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As the new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) grant program neared its October 31 public comment deadline, the program was showing a more definite sense of institutional purpose, focused on promoting dense transit-oriented urban streetscapes. Would-be grant applicants may be disappointed if they expect AHSC to focus on maximizing affordable housing construction or promoting healthier living in small inland towns. Housing is a major statutory goal of the AHSC program, and the proposed grant criteria do allow some leeway for use in less dense areas. But this is not the comprehensive housing construction and rehabilitation program that housing and economic justice advocates would like to see the state enact. The Strategic Growth Council's presentation materials released in late October for the current, final round of public workshops on the program were full of reminders about AHSC's narrow focus. The materials said the program is able to make only a few grants -- 13 to 23 in the main part of the program for the coming year. The materials emphasized the goal of transit-oriented density in a look at "the big picture vision" through before-and-after renderings of urban street makeovers. These showed how a street could be made more prosperous and welcoming to visitors through denser, less car-oriented development. "Before" images depicted broad, rough-edged commuter arteries, with sparsely placed businesses, unevenly set back from the sidewalk by parking lots, often using old-fashioned or awkwardly hand-lettered signage. "After" images created a cozier, more prosperous look, using a palette of streetcars, bike lanes, trees, pedestrians, and upscale storefronts in better-kept, taller mixed-use buildings that snuggled right up to their sidewalks. In these images, the likes of International Boulevard in Oakland and El Camino Real in Santa Clara began to look more like the likes of Barcelona. The presentation called attention to a proposed requirement that appears in text surrounding Table 4 of the Draft Guidelines released in September . It would provide that housing developments supported by the program must have a transit station within a "walkable route" of half a mile. They would need to contain at least 100 units in a metropolitan area or 50 units elsewhere. Minimum net density for all-housing buildings would range from 20 to 60 units per acre by type of area; for mixed-use projects, minimum floor-to-area ratios would range up the same scale from 1.5 to 3.0. On two major outstanding questions -- identification of "disadvantaged communities" and definition of a role for regional government entities -- the new materials added little beyond the early-October staff report and SGC hearing discussion . On the belated CalEPA designation of "disadvantaged" census tracts that must be "benefited" by half of AHSC funds, the new materials said the choices "will be available in the next few weeks." The SGC Web site now provides a dedicated Web page for the AHSC program and a separate page for its separately administered farmland fragment, the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC). Workshops seeking to explain and receive comment on the near-final design for the main AHSC program were being held October 23 through 28 , with plans to webcast the October 28 meeting in Sacramento. Workshops on the SALC program were set for October 24 in Oroville, October 29 in Bakersfield, and October 30 in Watsonville . Comments on both program designs are due October 31, respectively to http://sgc.ca.gov/s_ahscwebcommentform.php and ahsc_ag@sgc.ca.gov. The ARB cap-and-trade proceeds page displays 149 comments on the "disadvantaged communities" choice process. Comments submitted to the SGC have not yet been posted online. The late-October AHSC materials said a final draft of the guidelines would be posted December 1 in preparation for the December 11 meeting where the Strategic Growth Council will be asked to approve the whole plan.

The Coastal Commission's October docket in Newport Beach served up a fair slice of Southern California celebrity-involved madness and possibly more items than usual of old business of the it's-never-over variety. The Commission's most widely reported act of the month was to postpone consideration of an appeal on an unpopular proposal by entities linked to U2 guitarist David Evans, known as "The Edge," to build five large new houses in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Malibu Times and LA Times reported the postponement was for lack of adequate notice to stakeholders and the Commission would likely take up the matter again in January. The paper quoted Frank Angel, attorney for the Sweetwater Mesa Homeowners' Association, as calling the continuance "a huge game changer" because the Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan (LCP) was to take effect the Friday after the October Commission meeting. (On that approval see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3559; http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3474.) In a commentary ahead of the meeting , LA Times columnist Steve Lopez had questioned how Evans managed to get the hearing scheduled just before that effective date. In the staff report , summaries of public comments included celebrity relationship gossip and a mention of a Web site that formerly discussed the project, www.leavesinthewind.com. As of 2011 that site explained the plan as it then stood in some detail, promoting it in terms of environmental responsibility and high-concept design. Rejected in its original form that year, the project has since been reduced and redesigned for a less visible group of sites . The Laguna Beach Independent reported that Mark Christy, proponent of a renovation and rebuilding project at "The Ranch" in Aliso Canyon, brought three busloads of supporters to speak in public comment sessions at the Coastal Commission. It said speakers in Christy's favor included the Mayor Pro Tem and two City Council members. The Newport Beach Independent reported more than 60 supporters of The Ranch appeared, outnumbering participants in the monthly anti-fracking protest. The Commission has had rocky relations with Christy for some time. This month, as reported further at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3595 and in the Coastline Pilot , the Commission determined The Ranch had done unpermitted work on its outdoor landscape, including creation of a 7000-square-foot