I’d like to give listeners an “early warning” on three upcoming meetings. First, residents of the City of Monterey should know that the City Planning Commission will be meeting in an evening session, from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. tomorrow, and will be talking, among other things, about a proposal that would delegate future condominium conversion decisions to the Planning Commission. Currently, the elected City Council makes these decisions, which can have significant social equity impacts.

Second, if you’re a resident of the City of Arroyo Grande, in San Luis Obispo County, you might be interested in a public hearing to be held by the City Council tomorrow night, to discuss affordable housing “in lieu” fees. Again, it would be hard to overstate how important this topic is in terms of social equity.

Finally, on Thursday, November 29th, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission will be considering whether or not to recommend the incorporation of “smart growth” principles into the San Luis Obispo County General Plan. That meeting will take place in the Board of Supervisors Chambers, beginning at 8:45 a.m. I’ve provided a link to materials about this proposal as part of the transcript of today’s Land Use Report.

Informed and engaged participation in public meetings can actually make a difference. I’ve said that before, but only because it’s true. If you’d like to help decide the future of your community, then get involved in helping to make these decisions yourself!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Agenda, City of Monterey Planning Commission
http://www.monterey.org/boards/planning/
agendas/2007/1127pcagenda.pdf

Agenda, City of Arroyo Grande City Council
http://www.arroyogrande.org/calendar/?id=278

Agenda, San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission
http://slocounty.granicus.com/
AgendaViewer.php?view_id=3&event_id=9

San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission Staff Report on “Smart Growth” and the General Plan
http://slocounty.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?
view_id=3&event_id=9&meta_id=72131

The “war on terror” has land use implications. Since this Land Use Report focuses on land use policy, and not on national and international politics, I won’t direct my comments to how soldiers with high tech weaponry could ever be expected to eliminate “terror,” a basic human emotion. Instead, I’ll give you some references to an environmental review related to the new, “ramped up” combat training proposed at Fort Hunter Liggett, located about 70 miles south of Salinas.

The Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the “Army Growth and Force Structure Realignment” has now been issued. It anticipates a major expansion of Fort Hunter Liggett, to house 3,500 to 5,000 regular army troops, and up to 12,000 additional family members in the Fort Hunter Liggett area. Since this area is still relatively rural and agricultural, the growth inducing impacts of this “Force Structure Realignment” may be pretty dramatic.

Implementation of the Army’s plans is scheduled to begin in 2008, and to be completed by 2013. Even with a new President (unless it’s Dennis Kucinich), it’s unlikely that federal policy is going to change from the top down. Action from the bottom up may thus be the best way to respond to the impacts of what the Army has planned for Fort Hunter Liggett. You can find out how to get involved at www.kusp.org.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Salinas Californian story on Fort Hunter Liggett expansion
http://www.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20071123/NEWS01/711230303/1002/rss

Final Environmental Impact Statement
http://aec.army.mil/usaec/publicaffairs/news/news35.html

The Ventana Wilderness Alliance is helping to coordinate grassroots action related to the Army’s proposed “ramp up” plans at Fort Hunter Liggett. You can contact the Ventana Wilderness Alliance through their website at www.ventanawild.org, or by telephone at 831-429-9010.

On October 9th, the Santa Cruz City Council, acting as the Redevelopment Agency of the City, unanimously approved an agreement with a consulting firm called “Design, Community, and Environment,” for the preparation of an Ocean Street Area Plan.

Ocean Street is the main entry into the City of Santa Cruz, and the most direct access to the beach. If you have ideas about how to improve Ocean Street, or want to learn more about future plans, I suggest you attend a meeting scheduled for tomorrow night. The meeting will be held from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., at the University Inn, 611 Ocean Street in the City of Santa Cruz, right next door to the County Governmental Center. This workshop will kick off the planning process for the Ocean Street Area Plan, and this is the very best time to get involved.

An “Area Plan” is usually adopted as a supplement to the local General Plan. Once adopted, it guides all future development. All project approvals, and public works and infrastructure projects, must be “consistent” with the General Plan, and with the “Area Plan” where one exists.

