In addition the Planning Commission will host a study session focusing on the General Plan Land Use Map Draft #1.  This is a repeat of the presentation given at the Board of Supervisors Study Session on February 14th so it’s a second chance for all of you who were unable to attend the earlier presentation.

Copies of the agenda and packet are available here.

Copies of the presentation and maps are available here.

And you can find links to all the General Plan documents on our website at http://calaverascap.com/planning-documents/general-plan-documents/

Drive west on Highway 4, a couple of miles past Angels Camp, and you pass ranches that predate Mark Twain, harkening back to when the only roads were wagon trails. Clenching the steering wheel tight, pumping the brakes, you wind through sharp bends on your way to Copperopolis. If you get going too fast down a hill, a 25 mph curve corrals you back to the brake pedal.

The scene is nondescript, one of Calaveras County’s many bucolic stretches surrounded by bull pines and livestock. However, debate over how best to straighten this portion of Highway 4, known as the Wagon Trail Project, has created a major rift between nearby property owners and county officials, most notably Supervisor Tom Tryon.

At a Jan. 24 Board of Supervisors meeting, supervisors voted 4-0, with one abstention, to authorize the Public Works Department and the Calaveras Council of Governments (CCOG) to administer the Wagon Trail’s environmental documentation at an estimated cost of $1,495,258. The environmental process will examine a northern and southern alignment to determine which road can be completed at a lower cost. Officials will measure cuts needed through hills and fills at drops in the right of way. However, the documentation process does not analyze the affects the road would have on grazing land, in some cases splitting valuable flat lands in half.

Bill Spence and Walt Valente, two patriarchs whose families have owned land in Calaveras for generations, are opposing the northern alignment, a route they say will cost more, be longer in distance and divide ranch lands into virtually unusable parcels.

“As far as this Wagon Trail thing, it’s about the rottenest situation of anything I’ve been involved in a long time,” said Spence, whose ranch sits on the land in question. “It started out fairly clean. We had a meeting, and at that meeting they told us there were 13 property owners. The 13 owners halfway agreed on where the design should go and that is unbelievable. When do you get 13 property owners to agree on anything let alone where a new road should be built?”

“We went to work, myself, my sister and all the impacted property owners,” Valente said, “We developed an alignment, talked to major property owners, and we had a concurrence of that alignment.”

Spence, Valente, and John Tiscornia, who owns an estimated 85 percent of ranch land on the current road, have banded together to support the southern alignment, or “blue alignment.” According to the ranchers, the blue alignment will preserve the continuity of farm land, protect open space for wildlife migration, and leave Miwok cultural sites, such as the American Indian graveyard, undisturbed, they said. But could two roads so similar in length and proximity really be that different?

“They are a lot different,” Valente said. “The one we’re advocating is about one mile less construction or more. We measured it and we itemized all the problems. There is really no other need for this northern alignment. Our alignment has fewer bridges and has culverts in it. Our alignment is the shortest one, and has less negative impact for the group of property owners. That’s all you’re looking for. You want to have two main criteria, safety and capacity, and our alignment does that.”

A vocal opponent of the southern alignment, county Supervisor and CCOG board member Tom Tryon insists the northern alignment will better maintain the integrity of the current road.

“I would like to have an alignment that would preserve the integrity of the old road,” Tryon said. “The current road would work well as a bicycle and pedestrian path from Angels to Copperopolis. But the property owners do not agree, they would like to do away with the present road. I am not an advocate of that.”

Spence, his sister Barbara Burger, Valente, and sister Anita Valente Nyland uniformly believe that Tryon is motivated by self-interest. Tryon operates a bed and breakfast on his own ranch, eight miles northeast of the proposed Wagon Trail and on the east side of Highway 49, and some ranchers think his advocating for the northern alignment is directly tied with his desire to have a bike path connecting Angels Camp to Copperopolis – a proposal ranchers say will drive more tourists to Tryon’s B&B.

“Tom Tryon told us emphatically right to our faces, to John (Tiscornia), and the Spences that we didn’t have a damn thing to say about it,” Valente said. “It was him and him only because he was our elected official and that’s it. You talk about polarizing the whole county, they (Tiscornias) won’t even talk to him. I’m his neighbor, but to come up against us and to tell us we don’t exist and we don’t know what the hell we are talking about is just not right.”

