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The San Francisco Planning Commission approved unanimously a fifteen-month period of controls on new developments in the Mission District. These new controls will require developers to provide information on how the projects will affect the neighborhoods economic diversity. Developers excused from the new regulations are those with 25 or more units or at least one-third of apartments reserved for low-income residents. Housing projects with more than 75 units must provide additional projections of the affect to the residents, businesses and community. The neighborhood activists pushed for a full moratorium on new developments to keep the affordability in the Mission. Coastal Commissioners to Consider Ouster of Lester Members of the California Coastal Commission are considering ousting the commission's highest ranking staff member, Executive Director Charles Lester. His future will be an agenda item on the commission's February meeting, according to a recent notice. Capitol Weekly reports that pro-development forces are seeking Lester's ouster, while he generally has support from environmental advocates. The same report indicates that commissioners who support Lester's ouster are appointees of Gov. Jerry Brown. LAFCO Sues City of Gilroy The City of Gilroy is facing an unusual lawsuit by the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission for illegally annexing 721 acres of farmland to build a new 4000-unit development. LAFCO says Gilroy violated CEQA and did not consider water and other impacts, and is not developing land within its city boundaries. The city council is currently divided on the development of the project. Mayor Perry Woodward hopes the city and LAFCO will come to a compromise. "We've been saying all along that this will take 10 to 15 years," Woodward told the Gilroy Dispatch. "This isn't a short-range project. We will have a discussion with LAFCO and if we can find a middle ground, then we will move forward." L.A. City Council Formalizes Oversight of Olympic Bid Finances The LA 2024 Committee, the group that is backing Los Angeles' Olympic bid, has signed off on a memorandum of understanding that gives the Los Angeles City Council oversight over the bid's financial projections. Los Angeles City Council must sign off on the bid because of the possibility for financial risk to the city. The International Olympic Committee typically requires host cities to pledge financial guarantees. President of the Council Herb Wesson told LA Times, "We don't believe anything this big should occur without us being equal partners." The agreement enables the council to hire an accounting firm or other expert to examine revenue and cost projections. The major expenditure in Los Angeles hosting the Olympics is constructing the village, housing 17,000 athletes, coaches, and other support staff. Coastal Commission Advances Controversial Sea Wall Fee City of Solano Beach is discussing how best to protect the environment and recreational uses of a beach while still protecting homeowners on beach cliffs at risk of erosion. The California Coastal Commission has asked citizens living on the coast to pay a mitigation fee to for the amenity of a sandy beach, which is protected by the sea wall permits. The fee will then be issued statewide. The Solano Beach proposal is a fee of $870 per linear foot of sea wall and will increase up to $1,311 in 2026. Most sea walls in the city are 50 feet long, and homeowners have expressed concerns that the fees are too steep as by building these walls they are protecting beachgoers from collapse and landslides. According to a report in the L.A. Times, environmental groups feel it is "pointless to build sea walls because eventually the ocean will destroy them and the bluffs will collapse." S.F. Lawmakers Propose Competing Housing Measures Following the passage of several measures related to affordable housing in November, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Jane Kim have each proposed to put competing measures to promote affordable housing on the June ballot. Kim's measure would increase the minimum percentage of below-market-rate units in a development to at least 25%. Lee's proposal leaves that percentage up to the city controller and Planning Department. Supervisor Scott Wiener has also proposed an initiative in which conditional use permits would be excused for developments that are 100 percent affordable housing. The deadline for measures on the ballot passed last week; however, initiatives can be negotiated or pulled out. Burbank Enters into Contract to Plan High Speed Rail Hub The City of Burbank has entered into an agreement with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to spend $1.2 million to plan for a transportation hub adjacent to Bob Hope Airport. The rail authority announced it would provide $800,000 while City of Burbank will contribute $400,000, mostly from a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority grant. The project will take almost two years but will involve community outreach and designs. Other cities in California have reached similar agreements with the rail authority: Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield, Gilroy and Palmdale. Borrego Springs Faces Dwindling Water Supply Results from a six-year groundwater study completed by the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that the inland San Diego County community of Borrego Springs may be in peril. Its only source of water, groundwater, is being depleted four times faster than it is replenished. The town of 3,500 people includes golf courses, and farms uses, which collectively use 20,000 acre-feet. Only 5,600 acre-feet sinks into the aquifers from rainfall and other sources. The study also showed that citrus farms (43%), palm tree farms and ornamental shrubbery nurseries use 70% of the water, while 20% goes to recreational reasons such as the golf courses, and 10% to residential. The town has constructed a group called Borrego Water Coalition to discuss and plan for its future. Sacramento Imposes Restrictions on Short-Term Rentals The Sacramento City Council unanimously approved two ordinances to regulate the use of short-term rental services such as Airbnb. Airbnb hosts must now obtain a business operations permit, and pay the transient occupancy tax of 12% of the room charge. The hosts must now notify neighbors within 200 feet that a permit has been issued, keep a register of all guests, have a six guest limit, rent less than 90 days annually if not primary residence, and host no weddings, fundraisers or other events. The ordinance is the strictest yet imposed among major California cities. Shirey to Step Down as Sacramento City Manager Sacramento City Manager John Shirey has announced he is leaving his position November 2016. He has served in Sacramento since 2011 and is credited with much of the revitalization of downtown Sacramento and Golden 1 Center. While Councilman Jay Schenirer says Shirey's greatest accomplishment was getting Sacramento on solid financial footing, in 2014 the city had a surplus for the first time in seven years. Shirey joined the city after a tenure as executive director of the California Redevelopment Association, which disbanded following the dissolution of redevelopment in 2011.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee introduced a five-pronged plan to build and rehabilitate 10,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2020. Significantly, construction will begin in November to allow nonprofit developers to take over federally funded public housing projects in exchange for upgrading them, hopefully repairing 1,400 units by 2017 and another 2,060 by 2018. In the wake of the removal of 5,470 apartments from protected status through evictions from 2004 to 2014, Lee's plan looks to pass legislation to give the city first right to buy the property if it goes on the market and to ensure that when new housing units go on the market, residents of that neighborhood have priority to rent or buy them. Though it strongly advocates for increasing affordable housing, Lee has clashed with sects of progressive housing advocates in opposing Proposition F, which would curtail the use of short-term rental sites like Airbnb, and Proposition I, which would halt construction of market-rate developments in the Mission for two years. While backers say that market-rate housing contributes to soaring prices, Lee says that the moratorium is counterproductive because market-rate developer help finance construction of affordable housing. Air District Votes for Stricter Controls on Urban Oil Fields Following a multitude of health and quality of life complaints over the past several years by residents neighboring oil and gas fields, the South Coast Air Quality Management District board in an 11-2 vote approved new rules requiring urban oil fields to control odors and more adequately respond to complaints from nearby residents. Applicable to as many as 240 facilities operating more than 4,000 onshore oil and gas wells, the regulations will require operators to adopt new odor control measures and post signs with instructions on how to report odor complaints. They will also force facilities within 1,500 feet of homes, schools and healthcare facilities to submit reports on the cause of any confirmed release of odors, oil mist, or droplets. Operators of facilities within 100 meters of homes will have to conduct daily inspections of well equipment in a compromise to industry groups that lowered the distance from the originally proposed 1,500 feet for daily inspections. More than 32,000 people in the Los Angeles basin reside within 100 meters of active or or gas wells, and about 1.7 million live within a mile of those wells. L.A. Olympic Bid May Jump-Start Transit Projects The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority is trying to use Los Angeles' bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics to fast-track two of its most anticipated rail projects. Metro sent a letter to the Federal Transit Administration asking to join a pilot program that would allow it to follow an "extremely aggressive" schedule to finish the $2.3-billion Purple Line subway extension and the $330 million LAX train station by 2024. The Purple Line - currently planned to be expanded in phases to Mid-Wilshire in 2024, to Century City in 2025, and to the Department of Veterans' Affairs campus in West L.A. in 2036 - would be crucial to the success of the Olympics, carrying thousands of international visitors to UCLA's campus to see events, Metro Chief Executive Phillip Washington wrote in the letter. Washington proposed accelerating the plan with concurrent construction on all three phases, hopefully funding the third phase through a $1 billion federal grant and $525 million in local taxpayer revenue, the letter said. They also hope to expedite the LAX "people mover," which will connect the airport with a consolidated car-rental facility, a ground transportation hub and a station on the Crenshaw line, from a 2028 schedule. FBI Targets Palm Springs Mayor's Ties to Developer The FBI raided Palm Springs' City Hall in response to allegations that Mayor Steve Pougnet illegally worked as a consultant for a developer when he voted to sell city property to the same developer. The raid comes as the city's downtown - developmentally stagnant for decades - has been booming with construction of new hotels and restaurants due to city incentives of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, the alleged involvement of the mayor with developer Richard Meaney, which the mayor called a mistake, has led some to say that developers have become too powerful in the desert city.  "People like to come here because it's an escape from the city, but this council is putting, basically, a miniature Century City in the heart of town," Frank Tysen, who owns a downtown boutique hotel, told the L.A. Times. Baylands Project Seeks Input from Would-Be Neighbors Residents in the tiny, 2,000-home city of Brisbane are being surveyed for their opinion on the proposed Baylands project, a huge mixed-use development that would add as many as 4,434 homes, condos and apartments along with 7.5 million square feet of commercial space on 684 acres of abandoned rail yards and bay fill. Center to the survey is how residents feel the surge of growth would alter the way of life in one of the Bay Area's smallest communities, with the survey asking voters to decide whether "I worry that too much is changing too fast in Brisbane and we're losing our small-town character," or "I feel we're maintaining Brisbane's small-town character even as we change and grow as a community." An alternate proposal put together by a citizens groups calls for a similar amount of commercial space, but no housing at all, raising red flags to housing advocates.  