The “lower” part of Ocean Street, nearest the beach, could certainly benefit from “redevelopment,” but “redevelopment” can sometimes have the effect of unfairly displacing lower income residents, who have nowhere else to go, in order to make room for more upscale uses.

The whole City has a stake in what happens on Ocean Street, and the planning process starts tomorrow night!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

City of Santa Cruz Website
http://www.ci.santa-cruz.ca.us/

DCE Website
http://www.dceplanning.com/

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider an important planning item on Tuesday, December 4th. The item is of particular relevance to the residents of Santa Cruz County’s “rural” areas, from deep in the San Lorenzo Valley, to Bonny Doon, to the Summit, and to mountain areas around Aptos and Watsonville. You should plan to attend the meeting, if you want to be sure that efforts to streamline the permit approval process don’t undermine the “rural” lifestyle you’ve probably taken for granted.

A link to the proposal is found in the transcript for today’s Land Use Report. In essence, the County is considering a change in its zoning regulations for small-scale residential structures, including additions, accessory structures, and second units. The “good news” for property owners is that the new regulations would make it a lot easier to develop additional units and larger units on existing properties. The possible “bad news” for nearby residents is that these proposed changes could lead to a lot more development in rural areas than existing residents might think is appropriate.

The Sierra Club has filed a fourteen-page letter, outlining its concerns. One of them is that a full Environmental Impact Report has not been prepared. There are some significant environmental concerns in the current proposal, and significant public engagement around this issue is vitally important, to make sure that the changes proposed don’t lead to some very unintended consequences.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Santa Cruz County Website
http://www.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/

Board of Supervisors Agendas
http://sccounty01.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/bds/
Govstream/archive/ArchiveIndex.asp

Planning Commission Staff Report
http://sccounty01.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/
planning/plnmeetings/PLNSupMaterial/
PC/agendas/2007/20071024/009.pdf

The Metro Santa Cruz newspaper published an article in October headlined, “Young and Rich.” The article quoted Jeremy Neuner, “Economic Development Manager” for the City of Santa Cruz, and also incorporates the ideas of Carl Guardino, Chief Executive Officer of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

The vision presented in the Metro article, reflecting the ideas of Santa Cruz Next, “an informal networking group for youngish professionals,” depicts Santa Cruz as moving from a blue-collar past, when we were “old and poor,” to a future in which we can become “young and rich.” This trajectory seems to be based on the idea that we can, or should, incorporate our local community more into the economic developments occurring in the Silicon Valley.

I remembered the Metro article when I heard about efforts to save the Santa Cruz Flea Market. Long ago, when I was on the Board of Supervisors, a proposal was made to knock down the Skyview Drive-In, displacing the Flea Market, to put up a more upscale development. We said, “no.” More recently, the Foundation that runs the Sutter Maternity & Surgery Center has purchased the Skyview property, and also proposes to shut down the Flea Market.

Getting rid of the lower-income jobs of the hundreds of families who make their living at the Flea Market may be what Santa Cruz wants to do. I think, though, that we should think long and hard before deciding that “Young and Rich” is really the objective towards which our community should strive.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

*Some quick web research found that Jeremy Neuner graduated at the top of his class in high school, went on to a private university, where he graduated magna cum laude, and from there joined the Navy, where he graduated number one in his flight school class. He spent the next nine years as an officer and helicopter pilot, and then resigned from the Navy and went to Harvard graduate school. At about the time he graduated from Harvard (apparently in about June 2006), he had what he describes as a “one-third life crisis,” when he “started asking myself that most soul-searchingly existential question of all: despite my achievements, what was I really put on this Earth to do?” He was named as the Economic Development Manager for the City of Santa Cruz in July 2007. See Jeremy Neuner and the “One-Third Life Crisis”
http://www.steveshapiro.com/2007/01/
18/the-one-third-life-crisis/

Metro Santa Cruz article on Jeremy Neuner (the “hard copy” edition had the headline, “Young and Rich”)
http://www.metroactive.com/metro-santa-cruz/
10.10.07/news-0741.html

If you’d like to help save the Flea Market, contact Angelina Reed or Eric Richter at angie_rou@yahoo.com