“There have been a lot of things that have seemed to go on that smell,” Valente’s sister Anita said. “Everything from the beginning of the Wagon Trail project, people hired and fired, have all been manipulated by Tom Tryon. He wants that horse trail business. He even said that at a CCOG meeting that he would like to see the current road turned into a horse trail.”

The CCOG meeting Anita is referring to took place March 25, 2010, at Bret Harte High School. However, Anita said the March meeting was not the first time Tryon expressed his preferred alignment, where he explicitly referenced the benefits of building a pedestrian path.

“This would be a perfect equestrian connector between the fairgrounds and Copperopolis,” Tryon said at the first Wagon Trail meeting Feb. 9, 2009. “It would allow riders a good loop.”

“Why would Tryon care what the alignment is if it provides a good road for the traveling public?” Burger asked.

While Tryon told the Enterprise he would like the current road transformed to a pedestrian and bike path, he refutes accusations that his motivation is somehow self-serving.

“My property is on the other side of town,” Tryon said. “Some people think everything that comes in front of the board I have a conflict with. They’re convinced a horrible corruption, or conspiracy and injustice is happening and, my God, they’re gonna clean it up.”

Tryon’s comments come on the heels of the board’s last meeting, where Calaveras resident George Fry accused Tryon of being a puppeteer, pulling the strings of fellow Supervisor and CCOG member Gary Tofanelli and CCOG Executive Director Melissa Eads.

Although Tofanelli and Eads have not walked the alignments, despite invitations from Valente, both say they are committed to working with property owners to develop an alignment that would address safety and capacity needs.

“You know I’m supposed to meet with Walt Valente and go over the property,” Tofanelli said. “I think this is another situation where property owners themselves need to have some input. We need to hear them out, and we need to listen to what they have to say. I’m not a builder of highways, I’m not an alignment specialist, and I’m not a surveyor, but I will have a role in deciding a vote at the county level. … I have always been in favor of the property owners so I want to see first-hand what the best alignment is.”

Eads has not yet walked the property-owners supported alignment, but said she welcomes the opportunity to meet with property owners in an effort to build trust.

“I think our goal is to secure right of entry through the environmental studies,” Eads said. “And so we look forward to continuing the public outreach process to build relationships with the property owners. But in the event that’s not successful, we’re working with Caltrans to develop an alternative methodology that Caltrans and the public agencies can be comfortable with in completion of our documentation.”

In other words, if an agreement between local agencies and property owners is not reached, California statute allows for the state to seize the property without the owners’ consent – an action known as eminent domain.

Some property owners, such as Burger herself, said she would not sell the homestead purchased by her great-grandfather.

“I am holding on to this land and doing the best I can for this land,” Burger said. “This land is a treasure to us and we have taken care of it. We know this road has to be built, but we want it done on our preferred alignment.”

Both Spence and Walt Valente, who also serves as a member on the CCOG, said property owners recognize the need for a new road, but will not support the northern alignment, especially if the current road is turned into a pedestrian path.

“The current road for the most part is called a prescriptive rights road,” Spence said. “In other words we own the property and we pay taxes on the property. We’ve been here since 1852. If they try to build a horse trail on that road we will just shut the road down. Tiscornia, who owns most of that property, said he would just shut it down.”

Contact Alex George at ageorge@calaverasenterprise.com
Read the original article here.

SAN ANDREAS – The Calaveras County Board of Supervisors remains deeply divided over how and whether to reign in ranchette-style development, the 5- to 40-acre lots that have replaced cattle ranches in some areas.

Board differences surfaced again this week as the supervisors took their first look since 2010 at proposed land-use maps for a revised General Plan.

Supervisors Merita Callaway and Tom Tryon, who represent the relatively upscale portions of the county along Highway 4, voiced the strongest support for measures to preserve open space and large working ranches during a study session.

Tryon was vehement in his criticism of past policies that have allowed a sprawl of ranchettes and the creation of rural lots that could someday have homes built on them.

