Downtrodden city officials and landowners vented March 16 about a county commission’s decision to deny their plans for the Southeast Quadrant and properties south of Watsonville Road.
Comments at the council meeting reflected deep frustration with the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission’s March 11 rejection of the city’s push to build athletic fields and preserve farmland in the SEQ. City staff and property owners have been working on the plans for more than 10 years.
Councilmember Marilyn Librers said March 16 she was “deeply saddened” by LAFCO’s decision and the fact that public discussion of the SEQ project has “divided our community in many ways.”
She added, “People that opposed us and these ideas, I think, really didn’t understand what we were trying to do. Shame on them for not being more educated. What we’re doing is trying to do is preserve the Southeast Quadrant to be ag and some development, not to become sprawl as (opponents) said.”
Councilmember Larry Carr wondered what exactly LAFCO had in store for preserving the agricultural land in the SEQ. He wants to know how the county’s effort to use a share of $40 million in statewide cap-and-trade funds for this purpose is going to work.
“How much longer (is LAFCO) going to ask our community to wait to hear some more thoughts, or some new thoughts (on ag preservation)?” Carr said.
Open space advocates have said they prefer to use the cap-and-trade funds to preserve local farmland with a regional effort, but this money won’t be available until at least 2017 and is not guaranteed for Santa Clara County. The county and the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority are spearheading that plan.
Carr added that LAFCO commissioners’ reasons for denying the project “still baffle” him.
At the March 16 council meeting, City Manager Steve Rymer repeated the presentation on the SEQ that he gave to LAFCO March 11. Rymer and other proponents were unsuccessful in their bid to convince that body to accept the city’s proposal to bring 229 acres of farmland in the area east of U.S. 101 into the Urban Service Area.
“We still truly believe we all have the same goal in mind” when it comes to preserving agriculture, Rymer said.
At the March 11 meeting, LAFCO voted 5-2 to block the city’s plan. The commission also voted 4-3 to reject a second annexation proposal for about 70 acres south of Watsonville Road, on the southwest side of town; those parcels included the Morgan Hill Bible Church and a portion of Royal Oaks Mushrooms.
The city planned to develop a new commercial Sports-Recreation-Leisure district in the SEQ that would fund the purchase of easements to preserve farmland farther east in the SEQ. It also included the development of a new Catholic high school on about 40 acres in the area of Tennant and Murphy avenues, owned by the San Jose Diocese.
LAFCO’s denial put a halt on these plans.
Librers also addressed comments about the SEQ on local social media pages. “If any of these social media groups are listening tonight, would you please take the time to call Mr. Rymer, or any of us on the council (to) find out what the truth is before you run your mouth off and go off on these tangents of how we’re just a bunch of crooks trying to ruin South County.”
Rymer and others have noted that without an ag preservation plan, SEQ property owners right now can develop their land into five- to 10-acre residential estate lots.
“We want to preserve it, but those property owners said that they have waited for 10 years, and they may not wait any longer,” Morgan Hill resident Brian Sullivan told the council.
Developer Gordon Jacoby, who sold about 22 acres of farmland in the SEQ to the city for the future use of baseball and softball fields last year, recommended the council wait “about a year” and see what the county and OSA’s plan is for any share of cap-and-trade funds they might receive.
Jacoby added it was “very wrong” for LAFCO to suggest the city use existing vacant industrial land for sports uses, but the city might have to concede by asking those property owners if they would be open to such recreational development.
