I have found myself studying, of all things, a site plan of a bicycle path in the City of Portola. Why would a small-town bike path be interesting, particularly one that exists only on paper? Perhaps because site plans, like all maps, seem so static, while the dotted line that represents the bike trail suggests movement and freedom. It is easy to imagine ourselves as tourists on bicycles in this small mountain town in the Sierra Nevada, tooling through the historic district, and then crossing the bridge into the riverfront area. Or maybe that dotted line, found on the update of the city's general plan, carries an added significance — a subliminal message, if you will — of showing all the parts of the town that ought to be better connected in downtown Portola. Looking at those connections in the city's new general plan update, in fact, is the best way to understand the strategy to revive the stagnant downtown in this city of 2,500 people in Plumas County. It would be wrong to suggest that that the plan of downtown Portola, especially the proposed Riverwalk and Old Town Corridor under discussion here, relies entirely on connections. Like all master plans, the city's general plan update relies on the construction of new streets and paths, new buildings and public spaces. Yet I would argue that the plan, prepared by Wade Associates of Sacramento, is an object lesson in getting the most out of bringing things together. And in a city with few resources and somewhat scattered attractions, making wise connections is the best way to get good weight out of planning. Like many other cities that have depended historically on the timber industry, Portola is casting about for ways to re-invent itself. The decline of logging has had a severe impact on a city that was essentially a railroad depot for timber. Tourism and fishing, while seasonal, have been a saving grace — except for the controversial program, sponsored by the state Department of Fish and Game, of poisoning nearby Lake Davis to rid the water of an invasive, non-native pike. The poisoning managed to kill the local fishing industry but not the pike, which eat the trout favored by anglers. The city apparently is looking to maximize its existing assets, which are strong. One is the city's adjacency to federally owned parkland, including campground areas. A second is the beauty of the Middle Fork of the Feather River as it meanders through the Sierra. And a third factor, possibly the city's single greatest source of international fame, is the Portola Railroad Museum. It not only has a collection a 35 locomotives but also offers lessons in driving locomotives and, for a price, will allow men and women who still fantasize about being Casey Jones — I'm a member of this community — to drive an actual locomotive around a circular track. The design problem, then, is how to bring all these disparate events into a single, coherent urban experience. The most obvious need for connection is between the older part of the city on the south side of the river, and the newer downtown on the north. Short of building new bridges, that means providing activity and lively uses on either side of the single bridge in town that spans the riverbank and the railroad tracks. In the Old Town area, the popular railroad museum is an obvious node for creating new activities and urban forms. To provide a better sense of an entrance to the museum, the plan proposes bending Colorado Street, a north-south corridor, so that it meets the east-west axis of First Street. The new quarter-circle-shaped block that results from this meeting would become a public green for "turfed recreation" and other events. A city block full of new restaurants, wedged between the public green and the railroad museum, would rely on its propinquity to these public areas to capture the lunch crowd. Visitors who want to walk off lunch might then be inclined to walk across the bridge to the river-oriented shops and restaurants on the river's northern bank. (This riverbank is a narrow finger of land between the river and Highway 70, two barriers that focus activity into a small area.) If visitors do walk across the bridge, they will find a collection of outdoor and camping-related amusements, including outdoor ice skating, camping, more "turfed recreation," and shops. The north part of the river bank is the most ingenious piece of connection-making in the plan, particularly in the way that the plan connects wilderness and urbanity in phases: starting with the federal park to the east, we go to a slightly denser, more settled use — the campground — then to a permanent building, the visitor center. Moving farther west, the plan provides several uses, including a park and an ice-skating rink, that buffer the campsite from urban life. The landscape grows more urban still as we move still farther west, passing by the amphitheater, the shops and restaurants, and the Memorial Hall Events Center. The weakness of the plan is that the two sides of riverbank need more connections, and hence at least one more bridge. One good spot for a new bridge would be immediately north of the Railroad Museum, connecting with the Visitor Gateway. Beyond providing more access between the divided downtown's north and south sides, a new bridge would make the bike path into a circuit that would allow our imaginary bicyclist to return to his or her starting point without retracing her route. And while I am generally a big supporter of parks, I am a little worried whether or not the several public greens in this plan will dissipate some of the energy in a downtown area where the experience of moving among other people can provide a pleasant contrast to the isolation of camping and fishing. This reflects an admittedly nostalgic note, because I remember camping outside Aspen, Colorado, during the 1960s. We woke up in tents, put on city clothes and went to the local music festival. It was a weirdly enchanting mixture of wildness and high culture. While Portola may not offer a music festival, the plan of the riverbank suggests the charm of leaving the forest and coming into a small city. Still, I hope it doesn't get too crowded in Portola. I have my heart set on driving a locomotive, and I don't want to wait too long in line.