“What do you think the roads are going to have to look like to handle 40,000 people in Copperopolis?” Tryon asked. “That’s about the population of Folsom. We need to be realistic about how many parcels we’re going to create and how many homes we are going to build on them.”

Pressure on property owners to carve up old ranches and sell them can be irresistible. Under zoning rules that set a 40-acre minimum lot size in ranching areas, a 400-acre ranch would be carved into 10 lots of 40 acres each, resulting in homes sprawled in such a way that it would be difficult to maintain public roads and other services.

County Planning Director Rebecca Willis suggested that supervisors consider a technique called clustering to preserve ranches while also allowing large ranch owners to sell some lots. Clustering would allow the owner of that same 400-acre ranch to create 10 smaller home lots, perhaps only 4 acres each, and to cluster those homes close to roads and utilities. That way, the rest of the ranch could stay in farm production.

The county’s Agriculture Coalition, a group of ranchers and representatives of mining and timber interests, wants to use clustering as a method to preserve large ranches.

“It’s a tool that landowners can have to use,” said rancher Bob Garamendi, a member of the coalition.

Yet the values of large land owners collide with those of ranchette owners, some of whom see efforts by planners to encourage clustering as infringement on property rights.

“I like sprawl. I want to live in sprawl,” said Tonja Dausend of Burson. “Government planning … imposes sustainable development on future generations that may not want it.”

The area from Burson to Valley Springs, in particular, has already pretty much been carved up into 5-acre house lots, according to county maps.

“The horses are out of the barn down there,” Tryon said of the septic tank-oriented development west of Valley Springs.

Tryon called for officials to consider an even larger minimum lot size of 100 or 150 acres in ranching zones. He argued that would prevent areas near towns from breaking into such small lots that they are useless for large-scale subdivision development in the future.

Board Chairman Gary Tofanelli, who represents Valley Springs, Wallace and Burson, balked at the idea of a countywide minimum lot size that could make properties in his district undevelopable.

“I don’t feel one size is going to fit all here,” Tofanelli said. And the fact that land near Valley Springs is already more carved up than land near Murphys or Angels Camp is one reason for that, Tofanelli said. “You don’t have large swaths of land there.”

Supervisor Steve Wilensky, who represents Mountain Ranch, West Point and Mokelumne Hill, also called for a more flexible approach.

Callaway, responding to Tofanelli, questioned what a more flexible approach might mean, other than more sprawl like that near Valley Springs.

“Are you saying that because the horse is out of the barn, we should let it gallop all over the place?” Callaway said.

The board hopes by the end of this year to finalize maps for the county and by next year to adopt a new General Plan to guide growth and development.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.

SACRAMENTO – A U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a Stockton bank’s request Thursday to sell the 280-acre Trinitas golf course property at a foreclosure sale.

The golf course was built without permits in an agricultural preserve south of Wallace on the western edge of Calaveras County. Owners Mike and Michelle Nemee filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after Community Bank of San Joaquin foreclosed and Calaveras County’s Board of Supervisors twice voted against measures that would have given the golf business legal status.

In his tentative ruling before Thursday’s hearing, Judge Ronald Sargis noted that allowing the foreclosure sale “brings an end to the belief and dreams of the Nemees and their investors to have a commercial golf course.”

Sargis wrote that foreclosure sale does not “unjustly harm” the Nemees.

“Based on the economics shown in this case, there is no reasonable reorganization or ability to pay the Community Bank secured claim.”

The Nemees and their attorneys do not agree. They’ve argued all along that Calaveras County officials are wrong to say that zoning codes ban golf courses on agricultural land. Although they lost a trial last year on that issue, they are now appealing that loss to the U.S. District Court in Fresno.

The dispute over Calaveras County’s agritourism zoning ordinance entered the federal court system via bankruptcy court, because the Nemees argued that winning that case was key to the economic success of the golf course.

“To a great extent, it has been a viable operation, despite the negative publicity, despite the protests,” Malcolm Gross, an attorney representing the Nemees, said during Thursday’s hearing.

Gross hinted that people with deep pockets may be waiting in the wings to pay the Trinitas debts. “We have been talking to people who are interested in putting some money up,” Gross said.