dance floor. Additional disputes concern whether Christy's proposed additions to the site will cause too much environmental harm, and whether the work he has already done on the mid-century resort buildings constitutes renovation or new construction. And this month the Coastline Pilot published a letter by Christy on an additional issue: the lack of a public trail on the site. He wrote that it wouldn't work for safety reasons because the resort includes a golf course. The Commission granted approval, with conditions , for a plan allowing the City of Los Angeles to sell the last seven house lots it owns on the rim of Potrero Canyon in Pacific Palisades. The plan comes with approvals for filling and grading by the city to stabilize the canyon rim. Proceeds will go into a special restoration fund for the park below the lots. The staff report recounts that the city bought 22 residential lots along the canyon in 1991 following litigation over landslides. Since then the city has been conducting restoration work in the area and selling house lots a few at a time to pay for each next stage of the project. This month's approval allows the city to sell the last seven lots without keeping an earlier promise that it would first complete a new park and riparian "habitat installation." Per the Los Angeles Times ' online archives the original landslide was in 1978 and coverage of city efforts to fix the problem dates back to at least 1985 and 1989 . Caltrans won confirmation of a 2012 approval to move about three miles of Highway 1 inland in San Luis Obispo County near Piedras Blancas. Shoreline erosion and bicycle safety were among the major concerns. The plan also brings the road farther away from a beach that is massively popular with elephant seals, hence decreasing the risk of sofa-sized marine mammals entering the roadway. On reconsideration, the Commission granted permission to the City of Los Angeles to install a seasonal ice rink on Venice Beach . The Commission had denied the permit initially in September because of objections to the city's prior handling of a zipline attraction and maintenance of nearby public bathrooms. San Diego got approval for its LCP amendment to license and regulate food trucks at parks and beaches . The Daily Pilot reported the Commission approved 23 "townhomes" for the former site of a Christian Science church in Newport Beach. The paper wrote, "The site along the 3300 block of Via Lido isn't far from where the former Newport Beach City Hall is to be replaced by a boutique hotel. Officials hope the move will inject life into the area." The Commission was still planning a workshop for December to consider methods of preserving public access to the cheap seaside family vacation. A cheerful mission at first glance, but conflicts over mitigation costs to developers to preserve low-cost access were less than cheerful through the summer, especially in July (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3528). The Commission's meeting agenda, annotated with outcomes, is at http://coastal.ca.gov/meetings/mtg-mm14-10.html. News of the Commission during the rest of October was a mix of grants, enforcement actions and appeals. Napster and Facebook billionaire Sean Parker and his wife Alexandra Lenas got the label of "philanthropists" from a Monterey Herald report on their steps to comply with a Coastal Commission settlement. The settlement is in compensation for environmental damage caused at Big Sur by elaborate preparations for the couple's wedding in June 2013. Parker and Lenas agreed to sprinkle $1.2 million among eight environmental and education nonprofits on the Central Coast as part of a $2.5 million settlement payment. Parker also agreed to create a mobile app for the Commission to help coastal visitors to find beach access points. In another resolution of long-running old business, the Commission announced its approval of a "final plan to restore public access" to the Ontario Ridge trail in San Luis Obispo County.  More details from the Tribune here . Commission staff contributed to an Assembly hearing September 25 , primarily on dangers of desalination to sea life. The city of San Clemente got a $90,000 planning grant to work toward finishing its Local Coastal Program (LCP) certification. Newport Beach is applying for a similar grant. More jurisdictions' pending planning grant applications are posted online , awaiting decisions during the next couple of months. KIEM-TV reported the city of Eureka got a $250,000 grant to prepare a risk analysis on sea level rise. The Orange County Register reported Long Beach officials were moving toward approval of the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, a pricey remodel of the existing Belmont Plaza Pool for use in diving competitions. Columnist Bob Keisser objected that the new pool would be less ambitious than the old one in the scale of competition events it could host; he was among those calling for a bigger effort to potentially host 2020 Olympic trials. The local Daily Breeze reported the city of Rancho Palos Verdes was working on an amendment to its LCP to comply with a Coastal Commission determination that the current 70-foot flagpole at the Trump National Golf Club violated the existing LCP. San Diego's Friends of the Children's Pool filed suit over the Coastal Commission's decision to reserve the Children's Pool beach for seals during pupping season. Beach access advocates were additionally calling on the city to open sluiceways in the seawall to clean the sand. Sadly for an already-contested resource, the pool was reportedly part of an area closed for safety due to an October 14 sewage spill. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Ross Eric Gibson of the La Bahia Coalition filed an appeal with the Coastal Commission against city approval of a plan to partly replace, partly renovate the historic La Bahia Hotel. The project would convert it from a 44-unit apartment building into a 165-room hotel, conference center and day spa.