A streetlighting assessment district created prior to Proposition 218 is exempt from the tax-limiting initiative, the Fourth District Court of Appeals has decided. The court held that the City of Riverside's Street Light Assessment District is exempt because it provides revenue to operate streets, which was a specific exemption in the 1996 initiative. The July ruling was a blow to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Paul Gann's Citizens Committee, two statewide organizations that backed Proposition 218. The landmark Proposition 13 was the forebearer to Proposition 218, the court noted. Backers intended for the initiative to close a loophole in Proposition 13 that allowed local government to raise taxes via special assessments. Proposition 218 requires two-thirds voter approval for special assessments. But Proposition 218 (Cal. Const. art. XIII D) contained four exemptions, and the Riverside case turned on one of them. The proposition exempted pre-existing special assessments "imposed exclusively to finance the capital costs or maintenance and operation expenses for sidewalks, streets, sewers, water flood control, drainage systems or vector control." Under the Riverside assessment district, created under the Landscaping and Lighting Act of 1972 (Sts. & Hy. Code § 22500), the city taxes almost all private property owners to pay for electricity for street lights. The district raises about $3 million annually. "Electrical current is necessary to operate streetlights; and streetlights, we believe, are necessary to operate streets and sidewalks," Justice Betty Ann Richli wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. "Streetlights make streets and sidewalks safer. Thus, they are analogous to traffic lights." Proposition 218 contained exemption for "traditionally appropriate, nonabusive special assessments" such as those for streetlights, the court ruled. The taxpayer groups argued that the necessity of streetlighting was a factual question that was not resolved at the trial level. But the appellate court said the question was whether streetlighting is necessary within the meaning of Proposition 218. The court affirmed that streetlighting is necessary. "Although the drafters of Proposition 218 did not exempt streetlighting assessments in so many words, it does not violate their evident intent to hold that a streetlighting assessment is exempt as an expense of the operation of streets and sidewalks," Richli wrote. Riverside city officials' unease regarding the assessment district's legal status vis a vis Proposition 218 was not an issue, the court said. In June of 1997, Riverside placed a measure on the ballot that was intended to continue the district. Measure EE received 50.5% of the vote, well short of the two-thirds requirement needed to survive as a special tax. "This does not necessarily mean the City actually believed the assessment was invalid under Proposition 218," the court said. "The City was entitled to take a ‘suspenders and belt' approach — to try to reauthorize the assessment as a special tax and thereby to forestall litigation, while preserving its position that the assessment was exempt, just in case its efforts failed and litigation did ensue." Proposition 218 also exempted assessments imposed pursuant to a petition signed by all property owners, assessments needed to repay certain bond indebtedness, and assessments that had previously received a majority voter approval. The Case: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association v. City of Riverside, No. E022717, 99 C.D.O.S. 5739, Filed July 16, 1999. The Lawyers: For Jarvis: Jonathan Coupal, (916) 444-9950. For Riverside: Stan Yamamoto, city attorney, (909) 782-5567.

San Bernardino County has adopted a policy that calls for the county to assume more control over land use in unincorporated areas within incorporated cities' spheres of influence. The policy concerns leaders of many cities in San Bernardino County who fear the county may compete with cities for desirable development and approve substandard projects that cities eventually must serve. The policy, which the Board of Supervisors adopted as a general plan amendment in June, is the latest in a series of conflicts between San Bernardino and at least some of its 24 incorporated cities. Although the new policy appears to have arisen from a flight in the San Bernardino metropolitan area, the change could have major impacts in high desert communities, northeast of San Bernardino, that have giant spheres of influence. But Jim Goss, the county's interim development services director, contended cities are overreacting. The general plan amendment replaces a previous policy that called for the county to rubber stamp whatever a city wanted within a city's sphere of influence, he said. "Basically, it did not reflect at all the rights of the county under state law," Goss said. By changing its stance toward development, the county "was clarifying its policy so that people in unincorporated areas can go to their elected representatives and get some land use changes," Goss said. Relations between the county and cities have been poor for some time, noted Barstow City Planner Scott Priester. "This appeared to just be a punitive response to the Redlands lawsuit," he said of the county's new policy. The lawsuit to which he referred was filed by the City of Redlands against the county after the county approved a shopping mall for an unincorporated island inside of Redlands. The city contended the project violated a specific plan. Conflicts between Redlands and the county have continued as competing mall proposals have arisen, with some developers playing the city against the county. (See CP&DR November 1998, November 1997.) Goss conceded developers have enticed different jurisdictions to bid against one another for desirable projects. But he dismissed the argument that the county's new policy came arose strictly because of the Redlands mall dispute. The issues are much bigger, Goss said. Cities that want to control areas outside their boundaries should annex those areas, Goss said. The county will not stand in the way of large annexations proposed by Ontario and Chino, he pointed out. James Roddy, executive officer of the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, an independent agency, said the new policy is likely to have little practical impact on annexations. Although the county's previous policy appeared to encourage annexation, the county usually was neutral. Roddy is unsure how the new policy will shake out. There has been talk of some cities annexing their entire spheres of influence, but Roddy doubts that will happen. Desert cities such as Hesperia, Victorville, Barstow and Needles have adopted giant spheres of influence, which, under the county's old policy, extended city's land-use influence far and wide. Indeed, Barstow's sphere of influence stretches for 150 miles — clear to the spheres of towns that realistically are 30 miles away. Priester conceded Barstow, a town of 24,000 people, has plenty of room to grow within its city limits, which themselves cover 35 square miles. Although the county is exerting more say over so much land near Barstow, Priester said, "It does not really affect how Barstow does business." The city will still comment on nearby development proposals, but growth is not a major issue in the area. But urban growth is more of an issue in high desert communities closer to San Bernardino and in the San Bernardino metropolitan area, where job growth is rapid and houses remain relatively affordable. "My biggest concern," Roddy said, "is that it might spark new interagency competition for certain types of urban development. ... It could bring about some level of shopping for land-use entitlements." San Bernardino County is unusual in that it has a county-wide community services area authorized to provide the full range of urban services, Roddy explained. Developers dissatisfied with a city may ask the county to form an assessment zone within the CSA to provide infrastructure and services to a project, he said. Raising the fiscalization of land use argument, city officials fear the county will try to lure sales tax generators to unincorporated territory, or prevent cities from annexing commercial areas near their borders. Fontana, for example, is interested in annexing a 19-square-mile island inside the city, where California Speedway, a large recycling facility and other business enterprises have been erected on the former Kaiser steel mill. The county has also approved a warehousing center, giant truck stop and retail development for the same area. (See CP&DR July 1999.) Fontana City Manager Ken Hunt told the San Bernardino Sun, "The city is very concerned (with the general plan amendment) because it takes a long-standing policy that recognizes city concerns and takes away these rights. We want to clean up our city boundaries. And this is a wake up call." Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Paul Baine also expressed frustration. "They're saying ‘We can do what we want, and to hell with you,'" Baine told the Ontario Daily Bulletin. Goss, a retired Chula Vista city manager, said he understands the cities' fears. He said there is not a history of the county treating the cities well, and the new policy was introduced earlier this year with little input from cities, he said. But it's a two-way street. "I think the cities also have a responsibility to ensure that communication occurs early on," Goss said. "At the staff level, I think there's definitely room for improvement in how we communicate." However, LAFCO's Roddy said the new policy "clearly does soften the language" calling for cooperation of cities and counties regarding urban development within cities' spheres. Ultimately, the upshot of the new policy will be seen on a case-by-case basis, he said. "All our cities are concerned about it, but I think it's more a matter of perception that it is of fundamental changes in relationships," Roddy said. Relationships clearly would sour if cities band together in a lawsuit against the county, which has been hinted at. Contacts: Jim Goss, San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department, (909) 387-4131. James Roddy, San Bernardino County LAFCO, (909) 387-5866. Scott Priester, City of Barstow, (760) 256-3531.

The Novato Fire Protection District detached the former Hamilton Air Force Base in 1977, but last month the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the detachment was an illegal attempt to tax the federal government. The court said the fire district is obliged to serve the former base, now occupied by the Navy, the Coast Guard, other federal agencies and even some private entities. The unanimous three-judge appeals court upheld Northern California District Judge Fern Smith's ruling that the detachment was invalid under state law. However, the appeals court never considered state law. Instead, the Ninth Circuit said the detachment violated the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Because the federal government does not pay property tax, the district removed Hamilton from inside its boundaries so the district could charge a fee for emergency services. However, Circuit Court Judge Sidney Thomas wrote that the district has an obligation to serve the area and "the district cannot now contrive to tax the United States through gerrymandering." The district intends to seek a rehearing before the entire 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said George Silvestri Jr., one of the district's lawyers. "We can't afford to sit back and let this decision stand," he said. "It raises some very frightening possibilities about the instability of the boundaries of local government entities in California." Hamilton Field had always been in the Novato Fire Protection District, but the Air Force maintained its own fire department. When the Air Force decommissioned the facility in 1974, it left Hamilton with minimal fire protection. The Navy then contracted with the district for fire protection and emergency services on portions of Hamilton managed by the Navy. The contract provided for payment of a flat fee equal to the amount the district would have received in property tax had the Navy's land been privately owned. Concerned that this arrangement might constitute an illegal intergovernmental tax, the district commenced detachment proceedings. "The stated purpose of the proposed detachment was to ensure that the district would continue to ‘receive compensation for any services it provided to the currently tax-exempt properties,'" according to Thomas's opinion. The Navy and Air Force lodged protests, but the district went forward anyway. In November of 1977, the district's voters approved the detachment, which the Marin County Local Agency Formation Commission and the California Secretary of State subsequently recognized. The district continued to provide service for a flat fee. But by October of 1996, the Coast Guard had assumed control of some property formerly managed by the Navy. The Coast Guard refused to pay the fire district, so the district sought a declaration of the detachment's validity in Marin County Superior Court. The Coast Guard moved the case to federal district court, which granted the federal government's motion for summary judgement on the grounds that the detachment was invalid because the election was improper. On appeal, the district did not dispute Hamilton's tax immunity. The district argued that the 1977 election was legal. But the appellate panel sidestepped the question of state election law. Instead, the court decided the district had violated the Supremacy Clause. "When the district assessed a fee equivalent to a theoretical property tax as a condition for providing fire and emergency medical services, its action clearly ran afoul of the Supremacy Clause," Judge Thomas wrote. Judge Thomas continued, "This is not to say that the United States cannot be charged reasonable fees related to the cost of government services provided, such as payment for metered water usage. However, the contractual fees that the district charged the government in exchange for continued fire and emergency medical protection were based not upon the actual cost of services provided to Hamilton Field, but rather upon the value of the property in question." The fee "clearly constituted an impermissible tax," the court concluded. Furthermore, the district intended to circumvent Hamilton's tax immunity, the court said. "We cannot allow a municipality to initiate a detachment action with the purpose of charging the federal government a flat fee for basic services that the municipality otherwise has a duty to provide." The court also said the statute of limitations for challenging the 22-year-old detachment is not binding when the federal government asserts a federally created right. Concerned about the stability of local government boundaries, the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commissions argued in an amicus brief that a 180-day statute of limitations existed. Silvestri, the fire district's lawyer, said the ruling raises questions about how far back the federal government may reach to challenge elections. The decision also throws into question contracts between the district and federal agencies, and the status of millions of dollars the Navy paid the district, he said. The Case: Novato Fire Protection District v. United State of America, No. 98-15441, 99 C.D.O.S. 5410, 1999 Daily Journal D.A.R. 6903, filed July 7, 1999. The Lawyers: For the fire district: George Silvestri Jr., (415) 883-8800. For the U.S.: Mary Beth Uitti, Department of Justice, (415) 436-7200.