Sargis said his review of the Nemees’ financial statements indicates the business is becoming less viable rather than more viable with time.

Attorney Mark B. Rishwain of Stockton, who with his wife, Michelle, loaned the Nemees $600,000, said he may be among those willing to bail out Trinitas and the Nemees.

“We do have the willingness and ability to work with them,” Rishwain said during a telephone appearance at Thursday’s hearing.

Dennis Hauser, an attorney representing Community Bank of San Joaquin, said the foreclosure sale will be in early March rather than the previously scheduled Feb. 17. Hauser said the delay is necessary to allow time to send out required notices.

Sargis also noted that the time before the sale gives Trinitas supporters time to come up with a way to avoid the auction.

“Maybe they come up with a sack of money and say (to the bank), ‘We want to buy you out of this with a discount,’ ” Sargis said.

The Nemees owe more than $3 million to Community Bank of San Joaquin, but the Trinitas land is worth only about $1.8 million, according to court documents.

It is still possible that a higher court could halt the auction pending appeal of the agritourism case. Gross said he is making a request for a stay to the U.S. District Court in Fresno.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.

See the original article here.

February 05, 2012

Record Staff Writer

SAN ANDREAS – The California Fish and Game Commission last week voted unanimously to add two species of mountain yellow-legged frogs to the state’s list of threatened or endangered species.

State officials say the listing will give them more flexibility in stocking popular trout species in remote Sierra Nevada lakes at 5,000 feet or higher. The trout eat tadpoles and are one of several factors in the dramatic decline of the two species, according to state scientists.

A decade ago, state officials halted trout stocking in more than a hundred lakes. Now that the frog species are listed, scientists will develop plans for each local population and those plans, in some cases, will allow the resumption of stocking trout for recreational anglers, Department of Fish and Game Environmental Scientist Mitch Lockhart said.

The Sierra Nevada mountain yellow-legged frog is threatened with extinction. The southern mountain yellow-legged frog has been given the more serious “endangered” listing.

Scientists say both species have declined rapidly in five decades because of the trout stocking, exposure to pesticides, and a fungal infection that eventually destroys every population where it is introduced.

Stafford Lehr, chief of the fisheries branch for the California Department of Fish and Game, said scientists in the last decade visited more than 15,000 sites where the yellow-legged frogs once lived and found them absent from 76 percent of the watersheds they once occupied.

In the watersheds where the frogs do survive, their numbers are greatly reduced. “Ten, twelve, fifteen individuals,” Lehr said of the typical yellow-legged population in an entire watershed.

In contrast, written accounts from the 1920s, the 1930s and even as recently as the 1960s indicate the frogs were then abundant. “When approaching an alpine lake, there were so many frogs you could not avoid walking on them,” Lehr told the commission.

State and federal scientists said they have an exceptionally large amount of data on the two frog species.

Several commissioners who usually oppose the listing of new species said the completeness of that data persuaded them to support the listing.

Commissioner Daniel Richards of Upland asked if state game staff would still seek to allow trout stocking and angling where possible.

However, “It’s not going to be easy” to do the necessary science, Lehr said of that part of the management plan.

At one time, state authorities stocked 617 remote mountain lakes with trout. Already, stocking has been halted at 113 lakes to reduce pressure on yellow-legged frogs.

“As a result, some of these lakes have gone fishless,” Lehr said.

At the same time, the elimination of fish from a number of lakes has helped local yellow-legged frog populations to rebound, he said.

The Center for Biological Diversity has been seeking greater protection for the frogs for years. In 2000, it asked the federal government to list the frogs as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Federal scientists in 2002 placed the two species on an indefinite waiting list.

The Center for Biological Diversity in 2010 asked state authorities to list the frogs. Although the center wanted both species listed as endangered, center senior attorney Lisa Belenky told the commission she was pleased with the decision the commission made.

“The yellow-legged frog is really an indicator of the health of our environment,” she said.

The southern yellow-legged frog is in worse shape and is gone from 87 percent of the watersheds where it once lived, Lehr said. It was once common in lakes in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains in Southern California as well as a portion of the southern Sierra Nevada.

The Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog lives in the portions of that mountain range north of Fresno County.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog here.

From the board agenda:

2:30 PM- STUDY SESSION: Planning: Review of the General Plan Land Use Map Draft
#1 for public release. Draft #1 includes the County’s Natural Resource Lands (forests,
watersheds, agriculture, mining) and Arnold, Avery, Burson, Camp Connell, Campo Seco,
Darrington, Douglas Flat, Hathaway Pines, Jenny Lind, La Contenta, Milton, Murphys,
Rancho Calaveras, Tamarack, Vallecito, Wallace, White Pines, as well as the natural
resource lands between community centers in District 2. Draft #1 does NOT include
Copperopolis, Valley Springs, Angels Camp Sphere of Influence, and the community
centers for Glencoe, Mokelumne Hill, Mountain Ranch, Paloma, Railroad Flat, San
Andreas, Sheep Ranch, West Point, and Wilseyville. Additional study sessions will be
scheduled for these areas.

The entire agenda and board packet may be downloaded and viewed here.

The maps and other published General Plan materials can be viewed here.

Ward La Valley | 0 comments

“In the interests of full disclosure,” said Rebecca Willis, Calaveras County’s newest planning director, at a study session last November, “the number is actually larger … like 400,000.”

The number Willis referred to, 400,000, is the potential population of Calaveras County at full build-out under the current General Plan. Willis also said there are currently 27,000 approved un-built-on (she calls them “unimproved”) parcels in the county, with hundreds more applications to create more parcels in the pipeline.

The current population of Calaveras County is probably around 45,000, an increase of over 40 percent since 1990, and it is no secret that the county’s basic infrastructure – roads and bridges, freshwater and wastewater facilities, fire and police protection – is inadequate.

Several years ago, Jeff Davidson, a prominent Valley Springs property developer and an elected director of the Calaveras County Water District, said he estimated that it would take $350 million to bring the county’s infrastructure to the point it needed to be. Merita Callaway, Calaveras County District 3 supervisor, has plainly said that the county has “not accommodated the growth” the county experienced over the past 20 years.

All these different numbers can be looked at in another way. If over the past 20 years the county fell at least $350 million behind in maintaining acceptable levels of infrastructure, it means there were many free riders during the county’s population growth. It means the supervisors, while busily planning for a potential build-out population of more than 400,000 in some fantastical future, failed to protect the interests of the people who already live here.

To many, this is quite questionable. For many calm, rational people it begs the question: “What the hell were they thinking?”
It is an interesting question, worthy of further research.

On a completely different subject, and also in the interests of full disclosure, the law requires that persons running for supervisor – if they raise or spend more than $1,000 – fill out forms showing how much was raised, and it requires itemizing contributions over $99. In the past two election cycles for supervisor, 2008 and 2010, the amount of itemized monetary contributions reported by all candidates for supervisor for all five districts in Calaveras County was just under $120,000. In the interests of full disclosure, this writer worked for some of those campaigns.

Interesting, perhaps, is the breakdown of these contributions by local segments of the economy in Calaveras County. The amount contributed by the Growth and Development complex (developers, Realtors, building supply, construction contractors, and mortgage brokers) was around $33,200 or 28 percent of the total itemized amount of monetary contributions. No other identified segment of the Calaveras economy even comes close to this figure.

By comparison, agriculture interests (ranchers, feed and equipment stores, vineyards not associated with tasting rooms) contributed a combined $1,848 or around 2 percent. Logging and mining interests chipped in just $3,200 or 3 percent. Tourism and hospitality (including all restaurants, hotels, tourist activity providers, etc.) contributed just $2,550, but to be fair this category shows up better in the non-monetary side of the total campaign contribution package. Manufacturing also contributed only around 2 percent.

The bottom line is, Growth and Development out-contributed agriculture, logging, mining, tourism, and manufacturing combined by three to one. Interestingly, these figures reflect contributions that were made either during or after the real estate bubble burst in 2008! Won’t it be interesting to see what the numbers show this year?

Ward La Valley is a San Andreas resident. He can be contacted at ward@schantz-ads.com. Read and comment on this article here.