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) won two major takings law victories in late October. Clients championed by the property rights organization defeated a San Francisco law on compensation to tenants evicted under the Ellis Act, and managed to undo a coastal easement requirement that the court said was an unfair permit condition. San Francisco city attorney to appeal San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced he would appeal a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer that struck down the city's new ordinance on compensation for tenants evicted under the Ellis Act. From its effective date in June until Breyer blocked it effective October 24, landlords who took an occupied unit off the rental market were required to pay their evicted tenants two years' worth of difference between the lost rent rate and the market-rate rent for a comparable unit in the city. The ruling in Levin v. City and County of San Francisco accepted arguments by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) that the ordinance violated constitutional property rights. The PLF victory press release said the lead plaintiffs in the matter would have had to pay $118,000 to the tenant of the duplex where they live in order to rent their extra unit to friends or family. The SF Chronicle 's Bob Egelko has details of the ruling . He quotes Breyer as calling the compensation amount "an enormous payout untethered in both nature and amount to the social harm actually caused by the property owner's action." A copy of the ruling is available on PLF's Web site . Coastal property owners vindicated On October 23, the Second Appellate District reversed itself on rehearing in Bowman v. California Coastal Commission . The court had agreed as of April 15 to depublish its initial ruling in March and rehear the matter. The new ruling is a victory for the PLF's clients, Sandra Bowman and her sisters, who inherited a large San Luis Obispo County property, partly along the coastline, from their father, Walton Emmick. The sisters have been disputing Coastal Commission efforts to enforce a public access easement as a condition for a coastal development permit (CDP) to improve the dilapidated house and barn on a part of the property a mile inland. As discussed at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3452, the court's earlier ruling backed the Coastal Commission in finding that collateral estoppel barred the sisters from repudiating a public access easement that the county initially required of them as a condition for a CDP. The March decision gave a somewhat confused account of the facts, saying Emmick did renovation work in anticipation of that first CDP although it was issued after his death -- hence that he and his successors accepted the CDP's burdens along with its benefits. Accordingly the March court agreed with the Coastal Commission that the sisters could not take advantage of the county's decision to grant their application for a second CDP without the easement. The new opinion accepted the PLF's version of the facts: that Emmick did renovation work on the property only under county permits that were exempt from the CDP requirement because they did not "change the use or dimensions of the structure." It stated Emmick "did not make the repairs for which he sought authorization" under the initial CDP, hence that neither he nor his successors accepted any benefit under it. However, the court's new opinion was not based solely on this fresh understanding of the facts. It also said the easement exaction was unfair: "There is no rational nexus, no less rough proportionality, between the work on a private residence a mile from the coast and a lateral public access easement." The court found it immaterial whether the requirement was the Commission's or the county's fault. Regardless, the court said collateral estoppel doctrine calls for equitable results. Because of both the reinterpreted fact pattern and the lack of nexus between the renovations and the easement, the court found the equity requirement was not met. In a statement in April, the court had requested letter briefing on the standard of review. It said "the parties appear to agree" that the March ruling misapplied the substantial evidence rule to the administrative mandate question, in that it chose to consider only evidence supporting the prevailing party rather than "all relevant evidence even if it detracts from the administrative decision," as called for in La Costa Beach Homeowners' Assn. v. Cal. Coastal Comm. (2002) 101 Cal.App.4th 804. The court asked the parties whether the Commission should be treated as the sole authority to determine credibility of evidence, or, if not, how the La Costa case should apply. In the opinion that followed, the court looked to a phrase in La Costa saying "Courts may reverse an agency's decision only if, based on the evidence before the agency, a reasonable person could not reach the conclusion reached by the agency." It then based the decision on its own interpretation of the facts. The new, currently effective opinion is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B243015A.PDF.

News Item: the Los Angeles City Council has rescinded a long-standing ordinance requiring all high-rise buildings in the downtown area to have rooftop helipads . When the ordinance was in effect, all downtown buildings were flat-headed in design to accommodate the helipads. The result was a skyline of monotonous uniformity and "architectural mediocrity," according to the New York Times . There is only one way to provide an adequate commentary on this situation: A Greek tragedy. SCENE: LATE NIGHT IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. A GREEK CHORUS, MADE UP ENTIRELY OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS, CHANTS IN UNISON. CHORUS OF FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Oh, misfortune! Our reign has come to a sorry end. Gone is our skyline, unique in all the world, of uniform flatness. Gone, alas, are the days when ‘copters swarmed us The way butterflies swarm poppy fields. No more to hear The sweet sound of chop-chop-chop-chubba-chubba-chop-chop. Goodbye, copters! Goodbye cops! Farewell, first responders in MedEvacs! For the Chief Fireman has said, in his annoying nasal voice,    ‘Go not to rooftops any more, oh thou office workers of LA! People in emergencies should stay put, and wait for help.'  What kind of poppycock is that? Does this mean That choppers are never more to land on our flat, bald heads, Each with a target for helicopters marked "X" in the center,  Seen by none but birds, planes, God and Google Earth? No more will high-rise buildings look like us, the flat-headed tribe. The next generation won't have that special look -- that is to say, The look of a bunch of wooden boards at the hardware store, Standing upright, that nobody has bought. Enter THE TRANSAMERICA TOWER, a famous pointy-headed building from San Francisco. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Oh, go ahead and moan, you inane band of overgrown cigar boxes. Snivel, if you want. You're through. The future belongs to sharper shapes. Just as skyscrapers with syringe-like tops were the toast of Manhattan In the Golden Age, so once again pin-head buildings will come to rule Your snoozefest of a skyline. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: Insult added to injury! You pyramidal monstrosity, come to torment us Just when we're feeling totally like we can't deal. TRANSAMERICA TOWER (being really obnoxious) But deal you must. This is progress, enlightenment, artistic freedom! Face it, anvil-brains, you don't stack up when compared with Tokyo Or all those Chinese cities with their pointy tower things. Boring, boring! FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You can laugh and scorn, you irresponsible pinhead! You, who never shouldered any social responsibility. Our very heads spoke of preparedness. TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Yes, and for that reason, you get no standout buildings by the Starchitects, Those favorites of Zeus and Hera, who got them jobs with the other gods. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: What bosh! Know ye not that we are of the International Style? Just as the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe, and its wife, the green-skinned Lever House by Skidmore Owings Merrill, The legendary New York pair that gave birth to all the office buildings that came after them, were both flat of brow? What say you of that, you much-derided pinhead! TRANSAMERICA TOWER: Don't remind me of my poor reception when first built! Though I stand by the Bay, I was by designed by an Angeleno, The hard-partying Bill Pereira. Now I am a symbol of San Francisco! Take that, you derivative clump of banalities! ENTER the Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, a recent building in Baku, Azerbajian by Zaha Hadid. This exquisite building, widely portrayed in published photos during recent months, is elliptically curved in profile. HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURE CENTRE (with a slightly husky voice): Hey boys, stop fighting. You're not just wrong, you're stuck in the past. Look at my beauty and be struck speechless as Buster Keaton. Flat, pointed, who cares? It's irrelevant. FLAT-HEADED BUILDINGS: You look like a woman in a head-scarf Standing in a strong breeze. I think we are in love. TRANSAMERICA BUILDING (to HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER) You call us irrelevant? You're from Azerbajian, for crying out loud. The client is a dictator who builds what he wants, regardless of cost. Plus, you're a cultural center, not an office building, so you don't count. And you were designed by Zaha Hadid. Her office buildings On the whole, have flat tops! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: All true. I'm just making a point, you pecan-brained dinosaurs. The future can be flat, pointed or free-form like me. The point is that LA can enjoy some variety, and catch up With the skyline of a second-tier Chinese city, maybe, if it tries. As for Tokyo or Dubai, however … oh, just give up now.  CHORUS OF FLAT-TOP BUILDINGS (highly offended): You decadent hussy! Irrational product of extravagance and waste! HEYDAR ALIYEV CULTURAL CENTER: Don't try to fluster me with your bluster, bub. Like the song says, you ain't so big, you're just tall, that's all.

In brief California land use news this week: Curbed and the LA Times reported that the legendary La Mirada Avenue Neighborhood Association and attorney Robert Silverstein may have reversed the opening of a 22-story, 299-unit residential development in Hollywood. Because of the neighborhood challenge, developer CIM group may have to displace the first 40 tenants who have moved into its Sunset/Gordon tower. A judge found CIM's construction permits invalid after the association objected that demolition of the prior building on the site was improper. Potential applicants for HUD's $1 billion in resiliency money may be interested in a large, varied calendar of webinars discussing the program and its goals. For prior notes on the program see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587. Environment California held an event in Santa Cruz to remind the public of the November 14 comment deadline on EPA's "Waters of the United States" proposed rule. The comment deadline on the proposed rule has already been extended twice . If approved, the EPA's proposal would extend the definition of waters that the Clean Water Act regulates to include smaller bodies of water and even wetlands. The EPA has given the proposed rule its own Web page at http://www2.epa.gov/uswaters. The Cupertino General Plan is nearing final approval. A recent Mercury News item lays out the remaining short timetable and (unsurprisingly) notes density levels in the housing element as an outstanding issue. Los Angeles County's running conflict over large solar arrays flared up in the San Fernando Valley. The LA Times reported a lawsuit was filed by PHL LLC and Foothill Solar, LLC  alleging the North Valley Area Planning Commission unfairly rejected a project application as incomplete. The San Luis Obispo Tribune reported a conflict over airport zoning "derailed" the city's General Plan update process this week. Two City Council members held up the plan by refusing to join a vote overriding the local Airport Land Use Commission's "safety zone" limits on development at the south end of the city. The General Plan itself can't pass until a deal is reached or the Council changes membership -- but that membership may change at the upcoming November election. The Tribune had editorialized that the airport body was inexplicably over-limiting construction in "the logical place for residential development to occur." The Tribune also reported that environmental advocates sued the Cambria Community Services District under CEQA, alleging the district tried to build "a permanent desalination plant intended for long-term operation under the guise of a temporary emergency facility." In another case of what seem to be frequent small-airport control issues lately, the city of Ontario was in litigation with the City of LA and its Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) entity. The Bakersfield Press-Enterprise reported Ontario alleged LAWA was neglecting the Ontario airport's marketing but also wouldn't cede control to local managers. The SF Business Times reported Mayor Ed Lee has a "housing working group" trying