Listeners may have heard about the dangers to local communities of the transportation of highly flammable petroleum products by rail. According to an Alternet article, there had been, as of the end of last year, eight major accidents in North America involving trains carrying crude oil. The worst of these incidents occurred in July 2013, when a train derailed at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The subsequent explosion killed 47 people and burned down own a quarter of the town. Six months later, another crude-bearing train derailed and exploded in Casselton, North Dakota, requiring the evacuation of most of the town's 2,300 residents. Most recently, on March 6th, another terrible explosion occurred, this one in Galena, Illinois. Two other, similar incidents occurred in the weeks before the Galena explosion.

This all sounds bad, but what's the "local angle?" The local angle is that San Luis Obispo County may be on the receiving end of highly flammable oil shipments that will pass right by the Pajaro River and through Monterey County. Supervisors John Leopold and Ryan Coonerty are asking the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors to weigh in. They have a letter on the Consent Agenda of tomorrow's Board meeting. You can get a link to the letter at kusp.org/landuse.

More Information

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton's Two Worlds Blog
• Board Agenda Item #26 – Coonerty/Leopold Letter
• Alternet Article on Transportation Danger
• News Story on Galena, Illinois Derailment
• MSNBC Video on Galena, Illinois Train Derailment

Today, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors meets at the County Governmental Center. It is a Tuesday, after all, and that is the normal "meeting day" for Boards of Supervisors all over the state.

Listeners may know that Board Members often wear more than one hat. By virtue of their service on a Board of Supervisors, Board members may also act as the governing body of legally separate governmental agencies. Today, for instance, the Santa Cruz County Board will recess, almost immediately after the Board meeting begins, to convene in the very same place as the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Zone 5. Zone 5 covers territory in Mid-County and Scotts Valley. All members of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors are automatically members of the Zone 5 Board, and representatives of the City of Capitola and the City of Scotts Valley also serve.

The big item on today's Zone 5 Agenda is a recommendation that the Zone 5 Board authorize an expenditure for television advertising that will alert viewers to the importance of making efforts to reduce stormwater runoff. This is a collaborative public education program, with agencies in both Monterey County and Santa Cruz County helping to fund the program. For more information, check out today's Zone 5 Agenda, or just stay tuned to your local television station!

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton's Two Worlds Blog
• March 10, 2015 Agenda, Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors
• LAFCO Countywide Service Review – Flood Protection and Stormwater Services
• Zone 5 Agenda

Regular listeners know that I talk quite a bit about affordable housing. In our region, affordable housing is a pretty high priority land use issue, and consistent with my "unhidden agenda" to stimulate your personal involvement, I would like to encourage you to get personally involved in housing issues. The Santa Cruz County Housing Advisory Commission would like that, too, and the Commission is specifically trying to mobilize public involvement in the state-mandated update to the Housing Element, part of the Santa Cruz County General Plan. That update effort is just getting underway, with very important discussions to take place this year. The purpose of the meetings being hosted by the Housing Advisory Commission is to discuss programs and policies that could address issues that affect the price, type, location, and availability of housing to serve the needs of County residents and workers. A meeting took place on March 4th, and two more meetings are coming up soon.

Tomorrow, on Thursday, March 12th, the Commission will host a meeting from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. at the Temple Beth El Community Room, located at 3055 Porter Gulch Road, Aptos. Next Monday, March 16th, a meeting is scheduled at the Watsonville Civic Plaza Community Room, located at 250 Main Street in Watsonville. That meeting is also from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.

Spanish translation will be available at all meetings. I hope you will get involved!

This is Gary Patton.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton's Two Worlds Blog
• For more information on the meetings, please call Sarah Neuse at: (831) 454-3290

LandWatch Monterey County is a nonprofit, community-based group. According to its website, its mission is to "promote and inspire sound land use policy through grassroots community action."

That's not a bad mission statement, as far as I am concerned. Back in the day (and I am talking about forty-five years ago back in the day), I first got involved with land use issues through a group called the Save Lighthouse Point Association. That group definitely operated on the basis of "grassroots community action," and that grassroots action changed the history of Santa Cruz. Because people cared enough to spend their time working to save Lighthouse Field, a City-County plan to develop Lighthouse Field was changed. Instead of using the Field for a convention center, a high-rise hotel, a shopping center, and an upscale condominium development, all to be accompanied by seven acres of blacktop parking, the City ultimately chose to protect the Field as open space along the coast.

In Monterey County, lots of very consequential development projects are poised for approval, and some of them have already been approved, most recently the Harper Canyon development off Highway 68. Forty-five years ago, in Santa Cruz, nobody thought that public participation actually made a difference. It turns out it does. Where land use issues are concerned, grassroots community action makes a very big difference indeed.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton's Two Worlds Blog
• LandWatch Monterey County Website
• Harper Canyon Project

In the late 1970's, Los Angeles was terrorized by a series of rapes and killings, attributed to a person the press called "the Hillside Strangler." It turned out that two men, working together, were actually responsible. The "Strangler" became the "Stranglers." This has little to do with land use around the Monterey Bay, but if you'd like to read some history, I do have links in today's blog.

I also have a link to the Supreme Court decision in the recent Berkeley Hillside Preservation case. It's the "Hillside" thing that made me think of the "Hillside Strangler." If you read the case, you might also conclude that the home approved by the City of Berkeley, and challenged by the Berkeley Hillside Preservation group, was a kind of crime in itself. Proposed on a 50% slope, in an historic Berkeley neighborhood, the home would be 6,478 square feet in size, with an attached 3,394 square foot 10-car garage.

The Berkeley Hillside case is incredibly important, because it holds that the California Environmental Quality Act does NOT require the preparation of an Environmental Impact Report for such a monster house. If this decision stands, there will be little, if any, CEQA review for any single-family dwelling, no matter how big, or where it is proposed to be built.

This is Gary Patton.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton's Two Worlds Blog
• This Day In History – The Hillside Stranglers
• Wikipedia on The Hillside Strangler
• Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley