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The City of San Jose has won an important round in a potentially landmark chase challenging the legality of inclusionary housing ordinances in California. The California Building Industry Association has challenged San Jose's inclusionary housing ordinance, claiming that in adopting it the City did not make a necessary "nexus" finding. In essence, CBIA is arguing that an inclusionary housing requirement is an exaction and therefore cannot be imposed unless a reasonable relationship is proven between the development being approved (market-rate housing) and the impact being mitigated (the need for affordable housing). Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Socrates Monoukian ruled in favor of CBIA. On appeal, however, the Sixth District Court of Appeal ruled that the inclusionary housing ordinance is an exercise of the police power, not an exaction, and therefore the burden of proof lies with CBIA, not with the City. The Sixth District remained the case to the trial court. It's a blow for the homebuilders, who have been trolling for a winning argument against inclusionary argument. Having lost Home Builders Ass'n of Northern California v. City of Napa (2001) 90 Cal.App.4th 188, 194 – in which the homebuilders claimed that inclusionary housing amounted to an unconstitutional taking – the builders now claim that inclusionary housing is an exaction. Inclusionary housing ordinances – requiring housing developers to set aside a certain percentage of their units as affordable or else pay a fee in lieu of that set-aside -- have become more common in California in recent years. According to one study in 2006, at least 30,000 affordable housing units have been constructed as a result of inclusionary requirements. However, the building industry has consistently argued against inclusionary ordinances, saying that they increase the cost of all housing and therefore actually make housing less affordable. In a 2009 letter to CBIA, Lynn Jacobs – then the state housing director and a former president of the Los Angeles BIA – stated that local governments should analyze inclusionary housing ordinances as a potential constraint to affordable housing when preparing their housing elements. San Jose adopted an inclusionary housing ordinance in 2010, which required residential developments of 20 or more units to set aside 15 percent for purchase at a below-market rate to households earning no more than 110 percent of the area median income. Developers had the option of providing the units off-site or paying a fee in lieu of providing the units. Relying on standards laid down in San Remo Hotel L.P. v. City & County of San Francisco (2002) 27 Cal.4th 643, and Building Industry Association of Central California v. City of Patterson <(2009)> 171 Cal.App.4th 886, CBIA filed a facial challenge to the ordinance, claiming that the City had failed to show a reasonable relationship between residential development projects and the inclusionary requirement, which it characterized as an exaction.  CBIA argued that the city's action lacked any "attempt to identify, much less to quantify, any 'deleterious public impacts' on City needs for affordable housing caused by new market rate development" and that the inclusionary percentages contained in the ordinance were arbitrary. Apparently seeking to distinguish this case from the Napa case, CBIA also went out of its way to make the point that it was not making a takings claim, which probably would have required an action for relief from a developer who had actually been subjected to the ordinances, rather than a facial challenge from a trade association such as CBIA. Judge Manoukian bought CBIA's argument, concluding that "the challenged portion of the ordinance bears no reasonable relationship to permissible outcomes in the generality or great majority of cases." The City and several affordable housing groups appealed the case to the Sixth District. They argued that the inclusionary housing ordinance should be considered a land use regulation enacted through as an exercise of the City's police power, not an exaction. For this reason, they claimed, the Court should have applied a difference standard of review -- giving great deference to the City – that required the Court to uphold the ordinance if it "merely has a reasonable relation to the public welfare" and also placed the burden of proof with CBIA, not the City. The appellate court sided with the City, reversed Manoukian's decision on the standard of review, and sent the case back to the trial court. CBIA argued that the inclusionary ordinance is an exaction because residential developers must "dedicate or convey property (new homes) for public purposes," or alternatively, pay a fee in lieu of "such compelled transfers of property."  However, the appellate court did not buy CBIA's argument. "This alternative portrayal of the inclusionary housing requirement misses the mark," the court wrote. "The IHO does not prescribe a dedication." The Court knocked down CBIA's arguments drawn from a whole series of exactions cases – most especially San Remo, which required hotel owners to provide affordable housing units as compensation for lost affordable housing when single-room occupancy hotels in San Francisco were converted to tourist use.  "We thus conclude that the standard articulated in San Remo is inapplicable here, and that the Ordinance should be reviewed as an exercise of the City's police power," the Court ruled. The Court did caution that "this does not entail unthinking acquiescence to the City's stated goals." But it did review case law on exercise of police power at some length and reiterated that the burden of proof lies with CBIA, not with the City.

The U.S. Supreme Court has tightened the screws on exactions, ruling in a case from Florida that government agencies must follow the Nollan/Dolan doctrine – even when a permit is denied and when the exaction involves money as well as property. At a glance, the ruling would appear to strike down the California Supreme Court's 17-year-old ruling in Ehrlich v. Culver City , 12 Cal.4th 854, which gave cities and counties more leeway on exactions when they are imposed as part of a general plan policy rather than a one-off permit.  The Nollan/Dolan doctrine demands that exactions imposed on developers be closely connected to the development's impacts. In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission , 483 U.S. 825 (1987), the Supreme Court ruled that there must be a "rational nexus" between a development and an exaction. In Dolan v. City of Tigard , 512 U.S. 374 (1994), the Supreme Court ruled that there must be "rough proportionality" between the cost of the impact created and the cost of the exaction demanded.  In Koontz v. St. Johns Water Management District , the court ruled 5-4 – along predictable ideological grounds – that these two rules apply in a situation where a property owner declined to accept the exactions and therefore the permit was denied. The court also ruled that there is no difference between an exaction of property and an exaction of money. Writing for the five-justice majority, Justice Samuel Alito resolved the most basic question in the case by saying that an actual taking did not have to occur in order for the property owner to have his constitutional rights violated. "Extortionate demands for property in the land-use permitting context run afoul of the Takings clause not because they take property but because they impermissibly burden the right not to have property taken without just compensation." He added: " he impermissible denaiol of a government benefit is a constitutionally cognizable injury." Writing for the four-judge minority, Justice Elena Kagan predicted that the ruling's effects would be widespread and confusing because ordinary fee setting will now be subject to federal constitutional tests. "The Federal Constitution … will decide whether one town is overcharging for sewage, or another is setting the price to sell liquor too high."  The facts of the case will be pretty familiar to anybody who follows California land-use regulation and wetlands regulation in particular. Property owner Cory Koontz bought a piece of land along the East-West Expressway east of Orlando in 1972, then lost part of it via eminent domain for an extension of the highway in 1987. Koontz was left with 14.2 acres of land, of which 12.8 acres is located in the Riparian Habitat Protection Zone (RHPZ) of the Econlockhatchee River Hydrological Basin and therefore subject to regulation by the water district. In 1994, Coontz sought approval to develop 3.7 acres of the property, of which 3.4 acres were wetlands and 0.3 acres were uplands. This was the portion of the property closest to highway. The water district agreed to permit this development so long as Koontz dedicated the remaining 10.5 acres to a conservation area and engaged in a variety of offsite mitigation efforts, including replacing culverts and plugging drainage canals several miles away. As an alternative. the water district said he could reduce his project to one acre and dedicate the rest to the conservation district. Koontz rejected the offsite mitigation and the alternative and the water district denied his permits. Writing for the court, Alito stopped short of deciding whether the property owner was entitled to monetary damages and remanded the case to Florida courts for further discussion. As stated above, by subjecting all exactions to the Nollan/Dola n test, Koontz would appear to overrule the longstanding Ehrlich rule in California, which permits more flexibility on exactions if they are imposed as part of an overall policy such as a general plan. Koontz would appear to eliminate any such flexibility. The Koontz ruling put to rest the idea that a conservative justice – possibly Antonin Scalia – would cross over to the liberal camp on the argument that the Takings clause cannot be applied in a case where a permit was not issued and therefore nothing was actually taken. He appeared to be leaning in that direction during oral argument. In the end, however, he sided with his conservative brethren. Koontz is notably for its unusually cross-referential banter between Alito and Kagan. Each refers to the other's opinion repeatedly and refutes it at length. As is his custom , Alito cloaked his ruling in arcane cases from long ago, a palpable anti-government streak (he used the word "confiscate" four times), and an unwillingness to play out the consequences of the ruling. Indeed, he spends a significant amount of time in his ruling explaining why the court does not need to go further than simply rule whether the Nollan/Dolan doctrine applies. He bases his opinion in large part on the doctrine of "unconstitutional conditions" – a doctrine rarely relied on, at least overtly, in land use cases – and his view that exactions are similar to liens, a notion that has rarely been put forth previously in a land use case. By contrast, Kagan's dissent is written in a straightforward fashion that is much more accessible to the lay reader and deals more extensively with the likely consequences of the ruling. Indeed, throughout both opinions, it is sometimes not clear whether or not the two justices are even talking about the same case. Kagan's interpretation of the interplay between the water district and Koontz is far different from Alito's, and this interpretation plays a big role in her conclusions. Alito accepted Koontz's version of the facts, saying that the water district gave Koontz two alternative mitigation proposals, both excessive. Kagan's dissent oozed skepticism about this black-and-white view of what happened, saying instead that the water district had simply proposed two mitigation options as possibilities and invited Koontz to negotiate further. " he District never made a demand or set a condition – not to cede an identifiable property interest, not to undertake a particular mitigation project, not even to write a check to the government. Instead, the District suggested to Koontz several non-exclusive ways to make his applications conform to state law." This interpretation led her to argue that if even casual negotiations between government agencies and developers are subject to the Nollan/Dolan rule, then government agencies will simply stop negotiating with developers and turn permits down – not a good outcome for developers.