to negotiate incentives to get private developers to add affordable housing to the city. Also this week in San Francisco, the Chron reported the developer of "what will become the highest condo tower west of the Mississippi River" agreed to pay $1.26 million per unit rather than build 11 units of below-market-rate housing. Last summer in San Francisco the MonkeyParking app startup was cease-and-desisted , parodied , and finally left town . Now it's having a similar time in LA County. The League of California Cities spotted news that Santa Monica and Beverly Hills banned the app, which helps people to sell the news that they're about to leave a public parking space. West Hollywood was considering a ban , and the LA City Council's transportation committee has voted to draft an ordinance banning private sales of public parking. The LA Times quoted Councilmember Mike Bonin calling it "the stealing economy masquerading as the sharing economy." Large-scale San Francisco housing development has finally branched out into the low-rise residential Inner Sunset neighborhood. J.K. Dineen reports in the SF Chronicle that Westlake Urban of San Mateo has proposed to replace the 86-unit Kirkham Heights apartment complex with 460 units of housing likely to serve medical staff and students from nearby UCSF. Sacramento Bee water writer Matt Weiser visited the Carlsbad desalination plant for a news feature on the project as a test case. He writes that it's being widely watched to see if its physical, environmental and financial challenges can be met in ways that work for the rest of California. His article makes a helpful companion piece to an earlier, more legalistic Latham and Watkins review of the Carlsbad project as "a case study of permitting and approvals." The Metropolitan Water District raised incentives for SoCal water agencies to recycle, recover or desalinate water. It's now offering $340 per acre-foot . (Item via League of CA Cities.) The Santa Barbara Independent reports the Arroyo Toad may soon no longer be officially endangered. The San Diego U-T reported the city of Escondido rejected a shelter for immigrant children "for reasons including traffic, safety, parking and community character." The San Francisco Planning Commission is expected in November to continue review of a Reasonable Modification Ordinance for disability accommodations. The measure would create a process for an individual with a disability to request reasonable modification to a building to remove a barrier to fair housing access. The LA Daily News reported the City Council gave Anschutz Entertainment Group "an additional six months to find a football team to play in the developer's proposed downtown stadium." Per most recent glance at the CalEPA Environmental Justice page , there's still no word on the designations of "disadvantaged" census tracts that were due by the end of September. As we've noted before, it's a tough, highly political decision . Early this month the Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a thoughtful extended news feature on The Sea Ranch and its lasting effects on regulation of California coastal development.

A new template for land use and preservation is forming across some 1,800 square miles of Los Angeles County's high, dry northeastern backlands. Its first increment could establish some key development permissions by mid-November, especially affecting the large Centennial new-town design, other construction plans, and solar energy arrays. The Antelope Valley (AV) Area Plan is tentatively scheduled for a vote by the LA County Supervisors on November 12. That approval, if granted, will be significant -- especially for the currently rural site along Highway 138 where the Tejon Ranch Co. has for years been laying regulatory groundwork to build a master-planned town it calls Centennial. There are also General Plan revisions afoot in two areas that affect the AV Plan area most: changes to boundaries and rules for Significant Ecological Areas (SEAs) and a renewable energy ordinance. (A plan to develop transit-oriented districts (TODs) is part of the same General Plan update process but affects more urban areas. The north edge of its "overview map" is in Pasadena.) The Antelope Valley plan area (see map ) covers rugged northeastern Los Angeles County, from the southeast-slanting San Andreas Fault to the Ventura, Kern and San Bernardino County lines, excluding incorporated areas around Lancaster and Palmdale, and applying as a limited overlay to federal property such as Edwards Air Force Base. It extends south of the fault to include the whole mass of the San Gabriel Mountains (including the new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument ), and the north half or so of the Angeles National Forest above Santa Clarita. The Centennial site is near the current northern limit of suburban development that looks toward Los Angeles. Above it are mountain ridges that, for the present, occupy a gap between the footprints of greater Los Angeles and greater Bakersfield. Mark Child, deputy director of advance planning with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, said the proposed SEA designation and governing ordinance changes would most affect the Antelope Valley area rather than other parts of L.A. County, especially now that sensitive habitats in the Santa Monica Mountains are being separately regulated by the new Santa Monica Mountains Local Coastal Plan and, farther inland, the Santa Monica Mountains North Area Plan. He said some SEAs are affected in the San Gabriel Valley and Puente Hills, but they are small in comparison to the Antelope Valley. Environmental and community activists' concerns have included keeping rural places rural, ensuring "heavy agriculture" upzoning doesn't allow solar arrays as of right (Child said it doesn't), and, especially, limiting density in three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs) that the AV Area Plan designates for concentrated development. They have also questioned whether enough big-picture environmental regulation is in place to avoid harmful cumulative effects. Major affected landscapes include the western tip of the Mojave Desert with its wild poppy fields and Joshua trees, and the knot of the Coast, Transverse and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, including condor habitat, where I-5 climbs over Tejon Pass toward LA from the foot of the Central Valley. Landowners, from owners of single-house lots to managers of mining and ranching