Study Questions Link between Food Deserts and  Obesity A study from Santa Monica-based RAND Corp. says that there is little evidence that eliminating food deserts - areas and neighborhoods that are devoid of fresh, healthy food - would improve people's health. Rather, the study said that causes of the obesity epidemic in low-income neighborhoods are more complex and include cost of food, cultural preferences, and marketing, and that simply putting a supermarket in a low-income neighborhood likely won't solve any problems. Specifically, the study found virtually no link between the type of food and drinks that Los Angeles County adults consume and the proximity of fast-food outlets, grocery stores and convenience stores to their homes. However, Dr. Paul Simon, director of the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said that while government regulations intended to improve public health tended to be too simplistic, the food environment is still one of many important factors in the obesity epidemic. Cost of Transbay Terminal Development Rises San Francisco's new Transbay Transit Center, whose price tag for construction jumped from $247 million to $2.1 billion two months ago, will cost an additional $244 million to complete its first phase, according to new estimates from consultant T.Y. Lin International. The project's first phase will set up a bus terminal with room for a railroad in the basement and a park on top, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has repeatedly helped the Transbay Joint Powers Authority balance its budget as the costs have soared. According to the report, much of the reason for the increase in costs is the booming economy pushing construction costs higher, along with a pattern of inaccurate estimates on contracts and overly optimistic assumptions. Study Identifies Southern California's Worst Air Residents in an Ontario neighborhood near the 60 Freeway are breathing in the dirtiest air in California, according to new measurements of lung-damaging soot by the South Coast Air Quality Management District as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The average concentration of fine-particle pollution about 30 feet from the freeway was 18.7 micrograms per cubic meter from January to March, compared with federal health standards limiting concentrations to 12 micrograms. "It's not just people living along the 60 Freeway - anyone close to that many diesel trucks is going to be breathing the same heavy pollution," Penny Newman, who heads the Riverside County-based Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, told the Los Angeles Times. Last year, the EPA instituted new requirements that 100 big cities place pollution monitors next to major roads. Air quality officials used to place monitors at a distance from traffic and other big pollution sources. S.F. Sup. Weiner Devises Plan for Subway Construction San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener laid out a plan to increase and maintain subway infrastructure citywide through his "Subway Master Plan," which will task San Francisco with "always" having a subway under construction. Seeking to accommodate a potential population boom of over 2 million people in the next 30 years, Wiener's plan would bring Muni subways to the southern and western sections of San Francisco and construct a second BART transbay tube to connect the East Bay with San Francisco and to alleviate traffic as the Bay Area grows. The master plan, which Wiener plans to introduce via an ordinance to the Board of Supervisors this week, does not identify funding sources for subway tunneling, which Wiener said would be acquired on a per-project basis. San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority Board of Directors Chairman Tom Nolan, however, said that many of these projects require federal funding, and the government has lately been stingier. "With the current situation, they're not likely to give us an extra billion dollars for more subways," Nolan told the SF Examiner. San Diego Appoints Planning Director Jeff Murphy, the planning director for the City of Encinitas, will serve as the new Director of the Planning Department for the City of San Diego, according to a letter from Mayor Kevin Falconer. Murphy has served as the director for Encinitas for 15 years, overseeing land development operations and developing an approach to public engagement on the City's Housing Element Update. He was also instrumental in the rebuild efforts following the 2003 and 2007 wildfires, directing, organizing, and coordinating approximately 100 employees, supervisors, and contract staff in carrying out planning and land use efforts. Murphy succeeds Tom Tomlinson, who had served in an interim capacity for over a year, having succeeded CP&DR Publisher Bill Fulton.

Three environmental groups are suing Riverside County over a climate action plan and amendments to its general plan. Plaintiffs claim that, contrary to the plan's stated goals to combat climate chance and protect the environment, the plan actually creates increased traffic, air pollution and threats to wildlife. Plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, and the Sierra Club. The groups argue that the Board of Supervisors violated CEQA by certifying an inadequate environmental impact report. The county argues its plans are up to the state's standards and designed to assist California in meeting its GHG emission-reduction targets. According to the groups, Riverside County is not discouraging sprawl by increasing density in existing cities, not actively reducing pollution, and allows for developments near sensitive wildlife areas. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 22. NFL Approves Rams' Move to Los Angeles After a 21-year wait, the National Football League has finally approved the relocation of a team to the Los Angeles area starting in the 2016 season. NFL owners voted, 30-2, to allow the St. Louis Rams to transfer to Los Angeles. They will temporarily play at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and then move to a new stadium complex in Inglewood. The San Diego Chargers have a one-year option to join, but must decide by Jan. 15, 2017 or else the Oakland Raiders will get the year-long option. If they both choose to stay in their home markets they will each get $100 million for their own new stadiums. The proposed stadium in Inglewood will open in 2019 and cost almost $3 billion with no public funds. The 298-acre site will include entertainment, retail, housing, performing arts venue, and privately financed stadium with 70,240 seats. Study of Bay Area Carbon Footprint Released UC's CoolClimate Network, which includes researchers from UC Berkeley and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, recently released a ranking of census blocks in the nine-counties in the Bay Area according to carbon consumption. The per-household measurements are based on transportation use, food consumption, goods and services used, energy to heat or cool home, materials going into construction, electricity use and waste. The study is the first detailed carbon study of a major metropolitan area. "One of the things that really struck me the most was the wide variation within cities," Christopher Jones, program director of the CoolClimate Network, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Oakland, for example, has some of the highest and lowest carbon footprints in the entire Bay Area, all within the same city." The study found that Atherton has the largest per-household carbon footprint in the Bay Area, at 85.7 tons; Emeryville has the smallest, at 30.7 tons. Caltrans Issues Statewide Bikeway Guidelines Caltrans has issued a long-awaited "Class IV Bikeway Guidance" ( pdf ) document to assist planners and engineers in building protected bike lanes. In 2014 the Protected Bikeways Act mandated Caltrans create a category and guidance documents. The guidelines provide, for the first time, a statewide standard to help local planners design and implement bike infrastructure.  The document is written with a permissive rather than restrictive attitude to encourage the local jurisdictions to specialize to fit their communities. The guidance document are continuing protected intersections, loading zones and driveways. This document is designed to help engineers and planners build bike lanes for those commuters less comfortable with using the road alongside vehicle traffic. "We didn't want to dictate from a Caltrans statewide perspective," Kevin Herritt, chief of Caltrans' Office of Standards and Procedure, told Streetsblog . "The guidelines are intended to be flexible, so that all local jurisdictions can do what they need to do given their specific local circumstances." Coalition Proposes Region-wide Tax to Restore San Francisco Bay A coalition of Silicon Valley business leaders, Bay Area Council, and environmental groups such as Save the Bay are teaming up to create a new local tax for the Bay Area to vote on in the next election. This initiative would put a $12 tax on each parcel to grow a fund for bay restoration to protect against rising sea levels. If approved this program would raise $500 million over the next twenty years for levees and restoration of natural buffers such as marshes and wetlands. The tax poses complex issues in communities not adjacent to the Bay, such as Gilroy, Livermore, and Half Moon Bay that would still pay the tax. There is discussion of structuring it more like a benefits assessment; those that live closest to the potential danger should pay more. The San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority voted Jan. 13 to place the measure on the June 7 ballot. Los Angles Landlords May Pass Some Seismic Retrofit Costs on to Tenants Under a plan recently approved by the Los Angeles City Council, property owners and tenants can split the costs of seismic retrofitting, with tenants having rent increases of less than $38 a month over a ten-year period. The plan clarifies an ambitious ordinance passed in October that requires around 15,000 buildings to be retrofitted, especially unstable wood-frame apartments and concrete buildings. The costs of retrofitting these types of buildings could cost between $130,000 to millions. With the cost-sharing discussion resolved, the question of implementation remains. Property owners have seven years to retrofit wooden apartments and twenty-five years for concrete. According to Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety there are approximately 13,500 soft-story wooden buildings that need retrofitting. The city is continuing to search for financing options to assist landlords such as low-interest loans, permit fee waivers and tax breaks. Ojai Approves Total Ban on Short-Term Rentals Enacting what may be the strictest limits on short-term rentals in the state, the Ojai City Council voted, 5-0, to ban informal rentals from sites such as Airbnb and VRBO in all areas of the city including mixed-use and commercial zones. Councilmember Betsy Clapp told the Ventura County Star, "online business model circumvents and undermines community zoning laws" by allowing renters who do not enroll in schools, volunteer or contribute to the community. While some citizens said they rely on short-term rentals for financial support, the majority of the community was against this new home-based hotel system. The council also voted, 4-1, to subpoena Airbnb, VRBO, and others for records on existing vacation rentals in Ojay. The restrictions go into effect Feb. 1. Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Suit over Santa Ana Sucker Fish By refusing to hear a suit brought on by 21 Inland Empire water agencies, the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively put to rest an ongoing dispute over the protection of the Santa Ana sucker fish, which has been listed as threatened since 2000. The species lives in a specific 2-3 mile stretch of the Santa Ana river in Riverside, with over 9,000 acres in the county designated as critical habitat. Plaintiffs claimed the designation was based on flawed science and threatens billions of dollars of future water capture and groundwater recharge projects. With the ruling, the agencies must develop plans to protect the species. McKeever to Step Down as SACOG CEO Mike McKeever has announced, that 2016 will be his last year as Chief Executive Officer of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. During McKeever's 12-year tenure as CEO, the organization has been recognized as an active participant in collaborative regional decision making. The work of SACOG and the region is highly regarded nationally for the visionary Blueprint framework, the Rural Urban Connections Strategy (RUCS), several high performing Metropolitan Transportation Plans, and programming hundreds of millions of dollars for members and partners to construct transportation projects that increase transportation choice and mobility. Don Saylor, SACOG Board Chair for 2015 and Yolo County Supervisor, said in a statement, "Mr. McKeever is a tremendous asset to the Sacramento region. He has assembled a great team at SACOG and has been extremely effective at serving our diverse 31-member Board." A successor has not been announced. Transfer of Control over Ontario Airport Nears Completion Following an agreement over the sale of Ontario International Airport to the City of Ontario, the city is applying to the FAA take control of airport operations. Approval could come as early as July, thus substantially completing transfer of the airport from Los Angeles World Airports to the city. There are multiple payments being negotiated between the various cities, airports and agencies. Los Angeles World Airports will operate ONT during the transition phase and assist with the protection of workers positions and salaries. Upon transfer, Ontario will owe LAWA $120 million, to be paid for largely through $2 per-passenger fees. Redondo Beach Develops Plan for Waterfront The City of Redondo Beach is considering a public-private partnerships to redevelop its pier and other waterfront properties.  Infrastructure repairs to fix the pier, crumbling parking garages and waterfront cost around $108 million. CenterCal Properties and the city of Redondo Beach are working together on a $250 million project called Waterfront Redondo. The plan has 11 acres of public open space, improved beach and swim area, public market, 700-seat specialty theater, hotel, retail space, and wider boardwalk. Some residents have expressed concerns over restricted views, threats by exploding sea lion population and resistance to a mall by the sea. The proposal will go to the City Council in March for approval. Accessory Dwelling Units Catch on in Marin County The San Rafael City Council voted , 3-2, to approve "junior second units." Council members agreed that additional units need to be built in the city. However, two council members disagreed on the requirements for the new units, expressing concerns about overcrowding and excessive parking use. The new junior second units will be constructed without minimum lot size or additional parking spaces. Officials will monitor the program for two years to watch for overcrowding or other problems, which warrant revisions. The move is part of a trend in Marin County. Novato and Tiburon adopted ordinances earlier and Fairfax, Larkspur and Belvedere are moving towards adopting standards. San Jose Considers Approval of Apple Facility Even as Apple Computers constructs its new headquarters in Cupertino, the company has received endorsement from the San Jose planners for the construction of a new campus in North San Jose, near the airport. This 86-acre development would bring 16,000-20,000 Apple employees to the area. The development plan gives the campus 4.15 million square feet and 15 years to add buildings. Planners see the campus as an anchor for economic development in that part of the city.