State and federal officials early this summer released a "draft preferred alternative" for the Calfed Bay-Delta Program, which officials inside the process contend will overhaul the plumbing system on which most California residents, farms and businesses rely. Many observers outside the program, however, struggle to determine how significantly Calfed will alter water and land use policies. Although the full plan weighs in at 40 pounds, it is light on some crucial details that might have major implications for land use planning. The plan, for example, does not recommend whether or not to build new reservoirs, and it postpones for up to seven years a decision on an "isolated conveyance facility" — better known as a peripheral canal. Still, water policy and politics appears likely to get more attention in coming months, as Calfed leaders have scheduled 15 public hearings around the state from August 18 through September 22. Plus, Gov. Gray Davis is receiving pressure, from Sen. Dianne Feinstein among others, to get more involved in state water negotiations. Calfed is a five-year-old effort involving 15 state and federal agencies, including the Resources Agency of California, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Calfed is charged with developing long-term solutions to Bay-Delta system problems concerning fish and wildlife, water supply reliability, flood control and water quality. Calfed will not change local land use decision-making and it will not tie water supply to growth, Calfed spokeswoman Valerie Holcomb said. Still, she pointed to several aspects of the Calfed plan that should interest planners and developers. Enhancing water reliability and water quality remain a major part of Calfed's mission, which should affect local development decisions, she said. Byron Buck, executive director of the California Urban Water Agencies, said the argument within Calfed over additional surface water storage is a surrogate for the growth debate. Not even Buck's member agencies, which are the state's 12 largest water districts, can agree on how closely water should be linked to land use planning. Buck complained that the pace of traditional water development has slowed to a trickle, which could well affect future urban development. "We've been through five consecutive wet years, and that continues to mask the concerns we have with water in California," he said. Joan Dym, executive director of the Southern California Water Committee, said, "Let's recognize that growth will happen and let's plan for it. I think storage is obviously one way to do that. There are lot more underground storage opportunities than we are taking advantage of." Agriculture has an obvious stake in the debate, but other business interests are paying close attention, too. An extended shut-down of pumps in the Delta to protect the Delta smelt this spring raised water-delivery concerns among some Silicon Valley manufacturers. Businesses planning to relocate or expand are considering water reliability when weighing siting options for new plants, said Dym, who represents a coalition of businesses, cities, counties and water agencies. Dym said Calfed needs to go forward now on the peripheral canal. "We don't want to wait 10 years down the road and then say, oops, and have to start from scratch," she said. Peripheral canal proponents say a water delivery system that bypasses the Bay-Delta system would improve water quantity and quality for the central and southern parts of the state, and prevent fish from getting sucked into Delta pumps. Opponents, however, fear such a canal would take too much water, harming the Bay-Delta ecosystem and inducing Southern California urban growth. While delaying for now decisions on the peripheral canal and new reservoirs, Calfed's latest plan does address water transfers. Rather than relying on the overcommitted state water project or a local water district, some developers purchase agricultural water rights from another location. Thus, water that would have irrigated crops in one part of the state, instead flushes toilets and keeps lawns green elsewhere. Calfed proposes a water transfer clearinghouse and a process for protecting areas from which water is being moved. "We're not talking about prohibiting a free market," said Holcomb, "but putting in place some guidelines that make the free market work better and protecting third parties who don't have a say over the transfer." Leaders of far northern California's rural counties, which are at the beginning of the state's plumbing system, have committed money and staff to participating in the Calfed process "because of the threats to land use and property rights," said Patrick Minturn, Shasta County assistant public works director. Minturn said a number of land use measures are tucked away in the volumes of Calfed documents. Among the issues he sees are stricter grading and erosion controls, greater development setbacks from riparian areas, water-efficient development mandates, and tight restrictions on sewer and storm drain discharges. The erosion control mandates could increase the cost of development significantly, Minturn said. For example, "you may see a quarter-acre sedimentation basin next to the parking lot for the new Wal-Mart," he said. Whether friend or foe of Calfed, several observers are frustrated with the pace at which the process is moving. Dym, among others, said Gov. Davis and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt need to take a direct role to speed things along. A final programmatic environmental impact statement is scheduled to be adopted in summer of 2000. Contacts: Joan Anderson, Southern California Water Committee, (909) 980-4700. Byron Buck, California Urban Water Agencies, (916) 552-2929. Patrick Minturn, Shasta County Department of Public Works, (530) 225-5661. Calfed Web page, http://calfed.ca.gov.

