At the 11th hour, a breakout group of environmentalists on the
Urban Limit Line Committee presented an alternative plan for
preserving open space view land and compensating property
owners.
At the 11th hour, a breakout group of environmentalists on the Urban Limit Line Committee presented an alternative plan for preserving open space view land and compensating property owners.
The plan was revealed by committee member Alex Kennett at last week’s workshop on the draft ULL plan, on which the committee has labored for two years. Kennett is also the local representative (and chair) of the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority.
“The only reason we are presenting the plan so late is that it took this long to finish the work,” Kennett told the committee and an audience full of property owners and interested citizens.
“I understand their frustration, having to go another six months’ work of meetings,” Kennett said. “But some who considered it the most difficult actually came up and said to me that this may be worth considering.”
Kennett said he doesn’t expect the committee to throw out two-years’ work and adopt the entire alternative plan.
“If we can fold solutions for the three difficult parts into the existing plan, we’ll have something we can live with. The committee will have to chew on it.”
Kennett said the alternative plan solved many of the difficulties the official ULL draft plan had not been able to solve. He assured the committee that his group was dedicated to the same principles that the ULL committee was: to help define the city physically and separate it from San Jose and San Martin and that they considered the greenbelt to be permanent.
The 17-member ULL committee has reached agreement on lines in the north and west of the city. It ran into trouble over the southeast area, which has far more undeveloped, flat land that landowners may have counted on to sell for development than other, hillier areas outside the proposed line. It was decided that the landowners would be compensated either by outright purchase or by buying development rights, a move that keep the land in open space or agriculture.
However, the city does not have sufficient funds to back these purchases. Kennett said his plan shows a way it can be done.
The alternative plan suggests a ULL line drawn much closer to the existing urban growth boundary and that fees from new houses are used to buy open space land. The report claims the plan would avoid many legal hurdles and large costs to Morgan Hill taxpayers and could become effective as early as 2006, providing incentives to greenbelt landowners.
The plan’s three steps are to define the greenbelt, find how greenbelt lands can be secured and to secure voter approval.
Manou Mobedshahi, who owns property in the east hills attended the meeting and picked up a copy of the Kennett proposal the next day.
“I find it quite intriguing,” Mobedshahi said. “It sounds like a credible solution that maybe the whole of California could use. I was a little bit surprised by the reaction of the committee members, they were a bit tepid. But this accelerates everything. They owe it to themselves to at least look at it.”
David Bischoff, the former community development director who has directed the ULL meetings, said city staff was a bit skeptical.
“The bottom line for staff is that we don’t believe the committee should endorse the recommendation,” Bischoff said. “It is a major diversion from what the committee has done.”
The alternative plan, he said, takes hundreds of acres presently in the city limits and puts them in the greenbelt. It takes hundreds of acres in the Urban Growth Boundary that could be available for development some time in the future and puts them in the greenbelt too.
All of Coyote Estates on Cochrane Road, the Golden Oak Restaurant on Condit Road would be in the greenbelt. Bischoff said the alternative plan document presented at last week’s meeting does not have enough information to tell if it would work.
“If there are portions (of the plan) that are viable,” Bischoff said, “they would have to be fleshed out more than they are now.”
He is also unsure about the timing.
“Ten plus years versus 2007,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
Bischoff said there is also a difference in scope: the ULL plan focuses on acquisition of specific valuable properties, not at buying everything outside the ULL.
“Kennett’s plan may mean everything outside the line would need to be purchased.”
He said it would be inappropriate to adopt the alternative plan now because the public has not had a chance to consider it and comment upon it.
“Should the committee feel the proposal has merit,” Bischoff said, “the staff would recommend the committee take no action but forward it to the City Council who would spend additional time evaluating it.”
ULL Committee member Joe Mueller, who is also a planning commissioner, said he hadn’t had time to digest the entire plan but he did have a reaction to Kennett’s bringing up the changes so late in the process.
“I’m a little disappointed that such a major change in where the committee is at concerns me,” Mueller said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to deal with it.
Joining Kennett in preparing the alternative plan were ULL committee members Michele Beasley (Greenbelt Alliance) and Tichinin; plus Brian Schmidt (Committee for Green Foothills) and Brenda Liz Torres, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society.
Councilman Mark Grzan, who was also a committee member before being elected to the council in November 2004, was not listed among the alternative planners but said he had known about and approved of the plan.
The ULL Committee met Monday to discuss information presented at last week’s workshop. The committee also heard more of the alternative plan, consider what, if any, changes it wants to make to the original draft plan and send the report on the City Council.
Copies of the alternative plan can be obtained from Alex Kennett, [email protected] or 779-1773 or from the city planning staff, 779-7248.
Carol Holzgrafe covers City Hall for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 201.
