The Monterey County Board of Supervisors regularly meets on Tuesdays. This week, however, no regular meeting is scheduled. Nonetheless, the Board is going to be holding a special meeting, today, beginning at 1:30 this afternoon.

How local agencies conduct their business is significantly determined by the Ralph M. Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law. The Brown Act does allow special meetings, and it also authorizes, in certain cases, meetings held behind closed doors. Today, the Board is holding a special meeting, behind closed doors, invoking Section 54956.9 of the Government Code:

“Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prevent a legislative body of a local agency, based on advice of its legal counsel, from holding a closed session to confer with, or receive advice from, its legal counsel regarding pending litigation…”

The Brown Act doesn’t require the Board to meet in secret. It just allows it, in restricted circumstances. Today, the Board is going to be discussing the recent federal court decision that directs the Board to allow the voters to vote on a referendum of the Rancho San Juan project, the biggest development project in the history of the County. Sometime after 1:30, the Board will emerge from a closed room, and either vote to follow the Judge’s order, or not. Maybe it makes sense to go to the Courthouse this afternoon, to see what they decide.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Monterey County Website
http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/

Board Agenda for Special Meeting
http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/cttb/specagenda040207.htm

Ralph M. Brown Act
http://www.cfac.org/Law/BrownAct/Text/ba_text.html

Today, neither the Monterey County Board nor the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to meet. The state legislature is out of session, too.

Listeners in San Luis Obispo County should note that the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors is not taking the week off. It’s holding a regularly scheduled meeting today. Because I’ve signed up for a helpful email alert sent out by Environment in the Public Interest, I know that the San Luis Obispo County Board will be considering an extremely interesting and important area of land use policy; namely, what kind of protection should be provided to “viewsheds.”

Today’s discussion will focus on a proposed ordinance to establish development standards to minimize the visual effects of certain new development within one mile of Highway One, approximately between Toro Creek Road and Villa Creek Road, and along Old Creek Road from the coastal zone boundary to its crest south of Highway 46, and along Santa Rita Road from Old Creek Road to the northeast, roughly 5.5 miles. The San Luis Obispo County Farm Bureau objects to the kind of viewshed protection being recommended by the county staff. The Farm Bureau proposal is to provide viewshed protection in a much smaller area.

If you care about this issue, consider attending today’s Board meeting, and mark your calendar, too. The Board is expected to call for a full public hearing on the ordinance on June 12th.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

San Luis Obispo County Website
http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/site4.aspx

Agenda for the April 3, 2007 Meeting
http://slocounty.granicus.com/
AgendaViewer.php?view_id=2&event_id=25

Get the EPI-Center Alert from g.r.hensley@sbcglobal.net

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is meeting tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., in the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors chambers, and Item 5.1 on the Consent Agenda is interesting to me. It’s just a status report, but it discusses what has become one of the popular “buzzwords” circulating in the halls of the State Capitol.

As you’ll remember, state voters decided, last November, to authorize infrastructure bonds in the total amount of about $40 billion dollars. The State Legislature is quite preoccupied with how they should spend all that money. One idea, which some people like, is to try to focus infrastructure investments into areas that make sense for future growth, in terms of good land use policy. This is popularly called “greening the bonds.” About fifty or so environmental organizations, led by the Planning and Conservation League, tried to get the Legislature to provide this kind of direction as a condition of the bonds themselves. That effort failed. Now we’re trying again.

One difficulty is finding the right “language” to use, to provide the appropriate kind of land use policy direction. Requiring future infrastructure expenditures to be consistent with regional “blueprints” is one idea in circulation. The Transportation Commission staff report outlines the local efforts to develop such a regional “blueprint” for the Monterey Bay Area.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

SCCRTC Website
http://www.sccrtc.org/

Agenda, April 5, 2007 Meeting
http://www.sccrtc.org/packet/2007/0704/TCAgenda0704.htm

Staff Report on regional “blueprint”
http://www.sccrtc.org/packet/2007/0704/0704-05-1a.pdf

Federal District Court Judge James Ware handed down an important ruling last week. The Judge’s order directed the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to allow the voters to vote on a referendum measure, qualified for the ballot by citizen action. It also applied to the Community General Plan initiative.

The final lines in the Judge’s opinion are of particular interest: “the Plaintiffs are entitled to recover reasonable costs and fees.”

This statement means that the taxpayers of Monterey County are not only going to foot the bill for the legal work done by the County’s attorneys, fighting against the people’s right to vote, they’re going to pay for the successful effort by the citizens to establish that right, despite the Board’s continued and persistent efforts to block the initiative and referendum.

It is now clear that the claims made by the Board, and by some in the community, that the initiative and referendum were pursued in violation of the Federal Voting Rights Act, are completely without merit. Congress has said so, as has the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Whatever may be your opinion of what the Board of Supervisors did, I think it’s fair to say that the Judge’s most recent decision does reward a persistent insistence by the public on the right of the public to vote on measures that the Board itself doesn’t like. In California, under our Constitution, that’s what democracy is all about.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Monterey County Herald News Article
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/
montereyherald/news/local/16999357.htm

U.S. District Court Website, Northern District of California
http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/

District Court Opinions
http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/judges.nsf/
61fffe74f99516d088256d480060b72d?OpenView
&Count=250&ResortAscending=0

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors fought for about a year against voter efforts to put a referendum and an initiative on the ballot, to give voters the right to decide for themselves what the future of Monterey County should be, in terms of land use policy.

A federal court judge has finally handed down an order that gives the public the right to vote on Rancho San Juan, the largest development project in the history of Monterey County, and to decide whether to adopt a “Community General Plan Initiative.” Because the Board was successful in delaying a public vote on the “Community General Plan Initiative,” the sponsors of the initiative also had to qualify a referendum of the Board’s own General Plan document, the so-called “GPU4.” Without that referendum, adoption of GPU4 could have “trumped” the initiative measure, thereby depriving the voters of their actual right to make the key land use policy decisions for themselves.

Somewhat ironically, the Board of Supervisors has now gone from trying to keep measures “off” the ballot to trying to keep them “on” the ballot, at least with reference to a measure that the Board itself has placed on the ballot, asking the public whether or not they want to “repeal” the so-far unenacted GPU4. This Board-sponsored measure is not legally mandated, and is confusing, but so far, the local Monterey County Superior Court has said that it’s “ok” for the Board to require the public to vote on this Board-sponsored measure, too.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Interested listeners can get copies of the Superior Court decision upholding the right of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to place its confusing “repeal” measure on the June ballot by contacting LandWatch Monterey County. The LandWatch website can be found at www.landwatch.org.