University of California, Santa Barbara, officials proposed building 200 dorm rooms a little too close to wetlands, the California Coastal Commission had decided. The commission approved the student housing but ordered the university to keep the planned construction at least 100 feet from a slough, coastal pools and other wetlands. The decision requires a major redesign of the San Rafael housing addition and will delay the project by a year, according to Tye Simpson, UCSB director of physical and environmental planning. University officials had hoped to have the dormitories ready for students in the fall of 2000. The UCSB proposal called for 200 dorm rooms in 18 buildings to house a total of 800 students. Housing is at a premium at the 20,000-student campus and in the neighboring unincorporated community of Isla Vista. University officials have agreed to build more housing, and the 10-acre site for the San Rafael addition is the last place on campus designated for housing by UCSB's Long-Range Development Plan, Simpson said. The San Rafael project is intended to house existing numbers of students, not additional UCSB students, he added. However, UCSB planners and the Coastal Commission differed over how best to protect natural resources. The university proposed a resource management approach that would have enhanced more valuable wetlands elsewhere, while the Coastal Commission took more of a preservationist approach, Simpson explained. Steve Hudson, a coastal program analyst for the commission, said the Coastal Act mandates protection of wetlands in general. Everyone involved agrees the wetlands involved are not pristine, but "even small and degraded wetlands serve an important environmental component," he said. Furthermore, UCSB's own Long-Range Development Plan — which the Coastal Commission approved in 1990 — requires a 100-foot buffer, Hudson noted. University planners had proposed buildings within 60 feet of wetlands, with grading even closer to the sensitive areas. Placing 800 students so close to the wetlands and to habitat for three rare plant species found on-site is bound to have an impact, but the revised project should offset those effects, Hudson said. While voting 9-1 in June to approve the dormitories, the Coastal Commission also required UCSB to provide better public access to a bluff and beach bordering the campus. The Coastal Commission decision may provide ammunition to environmental groups concerned about UCSB plans to build 500 faculty houses near a slough and nature preserve elsewhere on campus. The university has not officially filed those plans with the Coastal Commission yet, Hudson said. Contacts: Tye Simpson, University of California, Santa Barbara, planning director, (805) 893-8388. Steve Hudson, Coastal Commission analyst, (805) 641-0142.

It was bound to happen. The neo-traditionalist planning movement is making inroads into the most doctrinaire of planning dynasties – Caltrans. Late last year, in a little-noticed but potentially monumental policy shift, the state road bureaucracy issued Design Information Bulletin Number 80, thereby granting guarded approval of modern roundabouts as part of California's highway design toolbox. Now it's up to local governments to press ahead with a back-to-the-future concept: intersections where signalized or controlled stopping and multiple turning movement lanes are replaced with slowed, continuous, circular movement patterns around landscaped or art-bedecked center plazas. The concept of one-way circular intersections was probably invented by French architect Eugene Henard during the 19th century. His American counterpart William Eno was simultaneously proposing small circles to alleviate traffic congestion in New York City. But the idea never flourished, and implementation remained limited to grand urban design locations like Du Pont Circle in Washington DC. The notion that the roundabout could actually enhance intersection operation and safety really took root in England during the mid-1960s with the innovation of the "yield-at-entry" rule and the "angle-of-deflection" design. These features combine to slow entering cars, allow only one point of conflict, and keep traffic moving in accordance with its load characteristics. These minor but critical design improvements enabled the safe handling of much higher volumes of traffic. The roundabout concept has flourished in many countries since then – notably in France, the Netherlands, and Australia. But, interestingly, in North America the idea has been slow to take hold. One wonders if the simplicity of the concept offends our more techno-fix oriented engineers. But there is movement. Led by roundabout consulting crusaders like Florida-based Michael Wallwork and Santa Barbara-based Lief Ourston and Peter Doctors, the modern roundabout is an idea that is, well, coming around. And it's no wonder why. Not only do the roundabouts dovetail nicely with growing preferences for new urbanist design, but, importantly, they seem to really work. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that roundabouts can handle more traffic, reduce injury collisions, and save capital and operational costs. Plus, they're fun to tool around in. In the mid 1990s, Vail, Colorado, took a groundbreaking risk in tackling the interchange design at Vail Road and Interstate 70, which is the freeway that funnels Denver's weekend skiers into the Rocky Mountain resorts. The solution was a double roundabout design that saved $3 million in capital costs by eliminating the need for a bridge widening and $85,000 per year in traffic police staffing. Interchange capacity grew by 56% while injury crashes have eased by 66%. California trails in the acceptance of roundabouts. Instead, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada are at the leading edge. With Bulletin 80, Caltrans has taken a baby step toward acceptance. But it will be the local jurisdictions that must take the lead. In California, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Carlsbad, and Arcata are at the forefront. In each case, local planners have served in advocacy and education-dispensing roles. In Santa Maria's case, the developer of an adjacent big-box center financed two roundabouts in 1998. Reluctant to be guinea pigs for an intersection experiment, the developer winded up benefiting from the cheaper cost and from the unique design features that serve as entry points. According to Jim Stern, city planner, the facilities are functioning well, but there were administrative bugs. "We had a bit of a problem with the signage component," Stern said. "Because there is no roundabout signage approved by Caltrans, we have not been able to install the internationally-accepted roundabout approach signage." Tiny Arcata in Humboldt County is the epicenter of California's roundabout trend. The city, which is proud of the fact that it has no traffic signals, has one circle on line, two beginning construction later this year, and three more scheduled for the summer of 2000. According to Dobie Class, assistant public works director, the city is retrofitting existing intersections to make them safer and to avoid the costs of signals and maintenance. Santa Barbara traffic consultant Scott Schell said the transportation community in the state is "cautiously optimistic" about the future of modern roundabouts. "We certainly look at them in specific instances where it appears to be a feasible alternative. The general feeling is ‘let's try them at smaller locations and see if they work,'" Schell said. He added that even though vehicle collisions have been reduced, engineers are insecure about data on the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists. But Ourston asserted that there have been no pedestrian collisions involving roundabouts in the U.S. As the new urbanist movement has demonstrated, sometimes what's old is what's new. And in matters of traffic, this may mean we will be going in circles.