Voters in the North San Diego County city of Encinitas have narrowly approved  a ballot initiative limiting building heights to two stories in most parts of the city and requiring future changes in height and density to a vote. Proposition A emerged in part from the city's raucus debate over a General Plan Update, which highlighted the question of whether taller buildings and greater density. The measure passed with 51% of the vote Tuesday The City of Encinitas is a collection of older communities near Carlsbad that were combined when the city was incorporated in the 1980s. These communities include downtown Encinitas and the beach town of Leucadia. Downtown Encinitas has seen several three-story buildings constructed in recent years, including one designed around a Whole Foods supermarket. North County has always been a hotbed of ballot-box zoning, though the pattern has slowed down considerable in recent years Much of the debate over Proposition A revolved around the state's density bonus law, which permits developers to increase density in exchange for providing affordable housing. Several councilmembers who were originally in favor of Proposition A later changed their position, arguing that the density bonus law would permit developers to end-run the two-story height limit but do so with less city control. In an effort to blunt support for Proposition A, the City Council voted to eliminate an existing exemption to local voter-approval provisions. Previously existing Encinitas ordinances already required voter approval for large projects, but permitted the council to waive that requirement with a four-fifths vote. The council eliminated that exemption in May as the election heated up.

Are there any two American cities more different from each other than Boston and Los Angeles? History vs. modernity, compactness vs. sprawl, chowder vs. kale, sun vs. snow, modesty vs. flash, intellect vs. entertainment.  Back in January, Boston beat out Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., to become the United States Olympic Committee's official pick to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Since then, civic leaders in Los Angles have been nearly salivating with every hint of disaffection on the part of the Beantown faithful. Concerns were legion: Boston doesn't have room; Boston's transit system can't handle the crowds; Boston doesn't have the facilities; Boston doesn't want to spend billions; Boston, to be characteristically blunt, has better things to do. Even Boston's hometown newspaper, the Globe, called the bid " improbable ."   Boston bailed out July 27, with a Mayor Marty Walsh refusing to put taxpayer money at risk. Last week, all of two weeks after Boston's surrender, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued his first public statement about turning Boston's loss his city's gain, acknowledging  "very positive discussions with the United States Olympic Committee" and claiming, "the LA Olympics would inspire the world and are right for our city." Garcetti's attitude thus adds to the list of distinctions between the two cities. Whereas Boston wants nothing to do with the world's premiere global event, Los Angeles considers it its birthright.   According to one  poll , an insane 81 percent of Angelenos support an Olympics bid. We are either supremely enthusiastic or supremely blasé.  (The group that backed the San Francisco bid is mildly interested in a joint bid but seems otherwise content to let L.A. do its thing.)  Los Angeles deservedly gets a lot of mileage out of its Olympic history. Both the 1932 games and 1984 games were rousing successes, the latter turning a small profit (as compared with billions, and tens of billions, spent in Beijing and Sochi). Of course, no one involved with the 1932 games is still around, but, amazingly, the most important venue is: the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Los Angeles takes the Olympics in stride because, as an urban behemoth dedicated to spectacle, it needs hardly lay a single brick. Garcetti's message to the USOC: "Want to have an Olympics here? No problem, let's check the calendar..."  By 2024, Los Angeles will have even more to offer the world, with miles of new light rail lines completed, more housing (we hope), more transportation options, and more vibrant neighborhoods. In fact, the development and planning efforts underway in Los Angeles constitute the best reasons not to seek the 2024 games.  I lived two years in Boston that were among the most miserable of my life. So, as a native Angeleno, I never thought I'd say this, but Los Angeles could stand to be more like Boston.   I don't mean that we should give up our pressed juice for Dunkin' Donuts or that we should start wearing boat shoes without socks. We could, however, stand to let some other city realize its Olympics dreams. As fun as the Olympics would be -- and there's no doubt that Los Angeles could pull it off well -- Los Angeles too has better things to do. In fact, we're already doing better things. Downtown and its surroundings are booming. Formerly anonymous neighborhoods, from Highland Park to Culver City, are on the rise. The City Council just adopted a revolutionary new mobility plan, and a revamp of the zoning code is underway. We have new museums and concert halls. We might have a river someday.   If you think about it, Los Angeles' build environment is becoming ever so slightly more similar to that of -- wait for it -- Boston.  Meanwhile, dire problems remain. We're short tens of thousands of housing units, with production only beginning to pick up. Gentrification is leading to displacement (anecdotally, at least). Traffic remains unbearable. LAUSD schools and others throughout the county remain shameful. Neighborhoods that were war zones in 1984 are more peaceful, but they're scarcely more healthy, with pollution and none of the Technicolor bounty of the farmers markets and Whole Foods that serve L.A.'s haves.  These positive developments, and these dire problems, all deserve our full attention, not just this year, but for many years to come.  I know the argument goes that an Olympics will be a catalytic event, bringing prosperity to the city. That's probably true for some Angelenos, but not for everyone. Ask residents of South Central, circa 1992, how much good the 1984 games did them. Ask the same of the aerospace workers whose plants closed and the generations of high school kids who have graduated hardly knowing how to write.  The fact is, Los Angeles needs to keep doing what it's doing -- and not distract itself with a global mega-event. (Interestingly, a private group is promoting an odd sort of transit-oriented  world's fair for the early 2020s.) We've proven that we can be our own catalysts: 2008's Measure R sales tax measure is having a bigger impact on the city than any sporting event could. We don't need stadiums around those new transit stops. We need housing. We need mobility hubs and wayfinding. We need thriving small businesses, not huge stadiums and not ads for corporate sponsors. And, let's face it, the reason why Los Angeles can hold an Olympics is the very reason why it doesn't need to hold an Olympics: Los Angeles already knows how to amuse itself. We have two of pretty much everything, including big-time football teams (the kind that don't pay their players). As I've written before, Los Angeles can thrive without the NFL. We can thrive without an Olympics too. And if we want to "beat" Boston at something, we can't rely on the Lakers anymore -- but we still have the Clippers.  In even my darkest days living in Boston, I could never deny the city's charms. Crooked streets, red bricks, wrought iron, leafy blocks, neighborhood pubs, and handsome public spaces are what cities are supposed to be about. It's no accident that Bostonians are willing to endure those awful winters. Boston has places that many Southern Californians, trapped on freeways and consigned to strip malls, can't even imagine. And yet, Los Angeles could have its own versions of Boston's delights. It just has to keep its eye on the ball.

