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Listen to the reports each weekday at 6:49 am & 8:49 am To
suggest a topic for a future land use report, or to convey a comment,
please use this link.
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| Past
Reports
The following Land Use Reports have been presented on KUSP by Gary Patton, Executive Director of The Planning and Conservation League. The opinions expressed by Mr. Patton are not necessarily those of KUSP You can contact Gary Patton at PCL by emailing him at: gapatton@pcl.org.
Monday, March 26, 2007 – Neighborhood Compatibility is a Big Issue There are, though, “finer grained” land use policy issues that are also important. These might be called “neighborhood compatibility” issues. In fact, that is exactly what they’re being called by Santa Cruz County government. Tomorrow, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will be considering a set of guidelines for “neighborhood compatibility.” Concerns include:
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors makes it easy to send in comments by email on specific agenda items in which you have an interest, so if you are interested in the future of your “neighborhood,” in terms of these issues, it would behoove you to review the proposed guidelines before tomorrow’s meeting, and to get your comments in. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton. More Information Tuesday, March 27, 2007 – Santa Cruz County General Plan Report The Board of Supervisors is also reviewing some “larger scale” policy matters at today’s meeting, in connection with their consideration of the 2006 Annual General Plan Report. That’s item #71 on today’s agenda. The General Plan is the community’s most important land use policy document, since all land use related actions must be “consistent” with General Plan policies. The report being considered by the Board today is easy to understand, and shows exactly how a local government can use land use policy to help accomplish community goals. Even if you’re not a Santa Cruz County resident, you might want to download and review this General Plan Report, and then see how your own County is doing on the issues that Santa Cruz County is addressing. These issues include an identification of General Plan amendments (i.e., is the County actually following its General Plan, or does the County simply amend that General Plan as developers request exemptions). That’s a pretty important thing to know, and is one of the issues highlighted in the General Plan Report. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton. More Information Wednesday, March 28, 2007 – TAMC and Money TAMC is planning, once again, to ask Monterey County voters to increase the local sales tax, to fund various transportation improvements. Earlier requests have been turned down. One reason may be that the voters don’t want to tax themselves to provide what they regard as public subsidies to sprawl developers. Tomorrow, I’m going to be talking about future development proposals in Monterey County, and have included a link to a compelling map of upcoming developments, pretty well dramatizing just how much development is being proposed. All that development, if actually built, would make existing traffic congestion even worse, and it’s understandable that the voters might be leery of what’s in store. Orange County recently passed a sales tax for transportation, and this tax measure was strongly supported by environmental organizations, including PCL, the group I work for. That’s because it was a measure that linked transportation funding to good land use policies. That’s something for TAMC to consider, as it plans for its next request to the voters. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton. More Information Thursday, March 29, 2007 – New Developments in Monterey County Developments are routinely approved, on a current basis, but aren’t actually built until many years later. This means, when we look around, we see one set of conditions (i.e., the territory we can see through our windshield), but there are other “realities” out there, invisible now, because not yet constructed. If we don’t want to run into a very hard reality, later on, we need to slow down our development approvals to a rate that allows us actually to know what the results of our current decisions will be. It’s also helpful to “map” out developments that have already been approved, but not yet built, and developments that are proposed, to see what is actually “out there,” but that we don’t yet see on the ground. A map documenting exactly that, for Monterey County, has recently been released by the Community General Plan Initiative group. You have to see this map to understand it, so follow the link found in the transcript of today’s Land Use Report. Based on this map, we’re driving rather dangerously in Monterey County! Developments have already been approved, or are approvable, to add over 190,000 persons to Monterey County’s population. For KUSP, this is Gary Patton. More Information Friday, March 30, 2007 – Agriculture at the Urban Edge Land use policy can play an important role in helping our local communities (and our state and nation) solve this problem. One of the most important things to do, in my mind, is to take some advice from the musical group, the Lovin’ Spoonful. They said, in one of my favorite songs: Sometimes you really dig a girl, the moment you kiss her, We should not underrate the importance of simply making a firm decision about what agricultural lands we intend to protect for their continued use for agriculture. Our dilemma, oftentimes, is that we want contradictory things. We do want to protect and preserve agricultural land, but we want to accommodate other kinds of growth and development, too. My thought is that we do, indeed, need to “make up our mind.” For KUSP, this is Gary Patton. More Information The April 5th and 6th UC Berkeley event will take place in the Lipman Room, Barrows Hall. The reception, poster session, and lecture will take place in Wurster Hall, College of Environmental Design. UC Berkeley map - http://www.berkeley.edu/map/ Lovin’ Spoonful lyrics - http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/didyouev.htm
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