With a significant increase in cap-and-trade funding for 2016, the Strategic Growth Council announced the expansion of the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation program (SALC). SALC provides funds that compensate farmers and ranchers for creating conservation easements. It also assists local governments' plans to preserve agricultural lands, with an eye towards mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Available funding in 2016 will amount to $40 million, a eightfold increase over the previous year. Funds will be made available through a competitive application process. Last year, SGC received $45 million worth of applications. The new funding level comes with new guidelines from SGC. Funding match thresholds have been reduced, particularly for projects in disadvantaged communities. Pre-applicaitons are due Feb. 16. Further information, including new guidelines, is available here .  DMV Issues Draft Regulations for Autonomous Vehicles Anticipating what could be one of the most significant urban trends of the coming decade, the Department of Motor Vehicles released a draft of preliminary regulations of autonomous vehicles ( pdf ). The regulations primarily focus on safety issues. Proposed regulations include the following: third-party safety certification; presence of liscenced operators capable of controlling vehiciles at all times; initial three-year deployment permits for manufacturers; privacy and cyber-security protection for vehicles that collect and relay data while driving. DMV initially intends to allow only autonomous passenger vehicles. Two upcoming workshops will be held to discuss the draft regulations and recieve input: Jan. 28 in Sacramento and Feb. 2 in Los Angeles.  Oakland, San Diego Stand Firm on Football Stadium Offers With NFL owners meeting in mid-January, Oakland and San Diego have issued what are apparantly final offers to keep their respective football teams. San Diego officials, including Mayor Kevin Faulconer, promised a $350 millino contribution towards a replacement for Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers. The City of Oakland is being less generous towards the Raiders. Mayor Libby Schaff and Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty reiterated their refusal to spend public money on a new stadium. They have, however, promised to give the Raiders a favorable deal on the long-term lease of 60 acres adjacent to O.co Coliseum if the Raiders choose to fund their own stadium.  Garcetti Taps Pasadena's Vince Bertoni to be New L.A. Planning Director Mayor Eric Garcetti today announced the nomination of Pasadena Planning Director Vince Bertoni as the new head of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning (LADCP). Bertoni comes to the department with more than 25 years of planning experience - including a previous stint at LADCP.  "Vince Bertoni's experience both here in Los Angeles and across the region will add tremendous value to our City's planning efforts," said Garcetti in a statement. "He is a professional who leads by collaborating and consensus-building - skills that will help him balance the diverse needs of our communities, and facilitate real progress in the ongoing conversation about development in this city."  Bertoni has served for five years as the City of Pasadena's Planning and Community Development Director. During that time, he successfully managed Pasadena's city planning program through a General Plan update, a comprehensive visioning process that happens just once every 20 years.  Before joining the City of Pasadena, Bertoni served as Deputy Planning Director in Los Angeles, where he oversaw the adoption of 16 historic preservation overlay zones, new guidelines for the Broadway Historic District, a bicycle master plan and a Hollywood community plan.  Los Angeles Goes After Nuisance Properties A new plan approved by the Los Angeles City Council would allow the city to take control of vacant nuisance properties from banks and put them under the control of a court-appointed overseer who would hire contractors to fix the houses for sale. Under the plan, proceeds from the sales, not taxpayer dollars, would pay for that work, including the fees of private attorneys who would handle the legal paperwork. "It offers an effective way to turn a property around quickly," City Attorney Mike Feuer told the LA Times. "This program costs nothing." Feuer's proposal now goes to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for approval. If he signs off, the city attorney would be able to have outside firms start working on takeovers after 30 days. Mayors Form Homelessness Alliance Five West Coast mayors announced the creation of an alliance united in addressing the growing crisis of homelessness. The alliance, consisting of Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, was developed during the West Coast Mayors Summit addressing homelessness, housing, and climate action. It first plans to elevate the importance of homelessness and housing in their communities and among their federal delegations. It would be committed to data collection and sharing - getting the right data for the West Coast - and sharing of best practices. Bay Area Cities Win Problem-Solving Grants San Francisco and San Jose are two of 13 new beneficiaries of grants from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's What Works Cities initiative, a program launched in April 2015 that provides grants to technical experts to help mid-sized urban governments solve local problems. The initiative, launched through New York-based Bloomberg Philanthropies, plans to expand to as many as 100 cities by 2017, investing a total of $42 million to support consulting and technical assistance for mid-sized cities. Its goal is to encourage cities to adopt the data-driven governing techniques that distinguished Bloomberg's administration in New York City. L.A. River Project Gets Key Backing from Army Corps The Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick, has signed off on the plan to restore the Los Angeles River, a major milestone in efforts to transform the river's aquatic ecosystem. This approval is a critical step toward moving the project forward to Congress for authorization and appropriation of funding.  The Chief's Report now goes to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) for administrative review and transmittal to Congress, expected in early 2016. Congress must authorize the project in a Water Resources Development Act and appropriate funds in order for the Corps and the City to begin construction.  The plan will restore approximately 719 acres by widening the river in key areas by terracing and restructuring channel banks to support vegetation, creating side channels and off-channel marsh, daylighting small streams, and removing invasive vegetation. Associated recreation features include trails, vista points, educational amenities, and pedestrian bridges. "We and our partners have put tremendous effort into developing and moving forward a plan that would improve the L.A. River ecosystem in a constrained funding environment," said Col. Gibbs. "Our number one priority of the plan is to restore the river's ecosystem while preserving the flood protection that is provided by the existing channel system."