A new survey has documented what many planning and public policy experts have long suspected: California city managers prefer retail projects in their community over any other type of land use, and they least favor multi-family housing and heavy industrial projects. The survey — part of a study of land use and sales tax issues by the Public Policy Institute of California — was released just as the California Legislature considers a bill that would require cities that lure large retailers across jurisdictional lines to share tax revenue with the "losing" jurisdiction. The bill, AB 178, carried by Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Contra Costa County, was approved by the Senate Local Government Committee on July 14. A similar Torlakson bill failed to pass the same committee last year. The PPIC study also emerged at the same time that a committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors in Humboldt County concluded that big-box retailers will bring few new jobs and little new tax revenue to the county. The city manager survey found that retail ranked significantly higher than office, mixed-use, and light industrial land uses, which also rated as city manager favorites. Surprisingly, the survey found little difference in city manager preferences for land uses inside and outside redevelopment project areas. "To be fair, cities are not one-dimensional in their policy orientation, and they're still pretty interested in other types of development," said Paul Lewis, a PPIC researcher and co-author of the study, California Cities and the Local Sales Tax. The PPIC study also found that even though cities are heavily focused on sales tax, the hierarchy of sales-tax "winners" and "losers" in the state has not changed significantly in the last 25 years. Furthermore, the study concluded, distributing sales tax on a population basis — either statewide or on a county-by-county basis — would not create significant change, as least on a macro scale. Approximately half the cities would be winners and half would be losers. Though individual cities would be heavily affected, there would be little difference, in the aggregate, between cities that win and cities that lose. Cities with a high Latino population would be winners — but so would extremely affluent cities, because they often have little retail base. Sales-tax revenue has been considered especially important to cities ever since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. According to the report, cities received about 20% of their revenue from property tax and only 10% from sales tax prior to Proposition 13. Today, the two revenue sources are approximately equal at about 10% apiece. Cities receive most of their revenue from public service enterprises (approximately a third) and licenses, fees, and assessments (including development fees), which have grown from about 20% of revenue in the pre-Proposition 13 era to about 30% to 35% today. Sales taxes are especially important, however, because there are no legal constraints to growth in revenue and because the funds may be used for any purpose. In tracking city sales-tax revenue, Lewis and his co-researcher, Elisa Barbour, examined statistics in the 1991-93 period (a recession, especially for retailing) as well as historical trends from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Among other things, they found that per-capita sales-tax revenue is generally higher in cities with declining household sizes, cities that have not had rapid population growth, and — significantly — cities located outside the Central Valley. These cities were more successful not only during the 1991-93 period, but also over the entire 20-year period. In addition, PPIC found, cities active in redevelopment, those located near freeways, and those with a small African American population were also successful in the sales-tax game — but these differences only showed up during the 1991-93 period, not over the 20-year period. Significantly, however, researchers did find that central cities — defined as 36 older cities with established downtown areas — have lost considerable ground compared with suburbs. In 1971, central cities actually had greater sales-tax revenue per capita than suburbs did. Suburbs overtook central cities in the mid-'70s, and the gap has accelerated during the boom years of both the 1980s and the 1990s. Today, sales tax revenues in the central cities is about $90 per capital compared with about $110 in other cities. The study also found an increasing gap in per-capita sales-tax revenues between the Bay Area and the Los Angeles region. Los Angeles had higher per-capita sales-tax revenue until the early 1980s but has been losing ground ever since. Today, the figures are approximately $125 per capita in the Bay Area and $95 per capita in Los Angeles. The survey of city managers — to which about three-quarters of city managers in the state responded — measured not only land-use preferences but also factors reported by city managers that influence land use decisions. New sales-tax revenues came out as the most important factor, followed closely by city council support, eradication of blight (in redevelopment areas), infrastructure adequacy, and likelihood of job creation. With the exception of blight, these factors were not very different inside and outside redevelopment project areas. Meeting affordable housing needs, although higher in redevelopment areas, was among the least of city managers' concerns. However, city managers in different regions of the state had different attitudes. City managers in all parts of the state listed sales-tax revenue as an important motivation. But Bay Area city managers, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, listed city council support, traffic problems, and neighborhood concerns as top factors. By contrast, Central Valley city managers were far more likely to list job creation as a factor influencing their land use decisions. "If you're an isolated Central Valley city, you have to be concerned about jobs," Lewis said. Though PPIC released the study at the same time the Senate Local Government Committee considered the Torlakson bill, it is hard to say whether the study affected the bill's success. AB 178, which was opposed by the California Motor Car Dealers Association among others, requires that if a city offers a subsidy to a big-box retailer or auto dealer to relocate within the same market area, the city must offer a sales-tax sharing contract to the city from which the retailer is relocating. The contract must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the city council or county board of supervisors in each jurisdiction. The legislation defines a big-box retailer as a store of at least 75,000 square feet. Rex Hime, lobbyist for the California Business Properties Association, said opposition was muted by a number of changes from Torlakson's 1998 bill. Among other things, AB 178 limits the definition of a financial incentive so that some mitigation measures such as traffic improvements are not included and provides a specific definition of a "market area". As originally written, the bill defined "market area" as a 40-mile radius. At the July 14 hearing, the committee amended the bill to define the market area for big-box retailers as 25 miles, while retaining the market area for autos as 40 miles. "It's a much different bill than it was before," Hime said. The Humboldt County report was issued by a 10-member committee, including city managers and other prominent county citizens, appointed by the Board of Supervisors. The Ad Hoc Committee on Big Box Development concluded that because the county is isolated and its retail market is not growing very rapidly, any new big-box development would simply siphon jobs and sales from existing retailers. Supervisors created the committee in response to the pending question of whether to approve a Wal-Mart in Eureka. That question will be on the Eureka ballot August 24. The committee encouraged the county's cities to take advantage of the sales-tax sharing provisions in Proposition 11, passed by state voters last year. Contacts: Paul Lewis, Public Policy Institute of California, (415) 291-4400. Peter Detwiler, Senate Local Government Committee, (916) 445-9748 Rex Hime, California Business Properties Association, (916) 443-4676. California Cities and the Local Sales Tax is available on the PPIC web site, www.ppic.org.

