40.1%) located on the Westside, 1,623 were located in the South Valley (24.9%), and 1168 were located in the Metro planning area (17.8%). By contrast, South Los Angeles saw the construction of only 208 units (3.2%), while Central L.A. had only 271 (4.1%), East L.A. had 166 (2.5%), and the Harbor area 75 (1.1%). These numbers were not appreciably different between residential and commercial parcels. o Multi-family residential projects located in commercial areas are generally larger than multi-family residential projects located in residential areas. The 3,644 multi-family units constructed on residential parcels represented 125 different projects -- an average of 29 units per project. However, the 2,904 multi-family units constructed on commercial parcels represented only 31 different projects -- an average of 94 units per project. These statistics were fairly consistent across all area planning commission areas. o Multi-family densities average approximately 50 units per acre, and that figure is similar for projects located on both residential and commercial sites. Overall, the 6,548 units were constructed on 136.3 acres of land, for an average density of 48 units per acre. The figure for residential property was 51 units per acre; for commercial property it was 44 units per acre. The overall density on commercial property was reduced by the low density of the Pico Aliso public housing project in East Los Angeles (12.4 units per acre), a HOPE VI project intentionally designed at low densities. Overall densities were similar for each planning area, but densities did vary within each planning area for commercial and residential parcels. For example, densities on residential parcels in the Metro planning area averaged almost 150 units per acre, while densities on commercial parcels in the Metro area averaged only 52 units per acre. In West Los Angeles, the reverse was true: Multi-family densities on residential parcels averaged 89 units per acre, while on commercial parcels they averaged 148 units per acre. These conclusions are derived from data provided by the Los Angeles City Planning Department. (Special thanks to Jane Blumenfeld for assembling the data.) The seven geographical areas represented in this data comprise the territory covered by the seven Area Planning Commissions created by the city's new charter. The statistical patterns are influenced by the presence of a small number of large projects. More than half of the permits (3,716 units out of 6,548, or 57%) were issued for approximately 10% of the projects (15 out or 156, or 9.6%).