More than four decades after a graduate student proposed adding a "green belt" of wildlife habitats, parks, and recreational areas in a rim circling the San Fernando Valley, Rep. Adam Schiff is pushing to add as much land as possible "Rim of the Valley Corridor" to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in the Los Angeles area. Backed by a broad coalition including the National Park Service, the designation would protect of the 1,000-square-mile area from future development and preserve puma and bobcat habitats, along with forests and fossil beds. "For us, it's a complete and utter enhancement," Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation president Kim Lamorie told the LA Times . "Our are always competing to get the National Park Service - to purchase land in and around our homeowners associations and rural villages.... Property values go up when you're surrounded by open space."  Group Proposes Complete Streets Alternative to 710 Freeway Tunnel An opposition group to an underground 710 freeway extension from Alhambra to South Pasadena presented its plan for an alternative to a tunnel proposed to close the 710 freeway gap through South Pasadena. Beyond the 710, a coalition of community organizations, environmental attorneys and five San Gabriel Valley cities, is advancing a plan that would expand bus service, improve surface streets, and develop more walkable communities to better address traffic congestion, pollution, and transportation needs of the area, all with a price tag for $875 million, much less than the $5.6 billion price tag of the tunnel, which is one of five alternatives analyzed in an environmental impact report released in March. "We are hoping to move beyond the old, tired 710 Freeway debate, which is wasting lots of time, money and resources," South Pasadena City Councilwoman Marina Khubesrian, vice chair of the Beyond the 710 coalition, told the  Los Angeles Times . Supporters of the estimated $5.6 billion tunnel, contend that the group is just trying to gum up an environmental review that is underway and undermine growing support for the tunnel project. Arcata Experiments with Zoning for Medical Marijuana  Believing that statewide marijuana legalization may be coming in 2016, the Arcata City Council voted unanimously for a proposal to create a new "Medical Marijuana Innovation Area," which would rezone three parcels of land to allow for the cultivation, processing, and wholesale of medical marijuana out in the open instead of in private homes. Isaiah O'Donnell, policy co-chairman for California Cannabis Voice Humboldt, estimated that there are about 100 indoor growers in the city that could legitimize their business in the innovation zone, but he expressed concern that a mega-cultivator could come in and monopolize the zone. "With Arcata being very small business-centric, I don't believe anybody should be able to come in and grow 50,000 square feet of cultivation," O'Donnell told the  Times-Standard .  Laguna Beach, Sacramento Propose Short-Term Rental Regulations Laguna Beach and Sacramento the latest cities to explore ways of regulating short-term rental services like Airbnb.  In Sacramento, City Council members say they are drafting a proposed ordinance backed by the city's planning department that would allow short-term rentals without a permit for up to 29 days and waive the requirement for an on-site manager. "We have this innovative new way for people to visit our city and for people to engage in the sharing economy," Sacramento City Councilman Steve Hansen told the Sacramento Bee . "We should be cautious of overshooting the mark with any kind of regulation." According to city estimates, Sacramento only has about 500 housing units used as short-term rentals, making it easier for lawmakers to take a breath before imposing restrictions, in contrast with coastal cities with high populations of tourists. Alternately, the Laguna Beach City Council voted unanimously to impose a 45-day moratorium on all new short-term rentals of 30 days or less as a temporary salve while city staff researches long-term solutions to what residents perceive as a growing quality-of-life issue. Residents have said that the high turnover of tenants has bred loud parties, the blocking of driveways by cars and increased trash on the streets. Additionally, city staff has said that many owners do not register their rentals with the city, avoiding the city's $275 transit occupancy tax.   Los Angeles Considers Long-Term Maintenance Plan for Sidewalks In an attempt to find a long-term plan for sidewalk upkeep after it makes a planned $1.4 billion in improvements, Los Angeles' top city budget office has recommended that the city transfer responsibility for fixing broken sidewalks in front of commercial businesses to property owners and make homeowners responsible for future upkeep. The report comes as the city has committed to spend $1.4 billion over the next three decades as part of a legal settlement with disability rights groups that had sued the city over its impassible sidewalks. Under the plan, businesses would have a year to voluntarily repair cracked sidewalks. If they did not comply, the city would make the repairs and charge the business. Residents, on the other hand, would receive a certificate following an inspection and city-funded improvements, and would be held responsible for all future damage to the sidewalks.  S.F. Mayor Proposes $500 Million for Affordable Housing San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed an ambitious new affordable housing plan to add 3,000 new units by 2030 in the Mission Bay, Transbay Terminal, and Hunters Point Shipyard-Candlestick Point neighborhoods. The plan would use the Redevelopment Property Tax Fund, established when the state dissolved redevelopment agencies, to tack on $500 million extra to Lee's previous plan to build $250 million worth of affordable housing throughout the city. The plan would authorize the issuance of bonds to build 1,800 affordable units by 2020, 660 units by 2025, and 540 units by 2030. Opposition Prompts Down-Scaling of Major San Diego Development Bowing to opposition from residents in the San Diego community of Carmel Valley, developer Kilroy Realty decided to scale back its massive mixed-use development known as One Paseo. Kilroy received City Council approval in February for a 1.1-million square foot version of the project with over 600 residences along with office and retail space, but a signature drive forced the previous version of the project to a vote in 2016 that would cost the city roughly $900,000. Observers are studying the fate of the project carefully as a potential precedent-setter for the development of denser projects in suburban San Diego. Kilroy said that the compromise would reduce the traffic caused by the project -- the major stickler for neighborhood opposition groups -- by half and would lower the heights of the tallest office towers from nine stories to seven stories. Kilroy will now present the compromised version to community groups for approval and eventually bring it back to the city council for another round of votes.  California Cites Score Highly in Fitness Ranking A new report ranks San Diego, the Bay Area, and Sacramento in the top five fittest among the 50 biggest metropolitan areas in the country. The ranking, called the American Fitness Index and released by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the Anthem Foundation, measures health and community indicators including varieties of outdoor exercise options and rates of smoking, obesity, and diabetes. Those three cities ranked respectively third, fourth, and fifth; San Jose rounded out 10th place, Los Angeles got 23rd, and Riverside-San Bernardino came in at 34th. California's Carbon Use Beats Most Nations California has the second-least carbon-intensive developed economy in the world, according to a new study from public policy group Next 10. Having more electric cars than any other state or country, the most clean-technology investment, and a fast-growing fleet of renewable power plants, California's economy is only beaten by France in the study which measures emissions of greenhouse gases per dollar of economic activity. From 1990 through 2012, California's greenhouse gas emissions shrank by 25 percent per person while per capita gross domestic product rose 37 percent. That ratio could increase even further as Governor Jerry Brown seeks to expand California's use of renewable energy to 50 percent by 2030. Lawsuit Over Sacramento Arena Dismissed Without further comment the California Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit led by retired state Department of Transportation director Adriana Saltonstall alleging that the $477 million Sacramento Kings downtown arena project violated CEQA and would cause massive traffic and air pollution problems in the city. Officials breathed a sigh of relief at the decision, as they assumed that the case could delay the stadium's scheduled opening date of October 2016. The dismissal leaves only one hurdle for the construction of the new arena which has been fast-tracked through CEQA by AB-900. Three Sacramentans are suing the city for contributing a $255 million subsidy to the project, most of which will come about by borrowing against its downtown parking operations. Natural Resources Agency Releases Application for River Parkways Grants The California Natural Resources Agency announced the release of the guidelines and application for the California River Parkways (RP) grant program. Awards for this program will be made pursuant to the River Parkways Act of 2004. An estimated $7.6 million will be available for projects that involve natural creeks, streams and/or rivers, or channelized or culverted creeks, streams and/or rivers. Projects must serve at least two of the following purposes: recreation, habitat protection, flood management, conservation, conversion to river parkways.  The agency will award funds to "projects that produce multiple benefits which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase water use efficiency, reduce risks from climate change impacts and demonstrate collaboration with local, state and community entities." The application period runs June 1 to Sept. 1.

The California High Speed Rail Authority won a court victory last week when Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled farmers and other plaintiffs in Kings County had not presented enough evidence to support their claim that the state's high speed rail project had violated the terms of 2008's Proposition 1A. Kenny wrote, "there are still too many unknown variables" and therefore does not constitute sufficient grounds for the suit. The ruling implies that plaintiffs may reopen the case in the future if the project does not comply with requirements of the bond measure. The rail authority still must comply with the bond measure's requirements, including target travel times, ridership, headways, and financial self-sufficiency. State May Not Garnish Cities' Tax Funds in RDA Disputes, Court Rules The Third District Court of Appeals ruled , 3-0, that the state may not garnish tax money from cities refusing to surrender funds that the state claims it is owed in the wake of the 2012 dissolution of the state's redevelopment agencies. Of the 400 former redevelopment agencies statewide, nine cities have refused to return funds totaling $24 million to distribute to local taxing entities. The Legislature in 2012 authorized the withholding of sales and tax revenue and property taxes of those cities. The judges said a provision of the California Constitution, passed in 2010 by voters as Proposition 22, prohibits such action. "In passing Proposition 22, the people took away from the Legislature the authority to withhold sales and use tax revenue and property tax revenue from local governments," the justices wrote. Report Details Consequences of California Housing Shortage Bay Area think-tank Next 10 released a report predicting that California's housing shortage will impose serious economic consequences on the state. In the ten years between 2005 and 2015, only 21.5 permits were issued per 100 people in the state. The report finds that in urban areas, 45 percent of developers say costs, neighbor opposition or both are reasons they do not proceed with infill projects. Other challenges area CEQA, zoning and potential lawsuits, and Proposition 13 which limits property-tax increases could switch cities from building homes to retail projects. The study found that California has some of the highest rates of post-recession job growth in the nation but also lost 625,000 people to other states. Housing costs in California are the highest in the nation, approximately 35.7 percent more than the national average. "California has an employment boom with a housing problem," said Christopher Thornberg, co-author of the report. "The state continues to offer great employment opportunities for all kinds of workers. But housing affordability and supply represent a major problem." Anaheim Releases Proposed Streetcar Route The City of Anaheim released a route for its proposed streetcar. The route would connect the ARTIC transit center in Anaheim to Disneyland and the Convention Center. The project could cost approximately $298.7 million and $4.3 million to operate annually. The 3.2-mile route would have eight stops and carry 120 passengers along the 18-minute trip. But many are opposed citing increased costs and traffic as drivers idle behind the streetcars. The plan will be reviewed by the city council March 14. Disneyland Resort wants to construct its own transportation center for drop-offs and build a new 6,800 space parking structure. The city projects that 1.25 million annual passengers could ride the route by 2035, by which time the Platinum Triangle area is expected to have 25,000 residents, complementing Disneyland's 25 million annual visitors. Air District Ousts Executive Officer, Faces Unrelated Lawsuit The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental and community groups are suing South Coast Air Quality Management District for adopting what they consider weak smog regulations proposed by Western States Petroleum Association. California Air Resources Board and state lawmakers have asked the air board to reconsider. Oil industry groups have fought against stronger smog-reduction measures because of the steep cost of upgrading pollution control measures. Meanwhile, the board of the SCAQMD recently ousted longtime Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein. The ouster is generally seen as a pro-business move, prompted by the board's Republican members, State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon denounced the decision in a written statement: "Today's shameful action by SCAQMD is only the latest in a disturbing trend of dirty energy interests dismantling clean air rules that the public overwhelmingly supports." High Speed Rail to be Delayed Three Years A recently released revision of the business plan for California High Speed Rail indicates that the project will cost more and incur a three-year delay for the initial leg. CAHSR acknowledges the complications of crossing the mountains from Central Valley to Los Angeles, both geographically and financially. However, the entire price tag for the system has been cut by $4 billion to a total price tag of $64 billion. The authority needs funding from private investors, state and federal government. The initial segment from San Jose to Central Valley, costing $21-billion, will be operating by 2025; the authority hopes that that segment will persuade investors to put up money to complete the system. Ainsworth Named Interim Successor to Fester on Coastal Commission Senior Deputy Director Jack Ainsworth has been named interim chief of the California Coastal Commission. His appointment was approved, 10-1. Ainsworth has worked for the commission for 27 years and under Lester, the dismissed director, since October 2011. He most recently held the title of senior deputy director. It will take up to six months to name a new executive director.  Ainsworth told the commission he has not decided if he will apply to the position permanently. Meanwhile, activists have gathered 775 signatures to call for an ethics investigation into Lester's dismissal. Santa Monica Faces Slow-Growth Ballot Measure Slow-growth advocates in Santa Monica have introduced the latest in a series of initiatives and protests designed to discourage what they see as overbuilding in the city. The Land Use Voters Empowerment (LUVE), sponsored by the group Residocracy, would require public vote on large and medium-size developments in the city. It would amend the city's zoning code to require a vote on all projects over two stories and on any project that seeks a development agreement. A majority of City Council opposes the measure, as they said it would give developers added power and influence in their politics. Residocracy hopes the measure will slow development in an already congested city. At least 6,500 signatures are to put it on the November ballot. (See prior CP&DR coverage .) Online Tool Tracks Cap-and-Trade Expenditures Bay Area advocacy group TransForm has released a new interactive  map that tracks where California's cap-and-trade program dollars are being invested. The map tallies all the billions of dollars received through the program and their greenhouse gas reductions. The map tracks 412 projects, $1.5 billion in investment and over 3 million megatons of greenhouse gas reduction.  Over $150 million from the fund has been used to build affordable, transit-oriented development. The website also marks the funding areas such as transportation and sustainable communities, clean energy and energy efficiency, and natural resources and waste diversion. Natural Resources Agency Hears Proposals for Salton Sea Restoration In the long-running effort to restore the Salton Sea, a group of local leaders have formed a Long Range Plan Committee under the sponsorship of the California Natural Resources Agency. Last month, multiple presentations were heard to discuss potential solutions, covering topics such as geothermal technology, environmental management, increasing water in the sea and economic development. Michael Clinton Consulting LLC proposed a $46 billion plan for hydro-electric pumped storage, geothermal development in southwestern Salton Sea area, new water supply for Colorado River Basin, development for Cucupah Tribe, and deep-water port for Mexicali.  AGESS Inc proposed lagoon-floating wetlands and specialized plants, microalgae and brine shrimp to clean the water. American Research and Development proposed bringing water from the Pacific Ocean through tunnels and building islands to raise water levels to create a current, all while using private funds.

