CGF opposes redesignating land to facilitate overdevelopment in South County

(We sent this letter to the Santa Clara County Planning Commission last week.  -Brian)

June 30, 2010

Santa Clara County Planning Commission

            Re:  CGF support for the County staff position on Planning Commission July 1, 2010 meeting Agenda Item 11, recommending rejection of application for formal processing

Dear Commissioners;

I regret that I may not be able to attend the Planning Commission meeting discussing the Pickett General Plan Amendment Proposal, but as we also stated in 2007, the Committee for Green Foothills continues to oppose the proposal, and the current proposal does not change any important issue that constituted adequate reason for rejecting the proposal three years ago.

The staff report describes several reasons for rejecting the application, both now and in 2007.  Related to the 2007 discussion, I would like to correct the record contained in the staff report:  it correctly states that I spoke on behalf of CGF in opposition to the project, but also states that I supported "conversion of lands to rural residential if the property is 35 percent or more surrounded by rural residential."

I am attempting to obtain the audio recording for that meeting, but at the least, the record does not describe what I intended to say.  Proposals like this one, where a minority of adjacent land is Rural Residential, should be rejected.  Proposals where even a majority of adjacent perimeter land is Rural Residential may also be inappropriate, and only where a substantial majority, such as three out of four sides, may be appropriately considered infill under some circumstances.

The applicant's proposal for what constitutes "infill" actually leads to a logical contradiction.  As can be seen on the parcel maps for the area, parcels with a large variety of sizes and shape are adjacent to one another.  If infill is only allowed where a substantial majority of adjacent perimeter is Rural Residential, then there will soon be a condition where the infill has "infilled" and no other parcels qualify for consideration.  If, on the other hand, the County uses the applicant's very different, proposed criteria of a minority of adjacent land being sufficient to justify changing designation, then the "infill" will actually expand consistently outward.  Instead of infilling holes, the applicant's rationale will lead to outward expansion, in direct contradiction to the purpose of infill.

Take the applicant's own example, where approximately one-third of their parcel number 77611001 borders Rural Residential property.  Changing this parcel's designation means that other neighboring parcels will have similar or greater percentages of perimeter shared with Rural Residential and appropriate for re-designation – parcels 77929027 (small parcel to the east), 77926003, 75619032 (already at equivalent percentage), 75619036, and 77612008.  These parcels, once re-designated, would justify changing the designation of still other parcels in an outward expansion that includes parcels 77929028, 75619031, 75619006, and 77612012, and those parcels would justify still more re-designations.  This is just in the immediate vicinity of the applicant, but their argument logically applies to any parcels anywhere in the County that border Rural Residential land.

The problem with the applicant's argument is not that it may someday take us down a "slippery slope" of accepting ever-smaller percentages for justifying re-designations.  Rather it is the applicant's own principle without any further deterioration that justifies outwardly expanding "infill".

Committee for Green Foothills has seen too many instances where past environmental mistakes have been used by developers to justify arguing for new mistakes.  We urge the Planning Commission to avoid a repeat of that process, and to recommend rejection of this application.

Please contact us with any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

Opposition to Santa Clara County General Plan Amendment Proposal

(CGF sent the letter below to the Santa Clara County Planning Commission. -Brian)

June 30, 2010

Santa Clara County Planning Commission

            Re:  CGF support for the County staff position on Planning Commission July 1, 2010 meeting Agenda Item 11, recommending rejection of application for formal processing

Dear Commissioners;

I regret that I may not be able to attend the Planning Commission meeting discussing the Pickett General Plan Amendment Proposal, but as we also stated in 2007, the Committee for Green Foothills continues to oppose the proposal, and the current proposal does not change any important issue that constituted adequate reason for rejecting the proposal three years ago.

The staff report describes several reasons for rejecting the application, both now and in 2007.  Related to the 2007 discussion, I would like to correct the record contained in the staff report:  it correctly states that I spoke on behalf of CGF in opposition to the project, but also states that I supported "conversion of lands to rural residential if the property is 35 percent or more surrounded by rural residential."

I am attempting to obtain the audio recording for that meeting, but at the least, the record does not describe what I intended to say.  Proposals like this one, where a minority of adjacent land is Rural Residential, should be rejected.  Proposals where even a majority of adjacent perimeter land is Rural Residential may also be inappropriate, and only where a substantial majority, such as three out of four sides, may be appropriately considered infill under some circumstances.