LOS ANGELES — The Strategic Growth Council and partner agencies went from 0 to $120 million in the span of a few short months this year.  Spurred by the passage of a budget bill last year, g uidelines for the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant program came out in January, initial applications were accepted March, and just last month 28 grant awardees were announced.  With a new funding year fast approaching and potentially $400 million at stake, the SGC is trying to keep up its momentum — and correct some of the glitches that many have identified in this year's lightening round.  On Monday, SGC staff and several council members convened in Los Angeles to hear from stakeholders. They were met with ample amounts of kudos and critiques from the three dozen or so public officials, activists, and others who offered official verbal comments. (A similar workshop was held last week in Sacramento.) Staff and council members alike pledged their intention to make next year's selection process as fair and equitable as possible, while remaining faithful to the program's mandate to directly effect reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. SGC Chair Ken Alex said, with a hint of frustration, that this requirement likely prevents AHSC funds from going to planning efforts. Rather, funds must go to specific projects and programs that reduce GHG emissions, typically through reducing car trips.  "The overriding purpose of what we're doing with this grant fund is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said Alex. "We're doing it in the context of transportation and housing, but….we as a legal matter always need to quantify those emissions reductions." SGC intends to revise the guidelines in August, release a draft in the fall, and vote on a final draft before January 1.  While commenters praised SGC's efforts and acknowledged the challenge of devising a new program in a short time frame, criticisms fell along several distinct themes:  SCAG's Slight. Officials at the Southern California Association of Governments and throughout the SCAG region reacted with dismay at the relatively small number of projects that were invited to submit full AHSC applications, with a disproportionate share of projects being located in the Bay Area. The SCAG finished strong, though, winning 9 of 28 awards. Not surprisingly, given the event's location in downtown Los Angeles, several speakers still smarted. They reminded the council that the region has 50 percent of the state's population and 66 percent of the state's disadvantaged communities. Many felt that the region's 22 percent share of AHSC funding was patently inequitable. They also questioned jurisdictional funding limits that took otherwise qualifying projects out of contention in both the SCAG region and the Bay Area. These limits, capping the amount a single city or developer could receive, were instituted to promote geographic diversity. Rural Reductions. Several speakers urged the council to consider ways to improve rural communities' chances or even to set aside a certain amount of funds for them. Speakers explained that rural communities' low densities and typical lack of transit prevent them from meeting many of the program's basic criteria. Many poor rural communities, they argued, can benefit significantly — in terms of both environmental benefits and economic development — from AHSC funds. Alex said that the the GHG reduction mandate could stifle efforts to direct funds to rural communities. Subsidiarity. Can any body based in Sacramento possibly evaluate individual development projects scattered in every corner of the state? That question led some  to lobby for what one speaker referred to as "subsidiarity." They encouraged SGC to look to the recommendations of MPO's in part to ensure that selected projects were upholding the respective MPOs' Sustainable Communities Strategies and to acknowledge MPOs' more intimate knowledge of their local needs.  Leading from Behind. One of the program's chief criteria is that of leverage, with AHSC monies being leveraged at a ratio of about 6 to 1 in the initial round. Some speakers felt that SGC awards should not always be used to supplement existing funds but rather could be some of the first dollars put into a project and therefore act as seed money to attract further funding.  In his closing statements, Alex tried to address many of these concerns, while pledging that SCG councilmembers and staff were dedicated to incremental improvement. The result will not be perfect, though. "Everybody needs to recognize that it's not going to come out perfectly," said Alex. "There are endless balances. Each time we allocate funds in different ways there are winners and losers." He noted, for instance, that disadvantaged communities in one region are competing against disadvantaged communities in other regions. Wealthy communities are not going to take funds away from poor ones.  While Alex acknowledged the dissatisfaction of many SCAG representatives, he encouraged SCAG to be proactive in next year's application processHe said, "SCAG needs to recognize that it needs to do some self-evaluation and see if there are ways that it can improve." He called the 22 percent number "a little artificial" because many SCAG projects did not meet minimal selection criteria in the first place. The responsibility for achieving equity is "on all of us," he said. Commentary Even if awards are a zero-sum game, the overall sum is going to get a lot bigger next year. With potentially three times as much money available (funded by the state's cap-and-trade system), there will be many more winners and, therefore, more opportunities for the SGC to appease competing interests. Though this likely means that a slew of worthy projects will receive funding, it also raises the possibility that certain interest groups will clamor for new criteria and set-asides that could detract from the objective process that SGC tried to establish this year.  These riches mean that SGC will have to be ever more diligent to maintain objectivity and ensure equity.  It also remains to be seen whether there are $400 million worth of projects that will have the same GHG impacts as did the small, elite group of 28 that were chosen this year. It's more than likely, though, that the promise of grant monies will spur cities and developers to put AHSC criteria into their designs, thus creating exactly the types of projects that the program intends to promote.  Resources and Related CP&DR Articles:  Workshop Presentation Materials  SCAG Wins In AHSC Grant Funding Recommendations Strategic Growth Council Posts AHSC Program Revisions Informally Cities Hustle for $120 Million in Funding from SGC

In response to escalating cost estimates for construction of California's high speed rail, two state senators have drafted a bipartisan bill to stop construction of the rail until a public revote can be taken on June 6, 2016. The bill, authored by Senators Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, and Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, is just one of eight other proposals to halt the project, though all previous bills have died in the legislature. But even if the legislature does not pass the bill, it is possible for the people to appeal directly for a re-vote, according to the State of California Department of Justice. "The High-Speed Rail Authority has failed to obtain private investment as promised to the voters and is now relying California's controversial cap-and-trade program to help fund the project," Vidak stated in a press release.  Kern County Releases Environmental Review of 2.8 Million Acres  Kern County has released the draft of a environmental review cataloging 2.8 million acres of oil and gas drilling across the county in an attempt to pave the way for the county itself to issue permits for drilling while charging oil companies for air quality mitigation measures. The report, which comes at a cost of over $12 million, calls for the county to charge petroleum producers between $12,500 and $23,000 per well. Funds would be dedicated to clean air projects, which, with 2,000 new wells being drilled in Kern every year, could come at a benefit of $20 million per year. The plan also attempts to serve agricultural interests in the wake of successful legal challenges in 2012 to drilling projects. Farmers accused companies with mineral rights of running roughshod over their fields without adequate compensation. The county plans to address this problem by making it quicker and cheaper for oil companies to drill if they can come to an agreement with surface owners, while subjecting them to several rounds of reviews if they cannot come to an agreement. Environmental groups, meanwhile, have called the plan an attempt to rubber-stamp drilling plans in the county. Report: New Housing in S.F. Results in Little Net Gain San Francisco can't solve its affordable housing crisis by just building more affordable units; instead, it has to preserve the ones it already has, according to a new report by the San Francisco Planning Department. For every 10 units that developers build there, according to the report, more than eight units are taken off the market by landlords. The city estimates that 5,470 rent-controlled units have been lost since 2005 largely due to Ellis Act evictions and owner move-ins. Additionally, the cost of building a new affordable unit has increased to between $600,000 to $750,000, while buying an existing unit from an owner usually costs between $150,000 and $400,000. In the past six months, the city has been attempting to buy out affordable units on a small scale to address the cost difference, buying up rent control buildings at risk of conversion or eviction through the mayor's "small sites program." O.C. Mismanaged $2 Billion in Property in Mello-Roos Districts A new grand jury concluded that Orange County's 119 Mello-Roos taxing districts worth more than $2 billion have been mismanaged and have poor oversight. While the districts were created to surpass the restrictions of Proposition 13 — allowing homebuilders to build needed infrastructure in the area without charging more for homes — the grand jury concluded that there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that the taxes are properly spent, and it recommend that the districts form an oversight committee to see how the taxes are managed. The report comes in the midst of a surge in home construction in Orange County that's relying on Mello-Roos districts — with Irvine forming a $384 million district and Santa Margarita Water District authorizing a $70 million district — to pay for public amenities without tacking the cost onto the price of the homes. Homeowners, however, have increasingly become upset by huge Mello-Roos bills in developments like San Clemente's Talega. Los Angeles Metro to Restructure Countywide Bus Service Los Angeles's Metro is considering  a systemwide restructuring that would speed up and slim down its bus lines, possibly cutting services to some of the least-used routes. The proposal, recommended by a commission convened by Metro, centers around increasing ridership by creating reliably frequent buses that arrive every 15 minutes. The buses also would travel faster, as the plan