Opponents of a 5,000-unit subdivision and golf resort in the western foothills of Stanislaus County continued their courtroom winning streak when Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Donald Shaver ruled a supplemental environmental impact report was inadequate. In a July decision, Shaver said the county "failed to adequately evaluate the environmental impacts and the cumulative impacts, failed to accurately describe one portion of the project and failed to recirculate the SEIR." In the first round of litigation over the Diablo Grande project, the Fifth District Court of Appeal ruled that the county's EIR had improperly deferred analysis of water supply issues. The court in that case, Stanislaus Natural Heritage Project v. County of Stanislaus, (1996) 48 Cal.App.4th 182, said the county could not make an informed decision on the development when the EIR only addressed the first five years of water supply for a 25-year project. Because the area does not contain adequate on-site water, project proponents have pursued a water transfer from the valley floor. After that decision, now known as Diablo Grande I, the county issued a supplemental EIR. But judge Shaver punched holes in that document too. "Nowhere in the report does it consider or evaluate the impact, alternatives or mitigation of directing 13,000 acre feet per year of valley or outside water to the new community," Shaver wrote. Shaver said the county misinterpreted Diablo Grande I by discussing in the SEIR a variety of potential water sources, three of which he called "too speculative." "The purposes of CEQA would be ill-served if the act sanctioned a generalized discussion of a shotgun list of options which leaves the reader to wonder which might or might not be used," Shaver wrote. The Cases: Protect Our Water v. County of Stanislaus, Superior Court Case No. 181472, and California Farm Bureau Federation v. County of Stanislaus, Superior Court Case No. 181448. The Lawyers: For Protect Our Water: Rose Zoia, Brandt-Hawley & Zoia, (707) 938-3908. For Stanislaus County: E. Vernon Seeley, assistant county counsel, (209) 525-6376.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has embarked on a major reorganization and a series of cost-cutting measures, partly in response to cost overruns for the construction of Eastside Reservoir in Riverside County. In July, MWD's new general manager, Ronald Gastelum, unveiled the first phase of a series of organizational reforms, calling for $10 million in immediate cost savings and perhaps as much as $100 million in cost savings in the coming years. Like the Calfed negotiations, the MWD's internal travails will not directly affect land-use issues in Southern California. But the agency supplies almost all the wholesale imported water in metropolitan Los Angeles and San Diego, providing water to 27 cities and water districts. Its boundaries have largely determined the boundaries of urban growth in Southern California over the past half-century. In recent years, the agency has had a series of internal problems, including a dispute with the San Diego Water Authority over whether San Diego will be able buy water directly from farmers in the Imperial Valley and have it shipped through MWD's Colorado Aqueduct. San Diego is MWD's biggest customer, and the possible loss of San Diego business could imperil the agency's capital program. The agency's largest capital project is the $2 billion, six-square-mile Eastside Reservoir project near Hemet, which is designed to increase surface water storage for the agency. Gastelum, a former official with the waste-management firm of BKK Corp., was appointed in March to replace John Wodraska, the MWD's previous general manager. The cost-cutting effort was initiated in the face of high-pressure criticism from the state Legislature regarding cost overruns and other allegations of mismanagement.

A 1998 law that builders hoped would keep a lid on school impact fees is instead becoming a tool for some districts to charge far higher fees than builders envisioned. The 1998 measure, known as SB 50, capped school fees at $1.93 per square foot. The Legislature passed SB 50 as part of a deal in which developers then agreed to support a $9.2 billion school facility bond on the November 1998 state ballot. Voters subsequently approved Proposition 1A. (See CP&DR June 1999.) However, SB 50 allows for school districts to charge "Level Two" fees in excess of $1.93 per square foot, and numerous school districts are going through the process. For instance, Modesto City Schools intends to adopt a fee of $3.73 this month, said Debbe Bailey, the district's director of planning and research. To go beyond the $1.93 limit, districts must prepare a five-year school facilities needs analysis as spelled out in the legislation, and must apply and be eligible for state funds. Then the district also must meet one of four criteria: 40 % of students enrolled in multi-track, year round school; or 50 % to two-thirds voter approval for a general obligation bond in the district during the last four years (meaning it failed); or 20 % of teaching stations in portable classrooms; or certain debt ceilings having been reached by the district. As of next year, districts must meet two of these criteria. Bailey's district cleared the portable classroom and bond indebtedness hurdles, but the required needs analysis was a challenge. "It's not a real needs analysis, it's a fee formula," she said. "Our district has probably one of the best data bases in the state, and it has taken us almost a year to get the information together." Several school districts in the San Diego area are preparing to levy Level Two fees of $2 to $5 per square foot, said Tom May, an attorney who assists with school financing. The requirements regarding portable classrooms and a failed local bond that got 50% of the vote are particularly easy to meet, May said. When Proposition 1A's $2.9 billion earmarked for additional K-12 schools runs out, districts may charge builders the full cost of new facilities, minus locally dedicated school monies, Bailey added.