The applicant's proposal for what constitutes "infill" actually leads to a logical contradiction.  As can be seen on the parcel maps for the area, parcels with a large variety of sizes and shape are adjacent to one another.  If infill is only allowed where a substantial majority of adjacent perimeter is Rural Residential, then there will soon be a condition where the infill has "infilled" and no other parcels qualify for consideration.  If, on the other hand, the County uses the applicant's very different, proposed criteria of a minority of adjacent land being sufficient to justify changing designation, then the "infill" will actually expand consistently outward.  Instead of infilling holes, the applicant's rationale will lead to outward expansion, in direct contradiction to the purpose of infill.

Take the applicant's own example, where approximately one-third of their parcel number 77611001 borders Rural Residential property.  Changing this parcel's designation means that other neighboring parcels will have similar or greater percentages of perimeter shared with Rural Residential and appropriate for re-designation – parcels 77929027 (small parcel to the east), 77926003, 75619032 (already at equivalent percentage), 75619036, and 77612008.  These parcels, once re-designated, would justify changing the designation of still other parcels in an outward expansion that includes parcels 77929028, 75619031, 75619006, and 77612012, and those parcels would justify still more re-designations.  This is just in the immediate vicinity of the applicant, but their argument logically applies to any parcels anywhere in the County that border Rural Residential land.

The problem with the applicant's argument is not that it may someday take us down a "slippery slope" of accepting ever-smaller percentages for justifying re-designations.  Rather it is the applicant's own principle without any further deterioration that justifies outwardly expanding "infill".

Committee for Green Foothills has seen too many instances where past environmental mistakes have been used by developers to justify arguing for new mistakes.  We urge the Planning Commission to avoid a repeat of that process, and to recommend rejection of this application.

Please contact us with any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

February letter to San Jose Envision 2040 Task Force on jobs:housing balance

(CGF submitted this letter regarding the balance between jobs and housing in the forthcoming San Jose General Plan revision.  -Brian)

February 22, 2010

Envision San Jose Task Force

Re:  recommended amendment to land use scenarios to rely upon "actual jobs" and not just jobs capacity for balancing employment and housing

Dear Envision San Jose Task Force members;

Several issues have become clear regarding the "jobs capacity" concept that is central to the choice of land use scenarios:

1. The jobs capacity number given in each scenario will not actually occur.  Staff has openly admitted this; they have discouraged those of us who are dismayed by environmentally destructive Jobs:Employed Residents ratios from taking them seriously; and they have said the numbers should be seen at most as indicating relative degrees of emphasis.

2. The numbers are being used for planning purposes as if they will actually occur.  Last meeting's discussion of VMT used the numbers as if they would occur, and the General Plan EIR will do the same.

3. If for some reasons the numbers are actually reached or nearly reached, the CEQA process for mitigating or stopping the environmental consequences will have long passed, because the EIR will be finalized many years before the actual development.

As has been discussed in many previous communications, any ratio of actual jobs to employed residents that exceeds a 1:1 ratio will require massive amounts of commuting from outside Santa Clara County , primarily residents of Central Valley coming to our area by car.  City staff is concerned that any jobs capacity to employed residents ratio of 1:1 or less will result in an actual jobs level that is far lower, and hurt the City's finances.

The Committee for Green Foothills proposes the following compromise that could be included as an amendment to any current land use scenario:

The land use scenario should include a performance criteria requiring that the actual jobs to employed residents ratio to remain no higher than a 1:1 ratio.  Development of jobs capacity in the City should happen in stages for different areas, and once the 1:1 ratio is reached, additional areas for additional capacity should not be readied for new jobs until the residential development level is also matched and planned to occur at approximately the same time.

An alternative recommendation is to "backload" the excess actual jobs, so that once the City has reached the 1:1 actual jobs:employed residents ratio, the jobs development cannot occur faster than residential development until all the planned residential development has occurred.  This alternative is inferior to our main proposal because it will still allow severe environmental consequences from inadequate housing relative to jobs, but it is superior to the proposals currently in front of the Task Force.

The Committee for Green Foothills notes that adopting this recommendation as a mandatory performance criterion can greatly improve the planning process and reduce the environmental impacts in the resulting EIR.  It places an upper limit on actual jobs that is much closer to what will actually occur, which means such issues as VMT calculations can reflect something approaching reality.  It also eliminates the worst environmental impacts from commuting that staff would otherwise have to acknowledge in the EIR,[1] so the EIR that the City would publish with this criterion included will show fewer negative and more positive environmental effects.