would increase the amount of passengers allowed on each bus, some stops would be eliminated, and it would cut services to some of the least-used corridors in the system. The draft policy will be taken to the Metro Board of Directors in July 2015. S.F. Activists Push for Development Moratorium; Short-Term Rental Restrictions San Francisco advocacy groups have filed two separate petitions aimed at pumping the brakes on San Francisco's booming housing development. In one petition, volunteers submitted 15,000 signatures to the Department of Elections, effectively putting a housing moratorium in San Francisco's Mission District on the November ballot. Activists say that the moratorium, which calls for an 18-month stop for demolition and construction in the district, is necessary to preserve housing and industrial spaces and to rethink the rapid development of the historically-Latino neighborhood. Additionally, advocates against short-term rentals submitted almost 16,000 signatures supporting a ballot measure that would put more restrictions on the city's short-term rental market, popularized by websites like Airbnb. The petition, sponsored by ShareBetter SF, would further enhance a measure that the Board of Supervisors adopted in October allowing home sharers to offer their rentals for 90 days a year without being present, or 265 days a year if they are. The petition asked the city and county to limit rentals to 75 nights per year, to fine companies like Airbnb and VRBO for listing unregistered units, and to force home sharers to regularly report their rentals. LAFCO Declines to Consolidate High Desert Districts The San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission  decided  not to consolidate community service districts in the Barstow area amidst widespread opposition at public hearings last year. Investigations of the districts in Yermo, Daggett, and Newberry Springs followed a 2013 Grand Jury report identifying numerous issues related to governance, accounting, and financial management in the areas. While it did not decide to consolidate the CSDs, the LAFCO will continue to monitor progress of the districts.

The California State Transportation Agency announced (pdf) recipients of $224 million in grant money to support public transportation projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This year's recipients would reduce an estimated 860,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases by taking 180,000 cars off the road, and 93 percent of the projects would benefit disadvantaged communities, according to the CSTA. Among 14 projects, the grant money will be used to improve service on the Los Angeles basin light rail and the Bay Area light rail, expand San Diego trolley service, improve Monterey and Salinas bus service, launch a new Orange county rapid bus route, and improve local transit transfers to and from the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner. Over 90 percent of projects serve disadvantaged communities. In total, the grants support $720 million in total investments and will, according to estimates, reduce annual carbon emissions by 860,000 metric tons. Grants are funded by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund using proceeds from the state's cap-and-trade auctions.   The grant funding is part of the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, implemented by CTC in coordination with the California Department of Transportation and California Air Resources Board. The grants help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by expanding public transportation ridership and capacity.  California Reduced Carbon Emissions in 2013 According to newly analyzed data , California managed to decrease its carbon dioxide emissions by 0.3 percent in 2013. The decline came despite major factors that contributed to carbon emissions: an economic growth rate of 2 percent, the shuttering of hydroelectric dams due to the drought, and the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Though the state still pumped almost 460 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, state officials consider the decrease a victory as the amount of renewable power generated within the state surged, with wind power production jumping 32 percent and solar rising 13 percent in 2013. First Phase of Alameda Air Station Conversion Approved Eighteen years worth of attempts to convert Alameda's former naval air station for civilian use have finally come to fruition, as the City Council there approved the first phase of construction of 800 housing units and 60,000 square feet of commercial space on the site. The development had been held up partly because of the 2008 recession and partly because of Measure A banning construction of apartment buildings in the city, which city officials worked around by increasing the number of affordable housing units on the project. That decision also gained favor with the Navy, which had previously turned down the city of Oakland's proposal to develop the former Oak Knoll Naval Hospital into a luxury golf course because it didn't provide a broad public benefit. Work at the air base is expected to lay the foundation for the development of nearly 900 acres of bay front property over the next 25 years, Jennifer Ott, the chief operating officer for the city's project at Alameda Point,  told  the San Francisco Chronicle. Upland General Plan Update Draws Criticism City leaders in the city of Upland have received sharp rebukes from residents  over its draft update to the city's general plan, with residents accusing the City Council of holding secret meetings, padding its pensions, and attempting to rubber stamp proposed updates to the plan. Residents are concerned about proposals in the plan to increase housing density in anticipation of the population growing from 75,000  81,462 by 2035, potentially constraining the city's water supply and changing the character of the city. "This is not an unchangeable document right now," Councilwoman Carol Timm said at a City Council meeting, according to the Daily Bulletin . "It is not set in stone, and we have not voted on the document, it is a draft document." L.A. May Revive Digital Billboards The Los Angeles City Council is considering reintroducing digital billboards in special districts throughout the city after they went dark because of a judicial order several years ago. Lawmakers are considering allowing two dozen districts to designate specific areas for the digital signs, along with a special permitting process that could allow sign companies to place the billboards outside of the districts. While some community members have complained about the harsh glare and blinking displays from the signs, some officials -- including several San Fernando Valley councilmembers -- contend that they could revitalize struggling commercial areas. Rail Authority Seeks Private Funding The California High-Speed Rail Authority has issued a "request for expressions of interest" to private industry, seeking to augment funds for its high speed rail with currently-nonexistent private investment on the $68 billion project. The request seeks input on how businesses believe they can best participate in financing, building and delivering a ready-to-operate system of electric passenger trains by the early 2020s. The agency currently envisions seeking a developer to design, build, finance, and maintain its "initial operating segment," a 300-mile stretch from Merced to Burbank, in exchange for a 25- to 50-year schedule of "availability payments" in the form of cap-and-trade money to repay the developer's capital investment. The agency currently has about $6 billion available from Prop. 1A and federal transportation funds. Reports Describe Inequitable Impacts of Housing Shortage A pair of new reports highlight the housing woes that Californians are facing even after the state has recovered from the economic recession of 2009. The first report, a survey of 80 community-based nonprofits by the California Reinvestment Coalition , found that spiking rents are forcing out long-term tenants throughout the state while 77 percent of nonprofits believe that potential homebuyers almost always lose out to institutional investors -- able to purchase homes in cash and financed by Main Street banks -- when trying to buy a lender-owned property. "As a nonprofit, we had a grant awarded to us through HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program," Lori Gay, president and CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County said in the report. "We got $60 million, which has really helped us to compete. But even with all of that cash, we still get outbid by investors — sometimes before the properties are even placed on the market."  The second report from the ACLU, titled " A Tale of Two Recoveries: Economic Recoveries for Black and White Homeowners ,"  highlights that, while both black and white families suffered in the economic recession, median white household wealth has stopped falling while median black household wealth has continued to drop by an additional 13 percent between 2009 and 2011. The report points to various factors affecting the disparity, including that black families had a larger proportion of their wealth in home equity before the quality, and that black Americans were far more likely to receive costly predatory loans during the subprime boom. California Species Considered for Endangered List The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken steps to possibly list four new California species under the Endangered Species Act. A review has determined that there is substantial evidence to warrant in-depth reviews of populations of the Western spadefoot toad of the Central Valley, the Relictual slender salamander in the lower Kern River Canyon, the Kern Canyon slender salamander in the lower Kern River Canyon, and the Foothill yellow-legged frog of the Upper San Gabriel River. Factors prompting the review are habitat losses, inadequacy of regulatory mechanisms, and pollution, among other factors. L.A. Seeks to Improve Ellis Act Enforcement Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Housing Committee of the City Council Chair Gil Cedillo introduced a motion to improve enforcement in the Ellis Act, which allows properties with rent stabilization to be removed from the rental market. The motion would close a loophole wherein landlords have been able to evict tenants using the Ellis Act by ensuring that property owners follow the City's Rent Stabilization Ordinance which requires that "Ellissed" properties being re-rented or rebuilt within five years provide housing at affordable levels.  CARB Holds Symposium on Transportation and Carbon Emissions Three of California's major public agencies on transportation and the environment along with experts in the field will conduct a joint symposium to discuss ways to transform California's transportation system to conform with Governor Jerry Brown's order to reduce California's use of petroleum by 50 percent by 2030. The symposium will take place July 8, and it will consist of the Air Resources Board, the California Transportation Agency, and the California Department of Transportation. The agenda is posted here: http://arb.ca.gov/cc/pillars/transportation/agenda.pdf .

