You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Likewise, you can lead California's road builders to ISTEA/TEA-21Transportation Enhancements, but you apparently can't make them take advantage of the matching funds. That's a shame because this resistance ensures that the state has poorly landscaped roads, fewer bridge and railroad depot renovations, and minimal interpretive centers for historic and scenic area.
The Transportation Enhancement (TE) program is a cornerstone o...
A proposal from Cisco Systems to build a 6.6 million-square-foot campus for up to 20,000 workers in south San Jose has focused attention on the Silicon Valley's housing shortage. Cities and counties south of San Jose feel threatened by the continued industrial development in Silicon Valley because more and more technology employees are commuting from places like Hollister, Salinas and Santa Cruz.
The City of San Jose, however, says it has long carried more than its fair share of the housing load...
In a case watched closely by ranchers and environmentalists, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld 1995 grazing regulations for public lands, including about 6.7 million acres in California controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
Ranchers challenged Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's power to impose the new rules, which ranchers said would raise their expenses and threaten their livestock businesses. But a unanimous Supreme Court, interpreting the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, 43 U.S.C. §315, said ...
Describing the closing of a military base as successful might strike some people as a poor choice of words. Anybody acquainted with base closures knows they are traumatic events. The initial trauma, of course, is the loss of jobs and resulting economic depression that befall surrounding communities. The secondary trauma, which happens more slowly, is the series of barriers that communities encounter in their efforts to reinvent a base into an office park or airport.
Redeveloping bases can b...
For the past decade, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been preparing to tap a significant new supply of water to help meet demand in its growing service area. Yet, after investing $55 million in a pipeline and related facilities, the DWP put the project on hold in late April, just days before it was to begin operation.
The reason was a loud, albeit belated, public outcry about the source of that new water: the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which treats munic...
Odd how the fast food joint has become emblematic of what's wrong with the modern world. The recent bombing of a McDonalds in Brittany was widely interpreted as nothing less than a shot across the bow of cultural globalization. Here on our golden shores, discussions about the merits of quick service restaurants are more measured, but the burger and burrito huts can cause high anxiety.
Particularly loathed by many are drive-through facilities. These car-friendly land uses have been scoffed at ...
The City of Livermore and Alameda County are close to completing a specific plan that provides for the development of 3,200 acres and the conservation of 10,300 acres of farmland and open space. However, a Sierra Club-backed urban growth boundary initiative that appears headed for the Alameda County ballot in November could throw the project into question. The city and county are in the midst of conducting approximately 17 workshops and public hearings on the North Livermore Specific Plan. Cit...
After a delay of almost a decade, the battle over how localities in California divvy up their responsibility for low- and moderate-income housing has been joined once again. The first battlefield is metropolitan Los Angeles, where the Southern California Association of Governments is engaged in a struggle with its own members over the "Regional Housing Needs Assessment" (RHNA) process � and is lobbying the state to reduce L.A.'s overall obligation to provide low/mod housing. The SCAG battle is ...
A Subdivision Map Act provision that gives local government a maximum of 120 days to acquire an interest in land upon which a subdivider is obligated to build improvements applies only in cases where the improvements are a condition of final map approval, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled.
A developer in the City of Clovis contended that such a narrow reading of Government Code §66462.5 would place an undue burden on the subdivider because a city could wait decades before acquiring of...
Making clear that the Community Redevelopment Law "is not simply a vehicle for cash-strapped municipalities to finance community improvements," an appellate court has thrown out the City of Diamond Bar's redevelopment plan.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Diamond Bar did not prove that its 1,300-acre redevelopment project area suffered from "blight," as defined by the Community Redevelopment Law (Health and Safety Code §§33000 et seq., 33030). The...
