City hopes to craft new measure, perform environmental review by
November ballot
Morgan Hill – It’s becoming clear to city leaders just how tough it will be to direct downtown development with another ballot measure.
Primed to put a measure on the June ballot that would carve out new rules for downtown separate from those in the 2004 Measure C, council members discovered Friday that the issue is far too complicated to move that fast.
“We need to take a step back rather than step forward,” Councilman Larry Carr said. “Clearly there are a lot of questions about whether we have a strategy or we’re just jumping around.”
Elected officials, planners and developers agree that something must be done to encourage more development in the city’s core, but there’s no agreement about what type of measure would solve the problem.
The immediate challenge is a lack of slots for new development projects in the fiscal year that ends in June 2010.
The city has received so many proposals for downtown that, if they’re all approved, there will be very few opportunities to build homes elsewhere in town. There’s a chance that the city’s Measure C competitive development process that began in 2004 could be suspended as soon as this year.
But many developers see a larger problem: what they say is the city’s lack of a coherent downtown strategy.
Gary Walton, owner several properties downtown, said the city does too much “spot zoning,” a sign that Morgan Hill’s regulations need work.
“I don’t think we have an overall strategic plan for downtown and I think we’re rushing through it,” Walton said of a new ballot measure. “We have empty lots, missing teeth, under-utilized sites. We need to focus on the spots that really need our attention. We’re all over the place.”
And there’s not yet consensus about the best way to massage Measure C, which caps new residential development at 250 units a year to keep the city in line with a population goal of 48,000 by 2020. The current population is 36,400.
Some developers and politicians think downtown projects should be exempt from Measure C limits, others argue against exemptions.
There’s no consensus about how long downtown’s special treatment should last and even concerns that the city is trying to build more residential and commercial spaces than it can reasonably fill.
The ballot measure process is also complicated by state laws requiring the city to perform an environmental review process along with most types of city-sponsored development measures.
The review means November 2006 is the earliest a measure could appear on a ballot. Planning director Kathy Molloy Previsich said that it will be possible but difficult to complete the review by August, when November measure must be submitted.
The downtown ballot measure will be discussed Feb. 17, at 3pm, by the city’s Community and Economic Development Committee at city hall.