Charles Lester, former Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission was  dismissed  from his role after nearly five years Feb. 10. The 7-5 vote took place behind closed doors after seven hours of public testimony, the majority of which supported Lester. Supporters of Lester say  pro-development commissioners were hoping to oust him. Lester defended himself by saying he and his staff preserved the coastal resources and public access with rising sea levels, growing populations and increased pressure from developers. However, one of the commissioners who spoke against Lester, Dayna Bochco, complained of the lack of communication on important projects. As commission Chair Steve Kinsey explained to Los Angeles Times, "the decision revolved around leadership and not around an issue of greater flexibility for development." Senior Deputy Director Jack Ainsworth will lead the commission staff until the commission selects a new executive director. LAO Report Calls for More Private Development Legislative Analyst's Office released the latest in a series of  reports  addressing California's worsening housing crisis. The report, "Perspectives on Helping Low-Income Californians Afford Housing," suggests that facilitating more private, market-rate housing development in the state's coastal urban communities would help make housing more affordable for low-income Californians. Existing affordable housing programs assist only a small proportion of low-income Californians. Most low-income Californians receive little or no assistance. Expanding affordable housing programs to help these households likely would be extremely challenging and prohibitively expensive, according to the report. The report recommends that the state focus on programs directed at specialized housing needs-such as homeless individuals and families or persons with significant physical and mental health challenges. The report notes some key findings: 1) California's averaged rents increased more than did rents in places with more home building; 2) areas with low home production had more displacement of low-income than did places with robust private development; and 3) places with inclusionary housing policies had no less displacement than those places without it. The report follows last year's  California's High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences , which discusses the housing shortage and need for increasing homes in coastal urban communities. Obama Budget Includes Infrastructure Earmarks for California President Obama's 2017 federal budget addresses infrastructure projects and other projects related to sustainability and climate change in California. Sacramento could receive $75 million for a proposed 3.3-mile rail line from West Sacramento to Old Sacramento, downtown depot, Kings arena and the state capitol to name a few key stops. To receive the funding, Sacramento must come up with an equal amount in local funding such as tax increases for property owners near the proposed route. Another project possibly receiving funds is $32 million for Sacramento's Natomas levees. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority could receive $375 million for two subway extensions and a connector through downtown LA. Orange County Transportation Authority hopes to use the $125 million for the 4.1-mile streetcar project in Santa Ana. L.A. City, County Pledge Funds and Cooperation on Homelessness Los Angeles County has the largest chronic homeless population in the country, and the city and county are teaming up together after declaring it reaching emergency proportions. The city has proposed $100 million this year and nearly $2 billion over the next decade for a city homeless coordinator, housing, public restrooms and showers, and providing affordable housing. The county has approved an additional $150 million over two years to help these nearly 44,000 individuals. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told the New York Times, "This is the highest priority that we have, to make sure that nobody is living on the streets and nobody is without a home." The mayor says voters will be asked to approve additional funding, and some revenue will come from shifting existing funds. Survey: Demise of Redevelopment's Impact on Affordable Housing Developers The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released results of a survey  of Affordable Housing Developers on the state of affordable housing in the wake of the 2012 elimination of redevelopment agencies. The survey was designed to "learn how they are faring following RDA dissolution; how their development pipelines have been affected by the loss of RDA funds; and how new legislation, local regulation, or funding strategies have impacted affordable housing development over the past three years." The responses are from 71 development organizations across the state. The report says 83 percent of respondents must pursue more funding sources than they did under RDA, 74 percent have projects that have been postponed or jeopardized, 80 percent of the projects have been negatively impacted by rising cost of lands and 61 percent  have had to reduce staff because of funding reductions. Only 26 percent say their jurisdictions have developed post-RDA regulatory reforms for affordable housing. Court Deals Setback to L.A. Metro Subway Alignment through Beverly Hills District Judge George Wu ruled that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority failed to property consider environmental studies for a proposed subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School. Metro originally had a route under Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City, but realized it was in earthquake faults and therefore relocated the alignment. Activists in Beverly Hills have decried the new alignment, citing a range of safety concerns and accusing Metro of a "bait and switch." Beverly Hills listed nine reasons were Metro's EIS failed to meet NEPA requirements. These issues include air quality and public health, methane gas and oil wells, seismic faults, and public land usage to name a few. This section is expected to begin construction soon and be opened in 2026. Judge Wu's ruling is preliminary, and both parties must respond and return to court March 14 for a finalization of the ruling. Kings County Files Suit against High Speed Rail A lawsuit recently filed by Kings County and two Central Valley farmers against the California High Speed Rail Authority argues that the California bullet train violates state law because it is not following restricted placed under the $9 billion bond act that voters approved in 2008. They are explicitly arguing the project is not financially viable, will operate slower than promised ad has changed its design. The lawsuit hopes to halt funding for construction and land acquisition, and a ruling will be issued within ninety days. The lawyers for the Rail Authority say it is a disagreement of the expert opinions, and that the shared railway in the bay area will cut funding by $30 billion.  Novato to Add Station to New Commuter Rail System The Novato City Council voted to move forward with development of a third train  station  downtown to be served by the forthcoming SMART commuter rail service. The station would cost an additional $2.4 million. The mayor Pat Eklund and member Pam Drew opposed, while three approved of the additional station. The two opposed are worried about financing the additional project, but as Mayor Pro Tem Athas said "the benefits far outweigh the expense in the long run." The council voted against the city staff's recommendation. The SMART board of directors will meet next month to discuss integrating the downtown station into the current plan.

As anticipated, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has approved the application by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to have its 1400-acre Camp 4 property taken into federal trust. The Tribe has stated intentions to build housing, a community center and related buildings on the property. Local critics have expressed fears about what could happen after trust status takes the property out of state and county jurisdiction and exempts it from local taxation. The Santa Barbara Independent reported county officials were preparing to follow through on the Supervisors' prior decision to appeal such a ruling. A December 30 report by the Lompoc Record quoted at length from antagonistic comments by two central spokespersons in the matter, Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta and Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr. The "Stand Up for California" organization, which monitors California gaming issues, has posted a copy of the Notice of Decision . The text includes extensive rebuttals to public comments critical of the fee-to-trust application. For CP&DR's pre-approval news feature on of the fee-to-trust controversy see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3650. Brown, at Fourth Swearing-In, Talks Climate Preservation Gov. Jerry Brown took the oath of office for his fourth term as Governor on Monday, with a speech calling for increased uses of renewable energy . His text expressed pride in the balancing of the state budget and in the passage of Propositions 1 and 2, and called on the state to work toward deriving 50% of electricity from renewable sources. The same day Brown swore in Justices Mariano-Florentino Cu�llar and Leondra Kruger, returning the state Supreme Court to its full complement of seven Justices. Moreno Valley May Create Foreclosure Registry The Riverside County city of Moreno Valley is considering requiring registration of foreclosed properties . The proposal would require lenders to register properties with the city "as they go into default," to report periodically on the properties' status, and to provide contact information for use "if criminal and property maintenance issues arise." The Press-Enterprise says the city saw a peak of 6,239 foreclosures in 2008 but the foreclosure rate "dropped" to 605 counted in 2014 as of mid-December. The proposal calls for contracting with Nationwide Cost Recovery Services , which already runs foreclosure registries for the Southern California cities of Carson, Eastvale , El Monte, South El Monte, Pico Rivera and West Covina. Other California cities with existing foreclosure registry ordinances include Los Angeles , which recently toughened its rules after criticism ; Fresno , Oakland , San Diego , Long Beach , Fountain Valley and San Bruno . (A few details as of 2012 are here .) Also in Moreno Valley, Maven's Morning Coffee noted efforts to solicit Riverside County business support for a gigantic warehouse complex , the "World Logistics Center." The Press-Enterprise said the complex would create 14,600 to 29,000 truck trips per day, though it reported the city of Riverside was questioning some figures in the traffic portion of last year's draft EIR on the project. Two Unusual City Hires in San Francisco Profiles appeared this past week of new city staff in San Francisco who have unusual job descriptions. Urbanful.org interviewed Patrick Otellini, a former permit expediter and city "earthquake czar," now working as " the world's first chief resiliency officer " -- though he's actually only the first of 100 CROs being hired by cities around the world funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. (Oakland has also hired one.) And the city Department of Public Health hired an epidemiologist to study pedestrian fatalities and injuries in traffic collisions. San Jose Buyer Makes Steep Resale of Redevelopment Property A San Jose real estate company has apparently made a tidy profit buying and selling a 1.25-acre former redevelopment property. Nate Donato Weinstein reported in the Silicon Valley Business Journa l that Next Realty bought a parking lot on Fountain Alley from the San Jose Redevelopment Agency for $6.2 million in 2011 and resold it in December 2014 to System Property Development Co., which he described as "a parking lot owner and operator based in Southern California." A few days later on Twitter, he reported the new sale price was $16 million . Also: CP&DR 's own Bill Fulton wrote an opinion piece for UT San Diego with  some afterthoughts on his time as Planning Director in San Diego . California's High-Speed Rail project officially starts construction with a groundbreaking in Fresno January 6 . And San Francisco Twitterers have been drawing faces on a mouth-like balcony in the rendering for a tower to replace the All Star Donut shop at Market and Van Ness. The tower design, by SoloCordBuenz and Sn�hetta, otherwise got a favorable review from Chronicle architecture critic John King. The "mouth" midway up the structure has a purpose: King writes that it's part of a design "intended to diffuse the downdraft" on one of the windiest parts of Market Street.