concerns, have been asking nervously how certain they can be of future requirements under tiered processes that the program-level rules are designed to set up but not resolve. In addition to Centennial and other housing developments, major affected industries and projects under the AV Area Plan and General Plan amendments include aggregate mines, cattle ranchlands, oil and gas wells, and solar energy businesses. For L.A. County's rural lands at present, it isn't easy to parse what will be decided where, how conclusively, and when. There are multiple rulemaking tracks; there are tiering provisions in the proposed rules that defer major decisions selectively, and there's uncertainty yet to resolve on how the new rules will take up the threads of older planning processes. The AV Area Plan and Centennial As previously reported at http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3587, the Regional Planning Commission approved the AV Area Plan September 27. Its accompanying Draft EIR remained open for comment until October 6 -- viewed as procedurally possible because the Commission's action September 27 was only a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors; the Supervisors bear responsibility for definitely approving the plan and certifying its EIR. which will probably occur at the same time. (Sitting as the Airport Land Use Commission, the Regional Planning Commission approved the plan's compatibility with relevant airport plans.) The AV Area Plan, updating the existing 1986 General Plan component for the area, has been under review since 2008 in what has also been labeled the "Town and Country" planning process. However, new versions of the plan, and an extensive new Draft EIR, were published on a brisk schedule this summer, with the DEIR Notice of Preparation (NOP) posted June 12, revised planning documents posted July 23 and August 22, and the extensive DEIR documents posted August 22. (Comments on the AV Area Plan leading up to the September 27 hearing are labeled as "correspondence" and "supplemental package" documents as part of the meeting materials .) The new plan would encourage the proposed Centennial development by establishing policy statements in favor of upzoning at the intended town site. However, it would not allow building permits to be granted for the new densities as of right. Centennial's proponents would still have to bring a more detailed proposal through a full specific plan review process -- and it's not clear when they will decide the time is ripe for them to follow through. According to Child and Supervising Regional Planner Susan Tae, out of the three "Economic Opportunity Areas" (EOAs), only the west EOA, which includes the Centennial site, has a strict provision to ensure future review is coordinated. Any proposal to build more than five units of housing in the west EOA would trigger a requirement to begin a full specific plan coordinating infrastructure and environmental protections for the whole area. The county could also choose to begin a community plan there in the next five years. The published summary of September 27 changes to the AV Area Plan says affected properties in the west EOA are those of two particular owners: the Tejon Ranch Company and Bruce Burrows. In the west EOA, the AV Area Plan sets as general policy the possibility of zoning levels up to maximum caps described in the Plan's Map 2.1 . The green-veined yellow patches of H5 zoning (five housing units per acre) as shown in the map's upper left corner would be defined as generically appropriate for the east half of the proposed Centennial development site. Later on, the actual zoning changes would need to be adopted legislatively as part of a future specific or community plan, and their exact values would depend on the overall design of the project as then proposed. (In a choice that confused some activists, the DEIR's Figure 3.7, at Page 27 of Chapter 3 , sets out the lower A-2-10 "heavy agriculture" densities that would apply without a specific plan.) The Center for Biological Diversity has objected starting at the NOP stage to the use of any H5 zoning on the Centennial site. As of a Tejon Ranch Co. amended 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last March, the company was still discussing plans for 23,000 units of housing at Centennial. County planning staff say the maximum buildout under zoning envisoned by the AV Area Plan would be less -- more like 17,000 units -- but either would be a long way from the site's current population of zero. The Tejon Ranch Co. as of its March report held a 72.83% interest in the project's proponent entity, Centennial Founders, LLC, with minority partners Tri Pointe Homes (formerly Pardee Homes), Lewis Investment Company and Standard Pacific Corp. . (For prior discussion of Tejon Ranch real estate plans in the context of the Kern Water Bank EIR ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3597.) SEA boundaries changing by stages Proposed new SEA boundaries are important for Centennial and for the AV area plan in general. Although the new SEAs are larger, it's disputed whether they actually increase environmental protection. Where former SEAs required buffer zones to surround them, the new approach is to expand the defined boundaries to include buffer zones within them. Similar changes were already adopted in 2011 for the Santa Clarita Valley area, which includes the Newhall Ranch planned-town site. (See http://planning.lacounty.gov/sea/proposed.) The Commission's September 27 action removed the SEA designation from a major area of the Centennial town site, between its east boundary at a farm road incongruously named "300th Street", and the west branch of the California Aqueduct, which forms a north-south divider across the site. (A separate SEA pullback limited barriers to development in the Central Economic Opportunity Area southwest of Edwards. For details see the September 27 summary document .) Child wrote that the west EOA changes "aim to strike a balance between habitat conservation and environmental protection, and economic development that is important to the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles County as a whole. As the most valuable habitat and habitat linkage within this landholding is on the western end where the SEA designation remains, the area removed seems not as critical to the overall viability of SEA protections in the area." But Greg Medeiros, vice president of the Centennial Founders LLC development entity, asked the Commission on