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The City of Morgan Hill’s Measure S has turned the widely accepted local concept of growth control into perhaps the most hot-button issue in an election where incumbents and challengers are, to varying extents, staking their own campaigns on the success or failure of the Nov. 8 ballot question.
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Measure S is the latest proposed update to the city’s Residential Development Control System, which was first approved by Morgan Hill’s voters in 1977 in an effort to prevent urban sprawl in Morgan Hill. Measure S, which was placed on the ballot by the city council July 27 with a 4-1 vote, will ask voters to approve a population cap of 58,200 for 2035. The ordinance would set an annual maximum of 215 housing allotments, but for the first time in RDCS history the council will have the ability to set that number as low as they want (but not higher than 215).
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The current RDCS expires in 2020, with a population cap of 48,000 for that year, resulting in a historical housing allotment cap of about 250 units annually.
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Measure S goes to the voters at a time when Morgan Hill faces a vastly different development landscape from nearly 40 years ago, and even from when the voters last extended the RDCS in 2004.
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Many residents are fatigued by the current wave of residential construction in Morgan Hill since 2013, when developers who gained allocations during the housing crash of 2009 started retrieving the finances to build those homes. And while city officials and local developers sharply disagree with other authorities such as the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission on the inventory of vacant, buildable property, there is no question there isn’t nearly as much dirt for developers as there was in 1977 or 2004.
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These and other factors combine to suggest that the competition among developers for available housing allotments, which has been fierce since the RDCS was first implemented, will start to wane.
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“I don’t see us being anywhere near (58,200 population) in 2035,” said Mayor Steve Tate, who is running for re-election and is a staunch supporter of Measure S. “Future councils are going to have to adjust (the 215-unit maximum) downward if there’s so few developers making applications that you don’t have a meaningful competition.”
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Tate has noted numerous times that Measure S’ shifting of priorities from the population cap to the housing allotment maximum—and with it the council’s potential ability to reduce this number in future years—is a fundamental change in the growth control ordinance’s key principles.
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A chief provision of the existing RDCS (and the proposed update) is it forces developers to compete for housing units through a system that awards points for certain features of a proposed project.
Two camps
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Measure S has the 2016 candidates for council and mayor—eight total, including incumbents—firmly divided into Yes and No camps. All of them agree that growth control is necessary in Morgan Hill, but they disagree on how soon and how sharply a slowdown should be imposed.
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Kirk Bertolet, who is running against Tate for the mayor’s seat, thinks growth in Morgan Hill should slow to about .5 percent per year—vastly lower than any other candidate has proposed. Two hundred fifteen homes in one year equates to just under a 2 percent annual growth rate.
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“I firmly believe some day we’re going to be a suburb of San Jose, but I’m not in a hurry,” said Bertolet, who will vote No on Measure S. “Half a percent (growth rate) is based on my personal feelings of where I think Morgan Hill should go.”
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Other candidates who plan to vote No on Measure S are council challengers Rene Spring and Armando Benavides.
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Those advocating a Yes vote are council incumbents Larry Carr and Marilyn Librers as well as their challenger Mario Banuelos, plus Mayor Tate and his challenger Joseph Carrillo.
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Measure S proponents say its failure would result in a sudden lack of any growth control and no limits on residential construction for the first time since 1977.
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But those voting No point out the RDCS doesn’t expire until 2020, and the council would still have time to present a new measure to the voters before then.
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“I am running on a platform to stop and slow down urban sprawl,” Spring said. “Measure S does nothing to prevent urban sprawl. In fact, it makes it worse because they removed a stipulation that would delay any (future) Urban Service Area expansion.”
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Spring, a planning commissioner, said he will vote No on Measure S only as a candidate and a resident—not as an appointed city official.
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Lengthy process
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The planning commission, city staff, the 17-member General Plan Advisory Committee and an RDCS working group spent more than two years running the numbers to try to determine the most appropriate growth rate for an RDCS ordinance update. These studies were based on the feelings of the residents and developers, as well as the varieties of housing needed for future growth and the city’s reliance on development-generated revenues that support infrastructure and parks maintenance.
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At the July 27 meeting, the council arrived at the 215-unit maximum “with no explanation why that is OK,” Spring said. “If we put in a measure for the next 20 years, our voters deserve a clear answer why this number is appropriate.”