Following the recommendations of its staff, the Strategic Growth Council formally approved $122 million in grants for 28 projects designed to provide affordable housing and reduce carbon emissions throughout the state. This is the inaugural awarding of funds through the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grant program, which is administered jointly by the SGC and Department of Housing and Community Development. Recommended projects , which consist of affordable housing projects, totally 2,000 units, and other transit-oriented developments throughout the state, were announced ten days ago by SGC staff. Projects were selected based on a predetermined set of criteria, including potential for greenhouse gas reduction, project readiness, and promotion of other state policy goals related to compact development and active transportation.  SGC Chair Ken Alex said in a statement that the grants would "help provide housing, improve transportation and transportation options, benefit disadvantaged communities, and most importantly, reduce greenhouse gas emissions while promoting a broad array of worthwhile projects." This year's 28 recommended projects leverage nearly six to one in matching funds and will reduce an estimated 723,286 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions—the equivalent to taking 140,483 cars off the road for one year. The program is funded by monies from the state's cap-and-trade program. This year, the state has dedicated $832 million to programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  "California's investments are helping bolster innovative and sustainable transportation to limit greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change," said California State Transportation Agency Secretary Brian Kelly in a statement. "This year's cap and trade investments help increase access to housing that is close to reliable public transportation, a smart investment that improves overall quality of life in California." Seventy-seven percent of the projects selected are in disadvantaged communities; a significant increase over the program's required 50 percent. Stakeholders debated the definition of "disadvantaged" as the program was being devised last year. Fifty-two percent of recipients are considered transit oriented developments.  The program did not deliberately seek equity among the California's population centers. Nevertheless, the state's two largest metropolitan planning regions, the Southern California Association of Governments and the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission, received eleven and ten awards, respectively.  At a time when communities across the state are promoting projects that conform to regional Sustainable Communities Strategies, the AHSC program is one of the only sources of funding from the state to promote SCS-friendly projects.  In a conference call last week, SGC Executive Director Mike McCoy said that many of the 56 projects that were considered for funding were credible, qualified candidates. Next year, the program will award around $400 million in grants. McCoy said that many projects that did not receive grants this year could qualify next year.  SGC and HCD staff will seek input and discuss next year's funding process at an upcoming series of workshops. The first two are July 14 in Sacramento and July 20 in Los Angeles. Resources:  Ranking of Applicants and Recommended Awardees  (pdf) Descriptions of Grant Recipients  (pdf) Map of Grant Recipients  (pdf)

It turns out that two of the world's biggest proponents of smart growth are Catholic. One of them is California Governor Jerry Brown, who once studied to be a Jesuit priest and, more recently, has promoted earthly initiatives like high-speed rail, the adoption of vehicle miles traveled metrics, and the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals in the western hemisphere.  The other is the Pope.  Today the Vatican released Pope Francis' long-awaited encyclical concerning the environment. Drafted a month ago, the encyclical is essentially the Vatican's version of a white paper. It is meant to influence pretty much everyone who falls under Catholicism's sway, but it's bound to gain fans among secular policymakers.  While the world may have expected airy proclamations about preserving God's creation and such, the Pope has recommendations for revitalizing Sodom and Gomorrah just as he does for preserving Eden.  Parts of the encyclical read like Jane Jacobs, starting with the chapter heading, "Ecology of Daily Life." The Pope observes and recommends:  In our rooms, our homes, our workplaces and neighbourhoods, we use our environment as a way of expressing our identity. We make every effort to adapt to our environment, but when it is disorderly, chaotic or saturated with noise and ugliness, such overstimulation makes it difficult to find ourselves integrated and happy. The feeling of asphyxiation brought on by densely populated residential areas is countered if close and warm relationships develop, if communities are created, if the limitations of the environment are compensated for in the interior of each person who feels held within a network of solidarity and belonging. In this way, any place can turn from being a hell on earth into the setting for a dignified life. This experience of a communitarian salvation often generates creative ideas for the improvement of a building or a neighbourhood Those who design buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities, ought to draw on the various disciplines which help us to understand people's thought processes, symbolic language and ways of acting....people's quality of life, their adaptation to the environment, encounter and mutual assistance. Here too, we see how important it is that urban planning always take into consideration the views of those who will live in these areas. There is also a need to protect those common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes which increase our sense of belonging, of rootedness, of "feeling at home" within a city which includes us and brings us together. Creativity should be shown in integrating rundown neighbourhoods into a welcoming city Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape.  (Note to Pope Francis: Don Shoup is retiring from UCLA. Maybe his next gig can be as Vatican advisor – Pontiff of Parking? Bishop of Bicycling?) These statements are both obvious and breathtaking. They are obvious because they echo the goals that many planners have been pursuing for years. They  are breathtaking for their eloquence and, even if for agnostics, for the enormity of the source from which they emanate. They also emphasize social justice more deeply than even the most environmentally conscious planners ever do. And, really, who ever thought a pope would call out urban planning by name? If Pope Francis is ever to be canonized, he has his first miracle.  Pope Francis himself is, of course, an city guy. He's from Buenos Aires, a city full of delights and troubles. And, really, the Papacy itself is urban. Angels and Demons would have been much less interesting, if not less grating, had it not been set in the extraordinary warren of history and humanity that is central Rome. Modern Rome is what it is in part because of the presence of the Vatican.  In fact, no one has used the world's urban network as cannily as the Catholic Church has. The hierarchy of cathedrals, churches, cardinals, and bishops mirrors the world's network of cities. The Church anticipated Saskia Sassen's theories on global cities by a few hundred years. It only stands to reason that the Pope would appreciate the power, and problems, of cities.  The Catholic Church has done a few amazing things for cities. Catholic cathedrals are some of humanity's most exhilarating works. The plazas in front of them are some of the world's great public spaces. (Subjugation of much of the "public" in many of those places, including  in mission-era California , is another matter.) It's about time the Church gave the world something a little less imperialistic.  This is of course a surprising announcement for a historically conservative institution (to say the least), and it's naturally infuriating for members of the religious right, who now find themselves disavowing the figure who is, supposedly, God's messenger on earth. Unfortunately, this encyclical will probably just reinforce existing attitudes. Progressives will hail it, and ignorant, self-serving climate deniers will reject it. Maybe, though, there are folks on the margins – those who are extraordinarily devout or who were extraordinarily ambivalent – and perhaps in out of the way places, including those in the developing world, who will be moved.  For everyone else it's a welcome, and even obvious, policy. That includes Gov. Brown, former Gov. Schwarzenegger, and the countless other supporters who have put California's environmental policies. Imperfect and incomplete as those policies may be (the Pope is not a fan of cap-and-trade ), they put California at the forefront of this essential crusade. Having quit the seminary, Gov. Brown may have missed his chance to become Pope. But he's clearly a good Catholic.  May we all be so devoted to the salvation of our state and our world.

As almost any transportation planner in Los Angeles County will attest, the car capital of the world is well on its way to becoming a transit capital as well. With tens of billions of dollars invested in recently opened and anticipated mass transit lines, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has transformed the county. Even so, Metro can't be everywhere.  The challenge Metro now faces – on a scale arguably larger than that of any other major city – is of getting riders to and from its trains and buses. Its proposed a is its First Last Mile Strategic Plan & Planning Guidelines.  Adopted in early April, the guidelines won a 2015 National Planning Excellence Award  for a Best Practice from the American Planning Association at its national conference a few weeks later. Though roughly 1.5 million Angelenos use Metro every day, the theory behind the program is that many more will use transit – thus reducing congestion and pollution – if transit is easer to find and get to. The guidelines propose localized, inexpensive upgrades to local infrastructure to improve wayfinding and make trips to transit stops feel easier and safer.  For the past decade, Metro has focused on the development of $40 billion worth of major infrastructure: light rail lines, busways, highway expansion, and the like, which collectively constitute the largest public works program in the country. The strategy, developed in collaboration with the Southern California Association of Governments, is the agency's way of thinking small. "First mile, last mile solutions are very good value for their dollar because they have an opportunity to encourage more users on your current system," said Hilary Norton, executive director, Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic contact, a business-backed advocacy group for transportation. The guidelines are meant to achieve the goals of Metro's 2012 Countywide Sustainable Planning Policy and to achieve some of the greenhouse gas reductions that will be included in the forthcoming Regional Transportation Plan / Sustainable Communities Strategy being devised by the Southern California Association of Governments. The guidelines also are designed to support the state's Complete Streets Act.  In a dense but geographically sprawling city like Los Angeles, many workplaces, and even more residences, lie outside of easy walking distance to a transit line. According to some planners, this problem, more so than issues of routing or headway, prevents Angelenos from taking full advantage of their transit network, of which Metro provides the backbone. The guidelines identify common barriers to access, including long blocks, freeways, poor sidewalks, safety, recognizabilty of transit stops, and street configurations that discourage active transportation, such as walking and biking.  "The emphasis is going to be in investing transit dollars in such a way that it maximizes the connectivity of the system," said Diego Cardoso, executive officer for Transit Corridors, Active Transportation and Sustainability at Metro. "The system is not just the trains, the bus; it's more than that. It's bicycles, it's walking. It's understanding the better interaction between land use and transit." Metro's strategy addresses this problem on multiple fronts, acknowledging ways that different modest of transportation complement each other. It includes everything from recommendations for novel new "mobility centers," to better bike lanes and wheelchair accessibility, to partnerships with ride-hailing and bike-sharing services to attitudinal changes that neighborhood groups can effect. It also includes informational shifts, like analysis of "access sheds" and "pathway" maps of high-volume transit stops that identify the ways that passengers can arrive at and depart from a given stop.  Access sheds, for instance, identify the distances that transit users can conveniently travel to bus and train stops according to different modes of active transportation, from bikes to skateboards, to feet. A countywide analysis suggests that the vast majority of the county's population lives within a three-mile bike ride of a rail station or bus rapid transit stop. The First Mile Last Mile Guidelines hope to ensure that those three miles are safe and accessible for would-be cyclists.  Because it can be replicated countless times across the region, the strategy takes a more expansive view of transit than has ever been conceived of in Los Angeles — or, possibly, anywhere else.  "Metro went from saying, ‘we run buses and we run trains' to, we get people from their homes to the buses to the trains to their destinations,'" said Norton.  "That's a big change in their overall view of what a transit trip looks like." Among the most novel of the strategy's ideas, "mobility centers" would be a cross between a convenience store and a bus stop. They would give transit riders safe, comfortable places to wait and the chance to sip a coffee or browse a newspaper. They could come with secured bike racks, rain shelters, landscaping, and information kiosks about the transit network.  "If you're waiting for a bus for a train and it's night and you're female, you'd like to be in or near someplace that's open for business that you can be inside drinking a cup of coffee or reading a newspaper," said Norton. Importantly, Metro envisions them as being privately funded — by the retailers themselves.  Convenience store chain Famima!!, a Japanese import that has made inroads in Los Angeles, has already expressed interest in sponsoring pilot projects. The chance to increase ridership without spending a public dime has Metro officials nearly giddy.  "We welcome any strategy from the private sector that maximizes the reach of accessibility to our system," said Cardoso. More modest tactics include the installation of signs and other wayfinding devices, to help cyclists and pedestrians locate the nearest transit stop. Metro is also discussing partnerships with ride-hailing services like Lyft to arrange short-distance rides between home and the bus stop or train station.  Especially with the rise of app-based transportation, these strategies face few technological hurdles. The logistical hurdles, however, have been massive thus far. Because Metro is a countywide agency, its services run through the vast majority of the county's 88 cities and its pockets of unincorporated areas. Metro has control over only its own services and rights of way. This means that the passengers whom Metro wants to attract have traditionally been beyond their grasp.  Metro's strategy overcomes this challenge by taking a do-it-yourself, open-source approach to infrastructure development. The strategy is essentially a guidebook that cities, community groups, and businesses can follow according to their own needs, timetables, and capacities. It includes methodology for analyzing transit stops, the pathways around them, and the barriers to those pathways so that every locality can customize its approach. And it includes a "toolbox" of improvements that localities can choose from.  "The culture in L.A. was that Metro kind of stayed to its own right of way," said Metro Transportation Planning Manager Steven Mateer, who worked on the guidelines. "A lot of cites were really excited about Metro being a partner in conducting the planning work for First Mile Last Mile." Excitement, however, will not build projects. Metro is offering no significant funding stream, so jurisdictions are on their essentially on their own to find funding. Some funds could come from statewide programs like the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities grants. The guidelines acknowledge that funding is limited but offer no recommendations for securing funds.  Metro is currently pursuing pilot projects. Generally, there is no master plan or timetable, and Metro will accept implementation as it comes. Metro officials are promoting these strategies in the hopes that partners will see their wisdom and jump on board. In essence, anyone can now be a transit planner in Los Angeles. In fact, Metro's strategies may apply to plenty of other cities around the region and around the country.  "Not everybody can go and build a rail system, but lots of people can address the first mile, last mile problem," said Norton. Contacts and Resources Metro First Mile Last Mile Guidelines (pdf) American Planning Association 2015 Awards Diego Cardoso & Steven Mateer, L.A. Metro , ( 213) 922-6000 Hilary Norton,  Fix Angelenos Stuck in Traffic ,   ( 213) 233-2542 A version of this article originally appeared on Next City, with support from the Surdna Foundation .