October 8 to also remove SEA status from the area west of the Aqueduct, saying, "Both commercial and residential land use remain within the SEA overlay within the west EOA boundary. This commercial development is critical in developing a balanced community that can provide necessary services and jobs." He assured: "Removing the SEA designation does not mean that biological resources will be ignored. Project-level environmental review during site design within the EOAs will require avoidance and mitigation if necessary to comply with both CEQA and Fish and Wildlife permitting requirements." Countywide, the proposed SEA changes have been divided among three different regulatory calendars: Some SEA boundary revisions that form part of the AV Area Plan will be before the Supervisors for approval November 12. SEA boundary changes elsewhere in the county go to the Regional Planning Commission as part of a General Plan update item December 10. Revisions to the current Draft 6 of the SEA Ordinance, which calls for protective measures to be determined in part by environmental reviews of each building site, were taken off calendar as of the Commission's October 8 meeting to allow more discussion. The issues taken off calendar as "ordinance" matters include issues such as whether existing uses will be grandfathered. For example, at the October 8 hearing, Jeff Mace of ERA Energy asked if his company's 3000 acres of oil and gas wells and grazing land would be subject to new SEA requirements with effects such as new fencing requirements. Some landowners saw the proposed environmental review process as a source of uncertainty. At the hearing, land use consultant Peter Gonzalez said he couldn't clearly advise a landowner on building rights in an SEA zone if a county biologist's review still had to determine each parcel's level of sensitivity under the proposed SEA ordinance. Marta Golding Brown, representing the Building Industry Association for Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, told the Commission that the proposed mitigation ratios were excessive in requiring up to four acres open space for one acre of disturbed land, and the SEA boundaries themselves were oversized: "The SEA expansion virtually walls off all unbuilt or remaining lands in the jurisdiction. As a result, future population growth will need to be accommodated by dramatically increasing densities in the existing developed areas." She urged the Commission to combine SEA and CEQA mitigation processes in a single procedure and closed with the comment, "Please reduce the SEA overlays in the county to those areas having biota to protect." Environmental advocates weren't happy with the proposed SEA ordinance either: some said it had the unintended effect of elevating mitigation into a first choice for developers instead of encouraging them to avoid doing harm in the first place. Gary George of Audubon California told the Commission, "It's kind of a free pass straight to compensatory mitigation." Another environmental concern was whether single-family homes ought to be exempted from SEA requirements, or whether they, too, should be required to reduce their footprints. High SEAs A perennial concern in northwestern LA County has been whether the SEAs in the high desert and mountains provide sufficient "connectivity" or "linkages" for wildlife to travel among the several types of habitat that converge in the area, especially where I-5 traverses the Grapevine. (A slightly dated but informative "connectivity and construction" map from April gives a sense of the principles guiding SEA designations.) Child said a key purpose of updating the boundaries was to allow for linkages -- not necessarily to maintain land in "pristine" condition, but to allow for wildlife movement -- for example, by maintaining a corridor of grassland that might not itself be valuable habitat, but that would allow wildlife to move between developed areas. For the Centennial site an added uncertainty for activists is whether currently envisioned planning processes will make use of the work already done in an SEA-related environmental advisory process on a prior Centennial specific plan effort that was begun in 2008 but then deferred. As suggested by a 2008 Center for Biological Diversity press release , the SEATAC was sympathetic to critics who questioned not just how development might be made more eco-friendly at Centennial, but why any new project had to be built on the site.  The September 8, 2008, minutes of a SEATAC meeting on Centennial, still available on the county's site , shows a level of concerned review that gets literally into the weeds. The board discusses protection of grasslands, creekside habitat, watersheds and linkages, concerns about "leapfrog" developments surrounded by open space, the fortunes of species including badgers, lizards, owls, pumas, and the Tehachapi Pocket Mouse, a request to hear more about the futures of antelopes and raptors, and possible relocation of the Pacific Crest Trail onto the Tejon Ranch lands. Child wrote: "The future level and scope of environmental/biological review in this area would not be less careful than the review by SEATAC in 2008. The project is still subject to CEQA requirements and the County's consultation with responsible and trustee agencies would ensure that the project identifies and mitigates for any and all potential environmental impacts, including biota. Comments received from SEATAC regarding the project specifically, and the general region as important habitat land, would still be applied in the review of the project." Tae wrote that where SEATAC review is currently required for all SEA Conditional Use Permits (CUPs), the new ordinance would direct some projects to the county biologist, and others to SEATAC, with SEATAC "considered the higher review". Centennial's design was publicized more specifically before about 2008. The project stressed its environmental smart growth aspirations, discussing ways the project could be environmentally responsible and partly self-contained, even if residents commuted to jobs elsewhere. Now Centennial's main link from the Tejon Ranch Web site is a "Coming Soon" placeholder page. More detailed prior materials on the plan , including previews of the town's design , have been taken offline since last September . The Centennial Scout, a weblog formerly maintained for Centennial Founders, LLC by its community development manager, last posted in August 2011. It remains uncertain when the Centennial Founders