DEALS: THE UNRAVELING OF DREAMWORKS AND WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT PUBLIC-PRIVATE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEALS Economic development and motion picture development are not alike. Economic development is a slow, often bureaucratic, process involving the collaboration of many people, including government, real estate interests, and big employers. Motion picture development, on the other hand, is dominated by a handful of powerful personalities, predominately studio heads, who can simply axe a project if they have second thoughts about it. End of story. On to the next project. The above observation is hardly original. Everybody knows that movie moguls are impulsive, willful and mercurial. The phrase, "as cooperative and public-minded as a studio executive" has never become a folk saying. Why, then, are we entrusting such people with an important part of our economic future? No doubt, this question was being repeated over and over in the minds of many Los Angeles residents in July, after DreamWorks co-founder and chief hatchetman Jeffrey Katzenberg wielded his axe. In a brief statement, Katzenberg said that DreamWorks was pulling out of its commitment to build the studio's long-anticipated headquarters in the Playa Vista development in the City of Los Angeles. Playa Vista, he said in the statement, was "no longer in the interests of DreamWorks." No apologies. No explanation. In other words, Katzenberg washed his hands of Playa Vista much as he would have rid himself of an unsatisfactory motion-picture development project. The problem is, building the studio was not a project that could be dropped without affecting many other people. Beyond the loss of potential jobs, the DreamWorks deal squandered a great deal of political capital and goodwill in Los Angeles. Katzenberg hung a lot of people out to dry, including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who campaigned vigorously for the project and even changed the business tax code, in part, to accommodate DreamWorks. Riordan also helped round up $35 million in economic incentives for the film studio. Similarly hung out was City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who first came to office campaigning against an earlier version of Playa Vista. Galanter had spent most of her political resources backing this controversial project on the promise of hundreds of high-paying jobs to be delivered by the film studio, as well as the many entertainment and technology companies expected to cluster around it. It's not as if Katzenberg and his partners, director Steven Spielberg and entertainment mogul David Geffen, did not have some ambivalence about Playa Vista. They had threatened to pull out before. Still, DreamWorks fought — and I mean fought — for the project for nearly five years. Katzenberg's tactics showed just how much tougher the entertainment industry is than commercial real estate, or nearly any other business that operates lawfully. Katzenberg publicly feuded with (and humiliated) developer Rob Maguire in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, just as he would later use the same newspaper to pillory his former boss at Disney, Michael Eisner. DreamWorks seemed to get everything that it asked for, including very favorable terms for 47 acres of ocean-front real estate from Maguire, who complained that Riordan strong-armed him into accepting the deal. After persevering and winning all that, it seems strange that DreamWorks would bow out after being rejected by a single lender. According to the Los Angeles Times, the lender turned down the deal because DreamWorks needed more "mezzanine financing," which is usually a way of providing more equity to a project. In other words, the lender asked for a bigger downpayment. (Customarily, real estate developers need to borrow some equity to receive a construction loan.) Here is where the mystery starts. Why did DreamWorks take no for an answer? One thing is clear: The loan refusal was used as a fig leaf for the DreamWorks partners. Does anyone really believe the shuck-and-jive routine of "oh, we couldn't get financing, so I guess we can't build a studio, after all. Darn." As the Times observed, each of the partners is a billionaire, or nearly so, and each could afford to finance the entire $200 million construction project out of his pocket without giving up his ski vacation in Gstaad. More than one person has observed that Katzenberg could have paid cash for nearly the entire project out of his recent settlement with The Walt Disney Company over contested royalty payments. So why didn't they build? This is my theory: It is well known that DreamWorks has fallen far short of its financial goals. Although several of the firms' movies have been well-received critically, only a few have been box office winners. It is perfectly believable that spending $200 million for a film studio may not appeal to DreamWorks as much as it did five years ago. After all, if these guys really wanted to build it, they would find a way. But they have decided that they can rent studio space and defer the grandiose prize of a monogrammed water-tower on their own studio lot. If there are any lessons to be learned from the Playa Vista fallout, however, they are not being learned quickly by local government. Almost desperate not to lose DreamWorks, the mayor's office and the City Council are trying to dangle a different development project elsewhere in the city in front of Katzenberg, this time in North Hollywood. Meanwhile, in accordance with California's dog-eat-dog style of regional cooperation, surrounding cities — including Burbank, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster — immediately made offers to el Tres Caballeros. (Lancaster, a high desert suburb as far away in the mind of Hollywood as Juneau, Alaska, reportedly offered 47 acres for free.) But DreamWorks will probably not build a campus anywhere. Yet there's something else more important that all the other Hollywood wannabes do not seem to understand. Companies like DreamWorks — entertainment and other fast-growing entrepreneurial firms — are bad bets for public-private partnerships. Perhaps cities would be better off with more lumbering, more conservative, more — dare we say it? — corporate partners than with hot-shot outfits. Unfortunately, the fastest growing sector of California's economy is in entrepreneurial entertainment, bio-tech, and software businesses, and this cachet of companies looks very sexy to economic development types. But if you lie down with DreamWorks, you will likely wake up alone.