The city of Bakersfield reached a settlement December 19 with the California High-Speed Rail Authority in which the rail agency agreed to consider a different route than originally proposed. The L.A. Times reported the new route "travels through the northern section of Bakersfield, arriving at a downtown station a few miles from the existing Amtrak station." The paper quoted the rail authority's spokeswoman, Lisa Marie Alley, as saying the settlement was unrelated to the December 12 decision by the federal Surface Transportation Board saying the California Environmental Quality Act didn't apply to high-speed rail projects. For the STB decision click here , courtesy of the California High-Speed Rail Blog , which advocates for the project. As CP&DR partly noted online last week , the issue of railroad preemption of CEQA has been raised in an implicit conflict between the First District Court of Appeal's Friends of the Eel River v. North Coast Railroad Authority -- which the state Supreme Court has now accepted for review -- and the Third District's Town of Atherton et al v. California High Speed Rail Commission , to which the state Supreme Court denied depublication in October . Monterey Downs EIR Delayed After Mistaken Release of Water Supply Document The Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Monterey Downs Specific Plan was expected out December 19. But the Monterey Herald reports the previously delayed document has been delayed again, following the unintentional release of a confidential legal document in which outside counsel advised the city of Seaside to address "uncertainties" about water supplies for the project in the EIR. The Monterey Downs project would create a racetrack and surrounding real estate development on a portion of former Fort Ord land. Cal American Goes Ahead With Test Well The Monterey Herald reported that California American Water was at work on its desalination test well although the Ag Land Trust and Marina Coast Water District were both suing to stop it. The Coastal Commission gave its permission for the project in November . Marin County Wins Landfill Expansion Litigation Marin County has defeated a CEQA challenge to the EIR for expansion of the Redwood Landfill, which receives most of Marin's solid waste. The decision, which followed extensive litigation, was in an unpublished First District appellate ruling, No Wetlands Landfill Expansion v. County of Marin . Among other unpublished holdings, the court found it was acceptable for the project proponents to present an off-site alternative landfill location in unidentified, hypothetical form, though opponents argued they couldn't comment meaningfully on a site that wasn't physically identified to them. It also found the EIR did not fail sufficiently to address sea level rise, groundwater effects, air pollution health effects or greenhouse gas emissions. Marin County's statement on the case is here . Los Angeles Creates Barriers to Demolitions of Older Buildings The Shepherd Mullin law firm has noted that, as of 2015, the city of Los Angeles will be imposing new  notice requirements for demolitions of most buildings more than 45 years old. Before demolishing such older buildings, property owners must post a notice on the property, write to abutting neighbors, and advise the office of the local City Council member. Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell said on his blog that the ordinance "will go a long way toward protecting non-designated local landmarks and architectural gems that are significant to the rich history in the 13th District." The City Council Web page for the legislation is here . L.A. Streetsblog panning 'Option 1A' for Glendale-Hyperion Bridge Writer Joe Linton at L.A. Streetsblog is in full dudgeon over a renovation proposal by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation for the Glendale-Hyperion Viaduct between Silver Lake and Atwater Village. He writes that the currently proposed version of the plan, "Option 1A", jams together bicyclists and pedestrians, redesignating the sidewalks as "shared use paths," in order to keep enough room for four auto lanes. The viaduct project has its own city Web site at http://www.glendalehyperion.com/ . Gate at Paradise Cove is Open Again The Coastal Commission and State Lands Commission have settled with the Paradise Cove Land Co., owner of a beachside mobile home park where non-resident surfers complained they were being charged $20 "walk-in fees" and blocked from carrying surfboards across the sand. Complaints had included some from members of the Black Surfers Collective. The L.A. Times has details . The agencies' press release is here . California King Tides Project Documents a Future of High Water Some of the highest tides of the year washed the Pacific coast at the winter solstice, and a network of cell phone photographers were waiting for them. The California King Tides Project , a partnership of nonprofits and agencies including the Coastal Commission, invited Californians to photograph how  exceptionally high "king tides" looked on the waterfront landscape. The project works on the prediction that the current highest tides of the year should look a lot like the ordinary daily tides of the global-warming future. For images see #KingTides on Twitter.

Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles announced his new " Sustainable City pLAn ," a far-reaching decree that seeks to make Los Angeles sustainable in ways ranging from water to solar energy to waste. Among other things, the plan seeks to reduce daily Vehicle Miles Traveled by 5 percent by 2025, to implement the Vision Zero policy to reduce traffic fatalities, to have zero days in which air pollution reaches unhealthy levels by 2025, and to complete 32 miles of Los Angeles River public access by 2025. The plan defines sustainability broadly, to include not only ecological goals but also broad goals of social and economic sustainability. The plan seeks to reduce driving and pollution, increase walkability within neighborhoods (using WalkScore), improve pedestrian safety, promote development of affordable housing and transit-oriented development, support the re:codeLA initiative to update the city's zoning code, revitalize the L.A. River, and support environmental justice, among other goals. Garcetti also signed a mayoral directive that requires all city departments to incorporate pLAn goals into their programs, and establishes sustainability officers in applicable departments and bureaus. At a signing event, he pledged that this "is not a plan for the shelves." San Diego County Rescinds Climate Plan In a long-awaited move, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors officially rescinded the county's Climate Action Plan, which had been the subject of a lawsuit from the Sierra Club since 2012 asserting that the plan violated CEQA and didn't do enough to combat global warming. On April 11, the California Supreme Court ruled against the county on the plan, denying its request to review and appeals court decision against the county and legally requiring the county to rescind the plan within 30 days. The 4th District Court of Appeals had ruled that the plan lacks the necessary specifics and enforcement mechanism to achieve the goals. "The Sierra Club wants to see a climate action plan that has meaningful and enforceable measures to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets," Davin Widgerow, a representative of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. National Planning Achievement Awards The American Planning Association announced its 2015 National Planning Achievement Awards, recognizing the work of three California organizations among the 12 nationwide recipients. Among the winners: Lake Tahoe Sustainability Action Plan, which provides a toolkit to local agencies in two states and five counties to rebalance the region's environment and economy while confronting climate change.  Pop-Up Outreach efforts in San Diego, which seek to connect neighborhoods that have historically low levels of trust in local government with urban planners through simple outreach efforts, including a chalkboard chat, street sign survey boxes, and pop-up feedback trees. Tongva Park & Ken Genser Square: a new urban park in Santa Monica that was once a parking lot. It covers 7.4 acres, features a lush landscape including rolling hills and gardens, overlooks the Santa Monica Pier, and is just two block away from the future terminus of a new light rail line. Awards will be given out at the national APA conference in Seattle next week.  Lennar Preserves $1 billion Judgement in Suit against a San Diego Developer A San Diego developer must pay $1 billion to Miami home builder Lennar Corp. following an appeals court ruling that the developer, Nicolas Marsch III, defamed Lennar and improperly deleted emails. The ruling is the culmination of a five-year lawsuit, which began when Marsch claimed that Lennar cheated him out of millions of dollars in a development of a private golf community. Marsch had hired Barry Minkow, a notorious con man now in prison for his involvement with Marsch, to back his claims. The Appeals Court cited in its ruling Marsch's "deletion of relevant emails, the concealment of material witnesses, lying during depositions, providing false testimony before the trial court and much more." Navy SEALs Release EIR for $1B Campus A proposed new Navy SEAL campus - a 1.5 million square foot development on the northern edge of Imperial Beach in South San Diego - took a step forward with the recent release of its final Environmental Impact Report. Built over a decade, the new campus would move the SEALs' center of activity from Coronado Island, where it has been since 1962, south to a largely empty piece of the Silver Strand beach. The main headquarters and the training centers will remain in Coronado, but the new campus would provide logistical support buildings, equipment-use and maintenance-training facilities, classroom and hands-on tactics instructional space, among other buildings. Residents of Coronado Cays, an upscale housing development just north of the proposal, told the San Diego Union-Tribue that they are concerned that loud helicopter traffic could impact their quality of life. UCLA Gives L.A. County C+ on Environmental Issues UCLA issued its first comprehensive environmental "report card" for the city of Los Angeles, giving the city an overall grade of C+ and indicating that there is "tremendous room for improvement in all six environmental areas" of water, air, ecosystem health, waste, environmental quality of life, and energy and greenhouse gases. Among other things, researchers from UCLA's Sustainable L.A. Grand Challenge and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability said in the report that L.A.'s air quality regularly fails federal standards for pollution, that excessive levels of pollutants are found in virtually all the region's bodies of water, and that the county's waste recycling program is robust but lacks data on how much is actually recycled. Judge Invalidates Take Permits for Logging Plan A federal judge invalidated incidental take permits that officials granted to Fruit Growers Supply Co. which allowed the company to harm threatened species in logging private land on 150,000 acres in Siskiyou County. U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins said that that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wrongly factored conservation efforts by the U.S. Forest Service into the company's plan to conserve spotted owl populations, adding that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should have also factored the timber operations' short term effects on coho salmon. Group Lists Rogue-Smith Rivers as �Endangered' American Rivers' 2015 list of "America's Most Endangered Rivers" includes the Rogue-Smith Rivers in Oregon and California as one of the ten most endangered rivers in the U.S. in need of immediate governmental help. The report says that proposed nickel mining in the headwaters of the Northern California rivers would threaten the rivers' salmon runs - with an average of 100,000 fish returning each year - plant biodiversity, and recreation. The report recommends that the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Department of Interior withdraw the area from mining immediately. Bay Area Bike Share Program Announces Ambitious Growth Plan The Bay Area Bike Share program could see a massive influx of bikes to its program, expanding tenfold from 700 to 7,000 bikes under a proposal announced by the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville. The proposal would extend the program for the first time into the East Bay. In San Francisco, the number of bikes would jump from 328 to 4,500; in San Jose from 129 to 1,000. In the East Bay, 850 bikes would go to Oakland, 400 to Berkeley and 100 to Emeryville. However, Redwood City, Palo Alto and Mountain View, which participated in the two-year pilot program, are cut out of the new proposal, based on low ridership numbers. Motivate, the company that operates the bike-share program, bought out previous owner Alta Bike Share, which had significant management problems that hampered cities from expanding their programs.