management may decide the time is right to go ahead with their specific plan. So it's clearly enough in the project's interest to lock in as many permissions as possible for the 20-year duration of a General Plan update. In the meantime, the Ranch's interest sounds warmer with respect to its more recently proposed Grapevine development in Kern County. The Tejon Ranch Co.'s amended 10-K as filed in March 2014 stated, "California regulatory dynamics may impact the future ability to entitle new development so we began the land planning and entitlement process for Grapevine during 2013 to take advantage of the existing favorable pro-business and political climate in Kern County." The Tejon Ranch is the subject of a 2008 settlement in which five environmental groups, including the Sierra Club but not the Center for Biological Diversity, agreed not to oppose future development on the ranch in return for a conservation program affecting much of the Tejon Ranch land. Opposition to Centennial and other projects has been less widely expressed in the six years since then. The March amended 10-K stated, "The Conservation Agreement we entered into with five major environmental organizations in 2008 is designed to minimize the opposition from environmental groups to these projects and eliminate or reduce the time spent in litigation once governmental approvals are received. Litigation by environmental groups has been a primary cause of delay and loss of financial value for real estate development projects in California." Solar up next On a slower schedule, hearings are expected this winter on a renewable energy land use ordinance for projects such as solar arrays. Tae wrote that the draft EIR would likely appear in November, with the Regional Planning Commission to take it up in January. Tae and Child wrote that the ordinance has to reach the Supervisors by March to help the county qualify for a grant out of the Renewable Resource Trust Fund related to Assembly Bill X1-13. Child said there had been anxieties that a large-scale upzoning of about 190,000 acres to A-2, "heavy agriculture," in the Antelope Valley Area Plan would allow large solar arrays as of right. In fact he said that while A-2 zoning is a prerequisite for solar arrays, the ordinance would regulate such approvals and they would require conditional use permits to go through. The county's public tally of proposed utility-scale renewable energy projects to date shows most such projects are solar; there have been a few wind turbine schemes. The renewable energy ordinance review will need to interact with the California and federal EIR/EIS for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan , which was posted for review September 26. Major solar energy developers are among the commenters on early stages of the energy ordinance.

In brief legal news this week: The State Supreme Court confirmed a victory for high-speed rail by declining to review the Third District's ruling in California High-Speed Rail Authority v. Superior Court (Tos) . The case upheld the High-Speed Rail Authority's authorization to issue bonds for the project. The Sacramento Bee had details on immediate reactions. For details of the ruling see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3546. Planetizen has more context at http://www.planetizen.com/articles/node-71723 . Prominent developer-side firms had asked the State Supreme Court to order publication of Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) v. County of San Diego , but the high court refused . What remains on the record is only the Fourth Appellate District's unpublished ruling in favor of the EIR to replace a city-owned historic warehouse building with mixed-use development. The State Supreme Court denied requests for both review and depublication of the Fifth District's ruling in North Coast Rivers Alliance v. Westlands Water District . That ruling upheld the application of a grandfathering rule to exempt a two-year interim water contract from CEQA review because its predecessor contract was set up in 1963, before CEQA was invented. For details of the Fifth District decision see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3539. (And in separate news, the LA Times ' Bettina Boxall wrote a stemwinder of a water feature on a proposed deal to let the Westlands Water District off from a $360 million debt to the Bureau of Reclamation for its part in the extension of the Central Valley Project.) Judge Timothy Frawley confirmed his rejection of both of the CEQA lawsuits against the Sacramento Kings basketball arena project. For prior recent moves in the case see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3599. Local coverage in the Willits News celebrated the North Coast Rail Authority's CEQA exemption victory last month over two environmental groups who opposed increased use of an existing rail system. The paper reports the First District appellate decision (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3584) may allow lumber to be shipped from Willits by rail for the first time since the 1990s. Encinitas homeowners Thomas Frick and Barbara Lynch, whose effort to build a seawall has been blocked by the Coastal Commission and the Fourth District state appellate court, have now requested review from the California Supreme Court. The attorney filing their appeal was Paul J. Beard of the Pacific Legal Foundation. Beard told the San Diego Union-Tribune , "We are asking the California Supreme Court to hear this case so that these homeowners, and all property owners along the coast, can be protected from the Coastal Commission's obsessive crusade against seawalls." For detailed coverage of the Fourth District's decision, see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3572. The Fourth District's online docket shows it denied a request for rehearing in September. The landlord of the "Friendly Village" mobile home park in Milpitas has appealed the city's federal court victory (see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3567), which blocked it from raising rents by 50 to 90 percent. The Mercury News reported the city has already approved $30,000 for attorneys' fees to fight the appeal before the Ninth Circuit. (Item via League of CA Cities.)

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

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

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

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

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