As we have mentioned before, any increase over the current baseline jobs-to-employed residents ratio would be environmentally harmful, but we also recognize that some change is likely.  Including larger levels of residential development in the City is important in our housing-poor region, especially transit-oriented and senior-oriented development.  Above and beyond all that is the need to keep a balance of actual jobs to employed residents that is not available in most of the current land use scenarios.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

---

[1] We believe a feasible mitigation for those impacts would be a similar performance criterion in the EIR, so the City has to consider this idea in any case.

Sprawl effect from San Jose planning scenarios

San Jose has the following scenarios in its proposed General Plan for future growth:

Scenario K - 339,530 new jobs and 158,970 new dwelling units (1.0 J/ER) (Jobs:Employed Resident ratio)

Scenario E - 360,550 new jobs and 135,650 new dwelling units (1.1 J/ER)

Scenario C - 346,550 new jobs and 88,650 new dwelling units (1.2 J/ER)

Scenario J - 526,000 new jobs and 88,650 new dwelling units (1.5 J/ER)

Generally accepted figure is that residences will have an average 1.7 people who are employed full time (or the equivalent of full time when multiple people employed part time are counted). Scenario J has a massive imbalance of housing and jobs. The 88,650 residences will provide housing for 151,000 employees and their families, while the 526,000 new employees will actually need 309,000 residences. The outcome then is that 158,000 residences will have to be built, somewhere, to accommodate these people. Most likely they'll be built in Central Valley, and those employees will be commuting. How this fits the City's claim to be planning for compact development is less than clear.

-Brian

CGF comments to San Jose City Council Meeting today

(I would have made the comments below to today's City Council meeting on its General Plan, but the mayor cut the time in half. I summarized instead. -Brian)

(UPDATE: The City Council protected Almaden Valley and mid-Coyote Valley, but not north Coyote Valley. So not too bad, but there's more to do.)

I want to address the suggestions in the supplemental documents for this item. The second Supplemental, from June 15, contains landowner suggestions to develop Almaden Valley and Coyote Valley Urban Reserves, and I think Councilmember Liccardo addressed this.

Developers have proposed in the June 3d Supplemental memo, suggesting that Scenario K be modified to add 10,000 residences to the proposed 50,000 jobs in North Coyote Valley. This is a bad idea, maybe the most environmentally destructive one in the packet. I would describe it as a "zombie idea," the walking dead version of the Coyote Valley Specific Plan that we thought we had been put down to rest in peace over a year ago. The proposal is really a stalking horse to get residential development and downplay jobs. All the reasons for not doing this became clear during the collapse of the Coyote Valley proposal and it shouldn't be revived now.

So what would be better? We suggest modifying Scenario K to remove the proposed 50,000 jobs from North Coyote Valley, based on the assumption that the Coyote Valley Research Park permits will expire without being used in 2011, as now appears highly likely. A certain number of the 50 thousand jobs could occur elsewhere, but mostly this scenario could be made much more politically realistic by somewhat reducing the total number of jobs and housing while keeping an appropriate balance. There is no need to expand the city outward and destroy this environmentally crucial area.

All the environmental and economic reasons for not developing urban reserves also apply to CV

General Plan updates in Santa Clara County

A useful list I received about the schedules for General Plan updates in Santa Clara County - something good to keep in mind.

-Brian

General Plan Updates – Santa Clara County Cities

listed by City, Next Scheduled Update, and Plan Elements To Be Updated
Campbell 2008 Housing (Other elements not scheduled)
Cupertino ? None scheduled. (Comprehensive update in 2005)
Gilroy 2015-17 Comprehensive
Los Altos 2008 Housing (Comprehensive not scheduled)
Los Altos Hills 2008 (at council now) Land Use
Los Gatos 2010 (just underway) Comprehensive
Milpitas 2009 Housing (Comprehensive not scheduled)
Monte Sereno 2008 (at council now) Comprehensive
Morgan Hill 2011 (approx) Comprehensive
Mountain View 2009-10
just underway Comprehensive
Palo Alto 2010 just underway Housing, add Sustainability, update all other elements
San Jose 2008 Comprehensive
Santa Clara 2009 Comprehensive
Saratoga 2008 Housing (Comprehensive not scheduled)
Sunnyvale 2008
Parks & Recreation (2008), Land Use & Transportation (2009), Housing (2009-10),
Santa Clara County ? Comprehensive not scheduled
Stanford University ? Comprehensive not scheduled