Allow me to laud something about California's state and local ballot initiative system. No, really.  Voting schemes for electing human beings to office are inevitably flawed. Whether a jurisdiction uses party primaries, open primaries, ranked choices, multiple votes, pluralities, majorities, voice votes, or anything else, no system can capture the true passions and preferences of all voters as they relate to all candidates.  The ballot initiative system cuts through these ambiguities by posing a binary choice: yes or no. However ill-conceived, ill-timed, poorly written, and disingenuously promoted (or opposed) a measure may be, at least the vote itself is clear and internally valid.  Ballot measures could, though, take at least one cue from their human counterparts: impermanence.  * A few weeks ago I tossed off a blog about Los Angeles' housing crisis. And I mean tossed off — I wrote it on a fleeting notion fueled as much by frustration as by scholarship. Clearly other people share my frustration, because it went seriously viral. It went so viral that it even reached one of the original backers of a ballot measure that I mentioned.  Passed in 1986, Proposition U was designed, as I wrote, to limit commercial development on Los Angeles' major corridors. It passed on an insane 2-1 margin, which I characterized as a symbol of Los Angeles' slow-growth movement and a precursor to today's housing crisis. (This wasn't news. Others, including CP&DR publisher Bill Fulton, have levied similar criticisms at Prop. U.) The backer of Prop. U took mild umbrage insisted that, 29 years ago, Prop. U was crafted specifically so that it does not constrain development or preservation of housing.  I don't doubt the earnestness or the wisdom of the authors' approach. As such, my criticism may have been unfair — at least in the context of 1986. The trouble, of course, is that what may have been entirely reasonable in 1986 may not be reasonable in 2015. Legislators, voters, activists, planners, planning philosophies, political alliances, and issues have changed. So have the density, function, infrastructure, economic base, ethnic makeup, and total population of Los Angeles. Try as they might to have predicted Los Angeles' needs one-and-a-half generations into the future, Prop. U's supporters were living in a different world.  Naturally, we can only legislate based on what we know and what we can reasonably predict. The ballot initiative process ignores this truism. From Prop. U to Prop. 20 (precursor to the Coastal Act) to Prop. 99 (eminent domain), to, yes, Prop. 13, many of the state's and localities' measures are structured to remain in effect until the end of time. If Los Angeles sticks around half has long as Rome has, a land-use measure passed today could remain in play in the 35th century.   I'm not a fan of term limits, and I'm sometimes disappointed to see elected officials retire (notwithstanding the immortality of Jerry Brown). But, at the very least, even the most popular elected officials have to submit themselves to re-approval every four years. Ballot measures need a similar temporal safeguard.  I don't have an ideal structure for what I'm thinking of. We obviously don't want to create chaos by yanking laws away unceremoniously. But we have plenty of options. It could be a sunset clause. It could be a mandatory re-vote at a certain juncture. It could be a failsafe, overturned only by a supermajority. Who knows. The point is that no law should ever elude reasonable scrutiny, and no law should presume to remain relevant decades into the future purely because of its own inertia. Supporters of an original ballot measure may need opportunities to gracefully update or even disavow those laws as circumstances change.  While we're at it, so do conventional laws could benefit from the same. Imagine, for instance, how much progress California might make if the California Environmental Quality Act had to be affirmatively revised and renewed?  (Naturally, concerned citizens can mount campaigns to repeal ballot measures that they don't like. But the money, effort, and political will for that kind of thing makes it effectively infeasible.) * I hardly think Prop. U is the cause of all of Los Angeles' troubles, just as I don't think Prop. 13 is the cause of all of California's troubles. Maybe even I would have voted for Prop. U in 1986. We were building some pretty hideous stuff back then; maybe some of it needed to be cut down. Our traffic wasn't nearly as bad, our rents weren't nearly as high (in real dollars), and planners didn't have many alternatives to our auto-oriented mix of residential neighborhoods and commercial strips.  Today, infill development, mixed-use buildings, walkability, transit-oriented development, environmental stewardship, transit use, design guidelines, and all the other trappings of smart growth are at play in Los Angeles. We need more development on commercial strips, because we need a better balance between jobs and housing, and we need more amenities that residents can walk to. We need opportunities to build a few levels of commercial space and then layer on a few levels of residential space. Whether development on boulevards is commercial or residential, we surely need to wean ourselves from single-story buildings, some of which are surrounded by surface parking, on our most valuable, important corridors. We need to accommodate 3.9 million people, not 3.2 million.  These are the goals that Los Angeles' planners are pursuing. Are they compatible with Prop. U? I hope so. If they are not, there should be a reasonable system by which the city can unburden itself.  If that were to happen, I, for one, think L.A. boulevards would turn out OK. They include Wilshire, Ventura, Western, and, yes, Sunset.

This article was corrected on June 2, 2015. The longtime battle over Newhall Ranch has spilled into unusual legal territory with a fight over the status of the private water company that would likely serve the development project. Uniquely, the Valencia Water Company (VWC) may be California's only active large-scale water provider that is neither public, nor mutual, nor regulated as a private entity by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). VWC still supplies water day by day to some 31,000 existing hookups serving about 120,000 people in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County. But legally VWC has been in an odd state of existence for a little over a year.  Opinions differ whether VWC is public or private, what rules apply to its continued operation, and even by what right it operates at all. A former subsidiary of the Newhall Land and Farming Company, VWC was purchased in 2012 by the Castaic Lake Water Agency (CLWA) in a settlement of an eminent domain action. Local environmental groups promptly challenged the purchase. In February 2014, the CPUC ruled that the cordial $73 million settlement -- which it termed a "consensual condemnation" -- meant VWC was no longer a "private corporation" eligible for CPUC regulation. The ruling canceled VWC's certificate of public convenience and necessity. This March, however, a county judge rejected a parallel challenge to VWC's current status, contradicting the CPUC's position. That ruling is on appeal. Many of the challengers have spent decades opposing the Newhall Ranch project -- the proposed development by the Newhall Land and Farming Company that, per current plans, would build nearly 20,000 new residential units in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles County. VWC is envisioned as the water provider for the Newhall Ranch project. CLWA's general manager, Dan Masnada, formerly served as general manager of VWC for the development company. Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE), a longtime leading environmental group in the area, first challenged the VWC purchase with a CPUC complaint in 2012. It alleged the whole purchase was improper and that the deal included an "apparent prejudicial preference to former parent company promised by a regulated utility" through terms in a purchase contract prior to the transfer of ownership. It said the CPUC previously required VWC to file a new Water Management Plan before supplying water to the Newhall Ranch and to serve old and new customers fairly -- but that Article VI of the agreement nevertheless promised actions that would help protect water supplies for the development. Masnada, with exasperation, described SCOPE and its ally Friends of the Santa Clara River as "trying to dictate land use planning in northern L.A. County" by "trying to keep us from augmenting our water supplies." But from the environmental groups' perspective the Valley's resources are already stretched thin, and the Newhall Ranch proposal is the biggest demand placed on them. SCOPE president Lynne Plambeck wrote that she was "frankly tired of being accused of trying to stop growth every time we demand good planning that is common practice in many other parts of the state or any time we demand that laws be followed as is required of most people and most developers." Parties on all sides said they would like to see Valencia Water become public -- but they have different ideas of what "public" should mean, and for the present the company's unusual private status is jammed in place by the dispute itself. Valley of Litigation The legal fronts in the war over Santa Clarita Valley real estate development seem endless. As recounted in CP&DR 's January coverage , one case in the multipart Newhall Ranch litigation is awaiting an oral argument date before the California Supreme Court, on issues that significantly include greenhouse gas reduction rules under AB 32. As also reported in January , SCOPE and other groups are separately challenging the plan's Landmark Village and Mission Village phases, and have sued over federal agencies' environmental resource reviews. On April 21, 2015, the Second District Court of Appeal, Fifth Division, issued an unpublished ruling that upheld the Landmark Village environmental impact report (EIR) -- a decision welcomed by Newhall Land and Farming. Plambeck said this newer ruling raised emissions issues similar to those before the state Supreme Court. In late May, SCOPE asked the Supreme Court to review this new decision as well. Yet another front may be about to open. In early June, Los Angeles County Regional Planning was about to hold an introductory public hearing on a third Newhall Ranch development phase, 1,574-unit Entrada South, which is queued in the planning process behind Landmark and Mission Villages. A separate dispute over a landfill expansion is further testing whether the valley can or should accommodate more new residents and businesses. Focus on the Water Fight This spring, however, the VWC dispute seems the most active front, or at least the most innovative one, in the Santa Clarita Valley land-use war. Last year after the CPUC decision, a statement from the Newhall County Water District (NCWD), where Plambeck is one of five board members, called the resulting lack of either CPUC regulation or a public board of directors "taxation without representation." On March 10, 2015, however, Judge Robert H. O'Brien of the Los Angeles Superior Court disagreed with a complaint by SCOPE, ruling that the purchase was legal and that VWC continued to exist as a private entity distinct from CLWA. Although last year's CPUC ruling is currently in effect, the CPUC case is awaiting a Commission decision whether to grant Newhall Land's request for rehearing. SCOPE appealed the March Superior Court decision in May. A parallel court challenge by NCWD to the VWC purchase is still pending. Plambeck argued there was no legal provision available for a private entity to sell water without being regulated by the CPUC. She said water sellers can be municipal agencies, mutual water districts, county waterworks, state-established agencies like CLWA, or CPUC-regulated private entities -- yet VWC is now none of those. She wrote, "Their action is illegal. They are operating illegally. There is no structure in California law to permit them to operate as they are operating. They are cowboy outlaws." But Ed Casey of Alston & Bird, an attorney for VWC, said, "Every private water company has the authority to sell water in the state of California. Simply because it's not subject to the PUC's regulatory requirements doesn't mean it doesn't have the legal right to sell water and if somebody wants to show me a legal argument to the contrary I would like to hear it." In the Superior Court lawsuit leading to the March ruling, SCOPE had argued CLWA's purchase of VWC was improper in part because, as a legislatively created wholesaler of water from the State Water Project (SWP), CLWA lacked authority to sell water at retail except within boundaries specified by its authorizing legislation. The boundaries in question were defined in AB 134 of the 2001-02 session, which was a legislative response to a similar dispute following CLWA's 1999 purchase and absorption of the Santa Clarita Water Company (now CLWA's Santa Clarita Water Division). AB 134 was approved amid litigation, brought by Plambeck among others, over the propriety of the 1999 purchase, principally in Klajic v. Castaic Lake Water Agency (2001) 90 Cal. App. 4th 987 ( Klajic I ) and Klajic v. Castaic Lake Water Agency (2004) 121 Cal. App. 4th 5. ( Klajic II ). In his recent March decision, Judge O'Brien found CLWA's purchase of VWC was not blocked by Article XVI, § 17 of the California Constitution, which allows public entities to acquire stock of "any mutual water company or corporation" in order to supply water. He found Klajic I "did not decide the constitutionality of the Agency's acquisition of a company other than a mutual water company," and hence did not settle whether the words "...or corporation" included VWC. On that issue, he flatly contradicted the Public Utilities Commission's 2014 decision -- which, drawing on legislative history, had found § 17 gave permission only for public entities to purchase not-for-profit mutual water companies. O'Brien wrote that the CPUC reasoning was not binding -- and instead he held as a matter of statutory construction that the VWC purchase was allowed. Further, O'Brien held there was no barrier to CLWA's ownership of VWC under § 12944.7 of the state Water Code, which provides that if an agency is restricted by its authorizing legislation to wholesale distribution of water -- and CLWA is under that restriction in the VWC service area -- then the only way it can sell water at retail is under a written contract with a CPUC-regulated water corporation providing retail service to the area in question. O'Brien agreed with CLWA that it was not acting through VWC, only owning it. The five directors on Valencia's board consist of Masnada, CLWA's administrative services manager, the retail manager of the Santa Clarita water division, and VWC's general manager and vice president. But O'Brien found the operations were not sufficiently merged to justify SCOPE's "alter ego" allegations. Water is, however, conveyed from CLWA to VWC. Masnada wrote that CLWA received 33,875 acre feet (AF) of imported water in 2014, consisting of 451 AF of currently contracted SWP water, "7,746 AF of SWP 'carryover' from prior years and most if not all of the roughly 14,000 AF extracted from our banking programs." (CLWA owns water banking rights in two storage districts in Kern County.) Of that he wrote that 7,668 AF were delivered to VWC. Meanwhile he wrote that VWC pumped 21,428 AF of groundwater and recycled about 500 AF. Since VWC occupies the "sweet spot of the aquifer," Masnada said Valencia has been trying to pump more than its share of groundwater to spare the other Santa Clarita Valley retailers, since some wells are going dry at the upward east end of the valley. He wrote that VWC expected to withdraw less water from storage in the current year, when SWP customers have been offered a 20% allocation, and likely would not need stored water at SWP allocations above 25%. What's public now? Adding to the uncertainty, earlier this year VWC conducted a ratemaking proceeding in the style of a Proposition 218 governmental process, but continued to assert its private status, both in the board's approval resolution and in a separate response to a SCOPE member's public records request. Casey saw no contradiction: "If there is no alter ego relationship, the identity of the entity that owns Valencia Water Company is irrelevant, which means that Valencia Water Co is not a public agency within the meaning of either Prop 218 or the Public Record Act." Casey said "Valencia Water Company is subject to the same rules any private entity would be subject to," in that a private corporation must turn over records for reasons such as litigation or subpoenas "but there is no other so-called public disclosure requirement." He said, "We comply with the self-same procedures. If some people like to have more, that's their policy position. But at this point in time there is no legal requirement to do so." But Casey and Masnada each said VWC voluntarily conducted a public meeting on the ratemaking with opportunities for public comments. Masnada wrote that fewer than 40 protests were filed, so "VWC customers appear to be satisfied with the service they are receiving and, more to the point, don't have the so-called concerns that SCOPE has in regards to acquisition of VWC by CLWA." Plambeck contended the ratemaking process was improper. But Casey said, "We decided to follow the PUC process because it was a process and we had been under that process for years and we thought it better to continue that process until some entity, whether it's the court or the PUC, told us that it did not have jurisdiction over us." He said "I don't think it's fair ... to criticize Valencia for what it did, when we tried to promote transparency and receive direct customer input to the board." Are Profits OK? The ratemaking procedure surprised Danilo Sanchez, program manager of the water branch for the Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) at the CPUC. Making clear he spoke only for ORA, not for the utilities regulator itself, he said, "They can't be for-profit and not under the Commission's jurisdiction." He said that would be an "unregulated monopoly." In reading through VWC's posted rate-setting document , he said the water rates were comparatively cheap at lower billing tiers but he was surprised to see projected "returns on equity". He asked, "If they are part of a public agency, should they be for-profit?" Reading through the document, he said, "I've never seen anything like this before." Regarding the concern Sanchez raised about profits, Casey offered "the same exact response" regarding the irrelevance of the identity of VWC's owner in the absence of an alter ego relationship. Sanchez further said that in his view the VWC tariff sheets listing water prices would have become invalid 30 days after last year's decision ended CPUC jurisdiction. Future Public Status? Masnada treated the separation of the entities as temporary, saying, "Until the litigation is resolved, the utility will continue to operate as a separate corporate entity." Regarding VWC, he said "We would dearly love to take it public." But he suggested SCOPE was "waving the red flag of AB 134" against allowing it to become public. An attorney for CLWA, Jeffrey Dunn of Best Best & Krieger, put it more strongly: "They are trying to stop the public from getting public ownership of a private water company." Dunn said nobody had heard "a rational reason for why somebody would do that, other than that they just want to sue." From SCOPE's side Plambeck favored a standalone public status for VWC: "It would be wonderful if the (VWC) ratepayers owned their own company and could hold elections." But she opposed its incorporation with CLWA, saying it would create a less accountable "vertical monopoly" between CLWA, as a water wholesaler, and VWC, as a water retailer. She said a public agency is supposed to safeguard the resources and the long-term sustainability of the community, and "what they are doing is directing water to special interests, not protecting the community." Legislative Suspicions A side dispute developed this spring when SCOPE questioned whether CLWA could be seeking legislative ratification of its hope to run VWC directly, as happened with AB 134. This year's AB 727 by Assemblymember Scott Wilk, D-Santa Clarita, provides for adjustments to CLWA's enabling legislation. SCOPE especially questioned whether the old AB 134 boundaries that limit retail housing might be expanded by a phrase authorizing activities in groundwater basins "both within and outside the boundaries of the agency." But Wilk's office wrote that he "has made sure since day one that this legislation not improve or alter the issues concerning CLWA ability to provide retail water." And Masnada wrote that "The intent of that language had nothing to do with administration of VWC's groundwater resources on a retail (or any other) basis." Instead he wrote that it had to do with recharging aquifers with recycled and imported water. The bill has been held over until next year.