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At that same meeting, Carr initially proposed an annual allotment of 200 units for Measure S, based on a “gut” feeling. After some discussion, Tate proposed 215, which the council approved 4-1.
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Even if 215 was not specifically mentioned during the RDCS study process, Carr maintains the 215-unit maximum is based on information gained from that input, including the impact on the city’s budget and services. He added it’s also based on an increasingly vocal point of view among residents.
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“We were asked to lower the growth rate, and we figured out a number that (provides) a sustainable budget and is lower than where we are,” Carr said.
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But he added the maximum housing allotment and population cap aren’t the important part of Measure S. “We limited the ability of it to change year over year. The population ceiling is not a target like in previous versions (of the RDCS). And it will preserve the small-town charm of Morgan Hill,” Carr said.
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Tate conceded that 215 is not a “scientific” conclusion, but is “based on the feeling that we need to cut back slightly for now.”
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Banuelos was a member of the GPAC, which met more than a dozen times to discuss the city’s General Plan and RDCS updates from 2013 to 2015. He supports Measure S and he is “comfortable” with the numbers the council came up with. He called it a “compromise” with residents who are concerned about current growth rates.
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Housing max ‘purely political’?
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Some growth observers who are not running for office Nov. 8 think the RDCS should be backed strictly by facts rather than feelings.
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Mayor Pro Temp Rich Constantine cast the only council vote against placing Measure S on the ballot at the July 27 meeting, although he still urges voters to vote Yes. Like all his council colleagues, Constantine says he remains committed to growth control.
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“I don’t think the number (215) is based on any facts,” said Constantine, who still has two years left on his four-year term. He noted that a city staff report said 240 units per year was a “break-even point” for city coffers funded by development fees. “All the studies by the RDCS working group and city staff didn’t support (215 units). That was purely political.”
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Real estate broker and longtime Morgan Hill resident John Telfer has been sitting front and center as an experienced advisor throughout the discussion to update the RDCS. He said the number of 215 annual units the council arrived at was “a bit random.”
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“I just can’t quite follow how they came up with that,” said Telfer, though he too plans to vote Yes on Measure S.
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He added, “With the available land inventory, we’re not going to have a lot of competitors because the land that’s zoned appropriately will be depleted, or it will not support residential projects.” He predicts that if LAFCO continues to deny the city’s requests to annex more land into the city limits, “within about four or five years” there won’t be enough land in Morgan Hill to support 215 annual units. That’s especially true if the city wants to maintain its housing variety ratio of 70 percent single family to 30 percent multi-family units for new construction.
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Other views
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Librers pointed to this 70/30 split as a key reason for her support of Measure S. Like many other residents she has heard from, the predominance of single family housing in Morgan Hill is what lends it the “small-town” atmosphere they prefer.
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She served on the RDCS committee that met 11 times over the last year. Librers has also been adamant in explaining to residents concerned about recent construction that since about 2013, developers have been catching up with the Great Recession and not accelerating the population growth any faster than was originally planned with the last RDCS update in 2004.
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According to City Hall Principal Planner John Baty, 205 residential units were built in 2012, though that number jumped to 330 in 2013. In 2014, developers built 268 units, and 351 in 2015.
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Benavides is against Measure S because he is also running on a platform to slow the growth. He also thinks the RDCS update is not linked closely enough to the city’s infrastructure, which is currently suffering from a shortfall in maintenance funding. Furthermore, he objects to the way the ballot measure is written, with “a bunch of feel-good statements” that no reasonable resident could object to but are only subjective assertions.
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Carrillo supports Measure S because of its commitment to preserving growth control.
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“If we don’t have growth control they’re going to develop everything,” Carrillo said. “The worst case would be if Morgan Hill looks like San Jose. The best case is Morgan Hill is a small city with a sustainable economy.”
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Measure S was sent by the Morgan Hill City Council to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters’ Office on a 4-1 vote at the July 27 council meeting. Voters will have the option to vote Yes or No, and the measure requires a simple majority to pass. The official text of the City of Morgan Hill’s Measure S, as posted on the registrar’s website (sccvote.org) is as follows: “Shall a measure be adopted to amend the Morgan Hill General Plan and Municipal Code to update the City’s voter-approved Residential Development Control System (RDCS) to extend it to 2035, establish a population ceiling of 58,200, with a slower rate of growth than currently exists, and improve policies to maintain neighborhood character, encourage more efficient land use, conserve water, and preserve open space?”
