Tomorrow would be a very good day to hie one’s hindquarters down to the Santa Cruz City Hall, to take in a double-barreled meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. At 2:00 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the Council will consider what to do about the Beach Flats Community Garden. The land on which the Garden is located is owned by the Seaside Company, which initially proposed to shut down the Garden and reclaim the land. Faced by a massive outpouring of support for the Garden, and with encouragement from the City Council, the Seaside Company now offers to shut down only one-third of the Garden, and to extend the lease for three years. After that, who knows? Garden advocates are urging the Council to take action to preserve the entirety of the Garden, forever and not just for 1,095 days. The Council could do that, if it wanted to. If you care, you now know where and when the decision will be made.

At 7:00 p.m. tomorrow, the Council will discuss the recently released report of the City’s Water Supply Advisory Committee. For anyone who cares about City water policy, this meeting is a “must attend” event.

As ever, there is more information at kusp.org/landuse. I also have information about a meeting tomorrow in Monterey County that will focus on what a public purchase of the Cal-Am water system might look like.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Santa Cruz City Council Agenda – November 10, 2015 Meeting
• Santa Cruz Sentinel Op-Ed By Carol Long – City Should Buy The Garden Property
• Public Water Now – Meeting Announcement

I am late in getting the word out, but those who live and work in the Salinas area might like to know about the City of Salinas’ proposed West Area Specific Plan. A Draft EIR has been prepared, and the final day to comment is Friday, November 13th.

The West Area Specific Plan proposes the development of 797 acres located at the corner of East Boronda Road and San Juan Grade Road. The development would include residential uses, mixed use commercial, a community park, some small neighborhood parks, and some open space in the form of stormwater detention basins. This is a “New Urbanism” development, and the City believes that it will achieve “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.” The specific goals of the Plan are to create a community that is pedestrian, bicycle, and transit friendly, that provides a variety of land uses in easy walking distance of housing, that will create an inviting tree-lined street system that incorporates traffic calming, and that will create a sense of place and a unique identity through the use of entry treatments, landscaping, streetscapes, public art, and decorative street lighting.

This all sounds pretty good. What the City doesn’t say is that this new development would pave over 797 acres of productive agricultural land. You can get more information at kusp.org/landuse.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• City of Salinas West Area Specific Plan
• Google Map – Picture of The Site
• For More Information, Contact Gabriel Elliott
  • Telephone: (831) 758-7387
  • Email: gabriel.elliott@ci.salinas.ca.us

Highway widening projects are always controversial. They cost a lot of money, of course, and they generally have pretty significant environmental impacts. The issue that I think is most often coming to the fore, nowadays, is a question about whether such highway widening projects actually accomplish anything positive, in terms of reducing highway congestion.

In other words, while spending many millions of dollars and causing large impacts to the environment might be a good tradeoff, if the end result were significantly less traffic congestion, those huge expenditures and negative environmental impacts look a lot less attractive if the end result is no significant improvement at all in the highway congestion problems that were the reason that the widening project was undertaken in the first place.

In fact, highway engineers are coming to the conclusion that widening highways results in what is called “induced demand,” which means that the new capacity from the widening project is quickly consumed by more people using the highway, so it’s the same old congestion, but with more people caught in the jam.

The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission is proposing a project to widen Highway One in Santa Cruz County, from Morrissey Boulevard to Larkin Valley Road. An EIR process is just beginning. You are invited to get involved, and can get more information at kusp.org/landuse.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• “Induced Demand”
• Highway One Widening EIR And Public Participation Notice

Santa Cruz County residents can often find out what their elected representatives on the Board of Supervisors are doing, by visiting their Supervisorial websites. In the case of at least a couple of Supervisors, interested persons can also sign up for periodic email alerts. Naturally, I’m signed up, and I recently got an alert from First District County Supervisor John Leopold that advertises a couple of interesting meetings that will take place next week.

On Tuesday, November 7th, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., the California Department of Transportation, or CALTRANS, will discuss an “access management” plan for Highway 17, to address access, mobility, and safety needs along the Highway 17 corridor. The Tuesday meeting will be held at the Happy Valley School, located at 3125 Branciforte Drive in Santa Cruz. Another meeting, addressing the same topic, will be held on Wednesday, November 18th, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. That Wednesday meeting will be held at the Loma Prieta School Forum, located at 23800 Summit Road in Los Gatos.

Anyone living near or having property right alongside Highway 17 will obviously have a big stake in the outcome of the CALTRANS access management planning process. Actually, though, anyone using Highway 17 should be interested and involved. That means just about everybody in Santa Cruz County.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Newsletter Signup – Supervisor John Leopold (First District)
• Contact Information – Supervisor Zach Friend (Second District)
• Newsletter Signup – Supervisor Ryan Coonerty (Third District)
• Contact Information – Supervisor Greg Caput (Fourth District)
• Contact Information – Supervisor Bruce McPherson (Fifth District)