Workshop Monday night on open space proposal
Two members of the Urban Limit Line Committee have come out objecting to the proposed line, which the city intends to use to protect its open space and limit development.
“No, it won’t,” said Alex Kennett, who is also the elected South County representative on the Open Space Authority. “That line (proposed by the ULL Committee) significantly expands the current growth boundary, allowing for the type of development that would threaten our rural character.”
Michele Beasley, a Morgan Hill resident and the South Bay representative to the Greenbelt Alliance, said the proposed line is a bad idea.
“Morgan Hill already has an urban growth boundary that provides enough land for, at the very least, another 20 years of development,” Beasley said in a column on today’s editorial page written for The Times.
Beasley said this week that the Greenbelt Alliance encourages infill – or building on vacant land within developed areas – before extending the line.
“That would lead to sprawl,” she said.
Kennett said he has been working with several environmental groups and Morgan Hill residents to develop an alternate plan, one that would not threaten the town’s rural character.
The Kennett, etc. plan proposes an alternate line west of Highway 101 that would keep hillsides free of development and preserve the open space that many residents say is what they enjoy most about the town.
The proposal would allow for 200-250 acres of industrial development in the southeast quadrant, near Tennant Avenue and east of Highway 101.
“The proposed line will also be fair and have strategies to compensate landowners,” Kennett writes in a letter to the editor in today’s Times. “After all, if it’s not a fair deal for all, it is not going to be a good deal for anyone.”
The 17-member ULL committee’s work took two years of discussion and 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 a development lease so, for example, a farmer could continue to farm but would be paid for the privilege.
However, the city does not have the funds to back these purchases. Kennett said his plan shows a way it can be done.
Beasley said she wants Morgan Hill residents to appreciate how different the local countryside is without the necessity of sound walls and border-to-border industrial buildings found in cities to the north.
“Once these lands are gone, they are gone forever,” Beasley said.
Gael Erickson and Beasley will lead a Greenbelt Alliance hike into Uvas Canyon Sunday, hoping to expose hikers to the beauties of nearby land they say could be threatened by development if the city’s urban limit line is imposed. Beasley said the hike was filling up but people interested could check out the website for directions, (www.greenbelt.org/getinvolved/outings/green_directions_uvas.html).
The Urban Limit Line Committee will present its draft plan in a workshop Monday, March 14, 7pm, at the Community Center, East Dunne Avenue and Monterey Road. Residents are invited to attend and voice their opinions.
Carol Holzgrafe covers City Hall for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at ch********@*************es.com or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 201.