Developers are awaiting a federal decision that may allow them to start building again in the Natomas region of Sutter and Sacramento Counties. The region, which sits between the Sacramento and American Rivers, was one of the most active areas of development in the Sacramento metro region in the early and mid-2000s. Based on concerns over levees whose solidity has been likened to that of toothpaste, the Federal Emergency Management Agency imposed a moratorium on the area in December 2008. That order put a halt to the development of up to 5,000 homes that had been issued building permits. Improvements to the levees reportedly have satisfied FEMA criteria for lowering the moratorium. The Sacramento Flood Control Agency has spent $410 million to upgrade 18 miles of levees, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set to spend $760 million on 24 remaining miles. Developers are expected to revive many of their plans when the moratorium is lifted in June, though many do not expect demand to be as robust as it was prior to the moratorium's imposition. Some in the Sacramento area , including Sacramento City Council Member Angelique Ashby, see the resumption of development in the area as an opportunity to pursue more sustainable development, as opposed to the traditional low-density subdivision model that had been pursued there in the past. State Budget Proposal Offers Financial Caution, Criticized on Equity Governor Jerry Brown's January 9 budget proposal was greeted with praise for financially cautious state spending, including paying down debt, but was criticized by some advocacy groups for doing too little on equity issues. Reactions from state political figures showed water projects, parks, education and In-Home Support Services (IHSS) came out relatively well. The budget assumed cap-and-trade proceeds would produce about $1 billion in revenue, of which $250 million would go to High-Speed Rail and $200 million to the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program. LOCUS Calls for Federal Real Estate Reforms A national advocacy group has announced an ambitious plan to pressure the federal government into addressing social equity and housing nationwide. LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors is calling on federal agencies to promote a series of reforms that, the group claims, could save the government $33 billion annually while helping cities and communities. The proposed reforms include: Eliminate some rate subsidies from the National Flood Insurance Program. Reform the Federal Housing Administration's single-family home program. Better target real estate tax expenditures. Preserve and increase the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. Improve the Rehabilitation Tax Credit. Establish individual Mortgage Savings Accounts. Create an Innovative Financing for Infrastructure Rehabilitation Program The recommendations are spelled out in LOCUS's report, " A Call to Action ". LOCUS is a project of Smart Growth America. (Disclosure: SGA is a former employer of CP&DR Publisher Bill Fulton.) Activists Fighting Chiquita Canyon Landfill Expansion Opponents of the Chiquita Canyon landfill expansion on Highway 126 in Los Angeles County were seeking a hearing in early January on the proposal. They circulated a statement January 5 saying the county had chosen not to schedule a hearing on the draft environmental impact report, instead planning to hold the hearing when the final EIR was up for review. The Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning's page on the project shows the comment period on the DEIR was extended twice, closing October 23, 2014. Groups seeking the hearing were the Val Verde Civic Association, Citizens for Chiquita Canyon Landfill Compliance and the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE). The landfill is close to the Landmark Village phase of the much-litigated Newhall Ranch community near the Six Flags amusement park in northwest Los Angeles County. L.A. Considers Fix for Housing Trust Fund The Affordable Housing Trust Fund for the City of Los Angeles, which was never particularly robust, has shrunk to the point of irrelevance. Since 2000, the fund has gone from $108 million to a current $19 million, as the fund's two biggest sources of contributions have both been curtailed. Contributions from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dropped from $54 million in 2008 to $19 million this year, and contributions from the local Community Redevelopment Agency evaporated with the dissolution of redevelopment in 2011. The fund's crisis comes at a time when rising rents and stagnant wages have made Los Angeles the most unaffordable rental market in the country, according to a 2014 UCLA report . Los Angeles City Council Members Felipe Fuentes and Gil Cedillo recently proposed that funds collected in former redevelopment project areas be directed, as they once were, to the trust fund. Strategies using these so-called "boomerang funds" are being considered in several California cities hit hard by the loss of redevelopment. The City Council is expected to discuss the proposal this month. Displacement Civil Rights Complaint Cites Lack of Spanish Translation Low-income Latino tenants facing displacement from ten houses on a future development site in Walnut Creek have filed a HUD civil rights complaint alleging disparate-impact violations of federal fair housing law. The Monterey Herald reported the families said the city had not given them information or interpretation in Spanish at meetings on their possible displacement. The project recently approved for the site is The Landing , a complex of 178 luxury apartments. The paper reported it's disputed how hard the city tried to help the tenants obtain housing in the new Third Avenue Apartments affordable housing project. The Landing project's public review process had been portrayed in 2013 as an early start on the larger public process for the proposed West Downtown Specific Plan near the Walnut Creek BART station. Once Developers' Promises Are Made, Who Enforces Them? The L.A. Times has an investigative report out on cases of promises made by developers to win approvals that are afterward kept slowly or not at all. Instances mentioned include two already-famous fights: over facade preservation at the Old Spaghetti Factory building in Hollywood that was in fact demolished , and promised extra-strength air filters at the Da Vinci apartment complex next to the 110 freeway, -- the latter being arguably a moot point, since the project recently burned to the ground . In Case You Missed Transportation Camp The annual transit nerds' Transportation Camp event in Washington D.C. posted a public list of data sources and tools as part of a hackathon during the event. More material from the conference, some of it California-focused, is available at https://tcamp2015dc.hackpad.com/ Time to Learn Lessons about Water from Australia? So what if the drought doesn't really end? Experts and legislators planned to talk about unhappy scenarios January 12 at the Public Policy Institute of California's "Managing Drought" one-day conference . Registration to watch the webcast has closed but some presentation materials are available online. Questioning Crumb Rubber on Playing Fields After All? State Sen. Jerry Hill has introduced a bill, SB 47 , that would suspend use of crumb rubber on publicly installed artificial turf playing fields while a public study is conducted on the safety of using shredded tire rubber as a padded base between artificial grass blades. Crumb rubber safety was a campaign issue for opponents of San Francisco's Golden Gate Fields renovation, a subject of dueling ballot measures last November. In the South Bay, Segregation Predated Silicon Valley Bay Area social media are buzzing over Kim-Mai Cutler's extended news feature on the history of residential and educational segregation in East Palo Alto and surrounding South Bay towns -- and what that might have to do with the state of employment inequalities in present-day Silicon Valley.

The Air Resources Board held workshops August 25 and 26, and rescheduled a third for Oakland on September 3, on how to define "benefit" to a "disadvantaged community" for purposes of programs distributing cap-and-trade auction proceeds. The discussion will include efforts at a formal answer to one of the most important urban planning questions of the past half-century: when does money spent in a place that is defined as disadvantaged actually benefit disadvantaged people? The new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program will be among those affected by the outcome. See http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/auctionproceeds/upcomingevents.htm for details, including a discussion document on how CalEPA's updated CalEnviroScreen 2.0 mapping project may be used to identify disadvantage, and a draft released August 22 of proposed interim guidance on what constitutes a "benefit" to a disadvantaged community. The workshop notice sets a deadline for written comment of September 9 but the proposed interim guidelines document states a comment deadline of September 15. Oakland releases Coliseum Area Specific Plan, EIR Oakland released the draft specific plan and accompanying draft EIR for the mega-development proposed to surround a rebuilt Oakland Coliseum. See http://bit.ly/1wyvMa7 for the city's main page linking to the extensive related planning documents. The SF Chron 's Michael Cabanatuan sets out main details at http://bit.ly/1v8Onry. The plan still calls for three separate sports venues, to potentially host professional football, baseball and basketball teams respectively, even though the Golden State Warriors have announced plans for a new arena in San Francisco. Earlier in the month, the Chron 's Will Kane wrote that Oakland would have to raise "at least $1.75 billion" to keep both the A's and the Raiders in town. See http://bit.ly/1owlOAg. Budget activists caution against 'race to the bottom' for Tesla factory The Mercury News reports five "budget watchdog" groups have asked the governments of five states not to let the Tesla company draw them into a "race to the bottom" in competition for Tesla's new "Gigafactory" battery plant. See http://bit.ly/1ASRWTj for the news report and http://californiabudgetbites.org/ for the letter. Los Angeles buys Taylor Yard parcel for LA River project Streetsblog LA has a news feature, and links to documents, on the purchase by the City of Los Angeles of a 41-acre parcel that formed part of the former Taylor Yard rail yard along the LA River. It reports the property is to form a major part of the $1 billion project to clean up 11 miles of the river and make it a center for recreation and investment. See http://bit.ly/1vjUdqf. The Curbed LA history file at http://la.curbed.com/tags/taylor-yard includes past coverage showing the property's site between Rio de Los Angeles State Park and the river. The state park's site, at http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22277, explains that the park is another former portion of Taylor Yard, closed to railroad use since the 1980s. Future of SB 270 plastic bag bill still in doubt The SB 270 plastic bag ban fight went high-profile again in late August as the measure neared its final chance at passage this session. A vote was imminent as of August 27. On Monday, August 25, the United Food and Commercial Workers yanked support from the bill. On the #SB270 Twitter hashtag meanwhile, the @YesonSB270 account and conservationists did battle with @BagTheBan and grocery and business representatives. The @YesonSB270 account links to a pro-ban lobbying coalition's site at http://www.yesonsb270.org/ that ironically was still displaying the UFCW logo on August 26. The @BagTheBan account is described at http://www.bagtheban.com/about-us as "a project of Hilex Poly." In a vote August 25 the bill fell narrowly short of passage in the Assembly, as reported thoroughly by Capitol Public Radio's Ben Adler via Twitter. Per Adler it can return to the floor once more for reconsideration before the end of this year's session and that return may be on August 28. The Sacramento Bee covered the August 25 vote and the UFCW withdrawal at http://bit.ly/1qffyN8. Readers who want to watch this one to the bitter end may want to follow @AdlerBen on Twitter or watch the #SB270 hashtag. AB 52, CEQA bill on Native American sacred sites, advances with significant amendments AB 52, the Native American sacred sites bill that was among the few possibilities this year for a legislative change in CEQA law, was moving forward as of this writing with amendments that in part appeared designed to reassure landowners. The bill would strengthen tribes' rights to involvement in consultation processes under CEQA where a newly defined category of Tribal Cultural Resources would be affected by a proposed project. The League of California Cities tracking page at http://bit.ly/VR4w5r shows the bill passed the Senate August 27. On that same page, the League links to a letter dated July 9, in which it expresses "concerns" about the definition of a tribal cultural resource, about the time(s) for required consultation in the environmental review process, and about tribal notification rules. An August 25 letter then states the League's concerns have been removed. Amendments since July change the definition of a "California Native American tribe" to define it by reference to the state's Native American Heritage Commission contact list rather than per federal recognition. They add a great deal more specificity about process. And they appear to give the lead agency reviewing a project the primary say in defining whether a cultural resource is significant for purposes of the statute. Assemblymember Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, published an op-ed in support of the bill at http://bit.ly/1lcCXzB. Legislative analyses available through the bill tracking page at http://bit.ly/1wyoe7e shows endorsements from tribal governments and conservationists but opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, a smaller number of tribes, and utility, solar, business and construction organizations. The Chamber of Commerce is cited in the analysis as arguing the bill would "create a disincentive to invest in land" by creating uncertainty on which places might be defined as Tribal Cultural Resources. CA Housing Partnership Corporation reports on affordable housing defecits The California Housing Partnership has posted reports at http://chpc.net/ describing failures to meet affordable housing needs in major California metro areas. Separate reports are posted for Alameda, Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. A combined summary report is at http://bit.ly/XRmsyU. Individual findings include defecits of 118,895 units in Orange County and 490,340 in Los Angeles County (KPCC coverage at http://bit.ly/1AS8SsV) and a defecit of 40,800 units in the City and County of San Francisco (see http://bit.ly/1mQouVH).   Groundwater bills still headed toward vote The groundwater bills, SB 1168 and AB 1739 (by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills and Assemblymember Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, respectively), were still nearing passage as of this writing. The League of California Cities has both measures on its "Hot Bills" list for August with a "no position" notation at http://bit.ly/1tRpiOc. Conservation groups were supporting the bills. Reuters reported Monday at http://reut.rs/1vgEeZY that many farm groups, but not all, opposed it. Meanwhile the Desert Sun was headed into litigation with Coachella Valley water officials over access to records of landowners' groundwater use (see desert.sn/VqAAgx), the Fresno Bee reported volunteers were delivering drinking water to households where the wells had run dry in Tulare County's East Porterville (see http://bit.ly/1wy2xnY), and celebrities were shipping in water by tanker truck to their estates in Montecito (see http://bit.ly/VPC6sH). Plea from mayors to enact relief bills for Inland Empire towns As of this writing, SB 69 and AB 1521, relief bills for new and newly expanded Inland Empire towns, had passed the Legislature and were awaiting Governor Brown's signature decision. Frank Johnston and Karen Spiegel, mayors of Jurupa Valley and Corona respectively, published an op-ed in the Press-Enterprise asking Governor Jerry Brown and the Legislature to save Jurupa Valley's incorporated status and protect other towns with the bills. See http://bit.ly/1tIhC1y. The two mayors claimed endorsements from 17 other Inland Empire mayors in asking the Legislature for the temporary financing lifeline that the bills represented. Together the bills would provide relief for cities that completed incorporations or annexations just before the Legislature took expected Vehicle License Fee income out of their local budgets in 2011. For past coverage see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3515 on SB 69 and http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3516 on AB 1521. AB 1537 to redefine Marin as 'suburban' goes to Governor AB 1537, to redefine Marin County from "metropolitan" to "suburban" for affordable housing density purposes, passed the Legislature in late August and was before Governor Brown as of this writing. Its proponent, Assemblymember Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, posted an August 22 statement celebrating the bill's passage, by a unanimous vote of the Assembly, at http://bit.ly/XQdh1P. Levine earlier joined Marin County Board of Supervisors President Kate Sears in an op-ed arguing its case at http://bit.ly/VPO71f. Their argument said the bill would only apply for eight years, would not limit local jurisdictions' power to make their own density decisions. A June I-J writeup at http://bit.ly/1x2WZi6 provides more background on the bill, which would reduce default densities for affordable housing in the county from 30 to 20 units per acre. Also in the Legislature -- The Orange County Register reported AB 1102, to protect the use of fire rings on Orange County Beaches by requiring a Coastal Commission permit for their removal, failed in the Senate in mid-August. See http://bit.ly/1qKpagc. Supporters of SB 1199, which would have designated the Upper Mokelumne River as "wild and scenic," told the Stockton Record it had failed in the Legislature. See http://bit.ly/1onHhXK. The Sacramento Bee is reporting at http://bit.ly/1q2t0oJ that the vigorous anti-"gas tax" campaign to postpone the calendared AB 32 expansion into fuels taxation is "finished for the year" with the postponement bill, AB 69 by Assemblymember Henry Perea, D-Fresno, now "sidelined" by outgoing Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. The Bee reported SB 1183, authorizing localities to vote in fees for bike facilities by initiative petition, was on the Governor's desk. See http://bit.ly/1q3b5go. In recent legal rulings -- The State Supreme Court on August 20 denied a request for partial republication of the underlying Fifth District appellate opinion that it reversed in City of Los Angeles v. County of Kern . The Supreme Court's July 7 decision concerned a challenge by the City of Los Angeles to a Kern County ballot measure that barred the city government from using biosolids from sewage to fertilize land that it owned in Kern County. The actual decision interpreted the federal grace period statute at 28 U.S.C. �1367(d) to bar Los Angeles from filing a state suit in the matter 78 days after a federal court dismissed its case on preemption grounds. For the State Supreme Court's online docket in the matter, see http://bit.ly/1BTPXj0. California's Fourth District ordered publication and modification, by orders August 13 and 14, of its opinion in San Diego Gas and Electric Company v. Schmidt , No. D062671. The court upheld a jury verdict setting the compensation amount, rejecting SDG&E's petition for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and also awarding litigation expenses to the defendant property owners. The property's "highest and best use" was said to be an open-pit aggregate mine. The decision is at http://bit.ly/1vOJDJ5 and the online docket at http://bit.ly/1p57aMh. The Ninth Circuit ruled that a citizen suit under the federal Solid Waste Disposal Act was not a proper means for neighbors of railyards to redress alleged harm from diesel particulate pollution, because "Defendants' emission of diesel particulate matter does not constitute 'disposal' of solid waste" under the statute. The case is Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice v. BNSF Railway Co. For the opinion, see http://1.usa.gov/1peSyyY. In Sierra Club v EPA , the Ninth Circuit held petitioners had associational standing to challenge a permit issued by the EPA for construction of a gas-fired power plant. It found the EPA wrongly allowed Avenal Power to build the plant in accordance with grandfathered prior air quality standards that were in effect when the company first applied for the permit. Instead, the court found "the Clean Air Act unambiguously requires Avenal Power to demonstrate that the Avenal Energy Project complies with the regulations ineffect at the time the Permit is issued." For the opinion, see http://1.usa.gov/1oH6T1G. A Ninth Circuit opinion by Judge Jay Bybee upheld decisions by the city of San Diego to deny conditional use permits for cell towers run by the American Tower Corporation. The case is American Tower Corporation v. City of San Diego , No. 11-56766, opinion at http://1.usa.gov/1rbUydI. And in other news -- The City of Rosemead scheduled public meetings this fall, beginning September 10, on the proposed Garvey Avenue Specific Plan. See http://www.cityofrosemead.org/index.aspx?page=436. A federal judge refused to enjoin the new San Francisco ordinance increasing relocation payments to tenants by landlords who elect to empty their buildings under the Ellis Act. See http://cbsloc.al/1wyKE8y. We still don't know which fault exactly caused the South Napa earthquake, but Scientific American discusses how geologists will go about finding out: http://bit.ly/1zGlMb8. Also, this may have been California's first major earthquake with an early damage patrol filmed by drone: http://lat.ms/1pCujLe.