CPC v. Board of Supervisors

On December 9, 2019, the Calaveras Planning Coalition (CPC) filed a case in Calaveras County Superior Court that convincingly asserts the General Plan Update (GPU) is incomplete and in violation of planning law. The case also calls for the County to release the 2011 Mintier-Harnish draft General Plan, which, to date, the County has withheld from the taxpayers who paid for it.

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or read why we filed this lawsuit below

Protect your Health and Safety

By adopting a General Plan that indefinitely defers action on over 120 matters from road safety, to water security, to fire responses, the County has gutted California land use law. This neglect is shocking given that such topics were consistently identified as key general plan issues by residents in public general plan workshops across the county and have been acknowledged as such by the Board of Supervisors since 2008. Click here for photos of citizens who want to see these measures.

But this case is about more than the integrity of the law, this case is also about saving lives.  Indefinitely deferring fire safety efforts, delaying emergency response funding, and making fire safety measures in new development optional threatens lives. Exempting commercial, industrial, and residential development for tourists from fire safety reviews and fire safety mitigation measures threatens lives. Allowing new residential development by right on parcels no matter how dry, how fuel-laden, how windswept, and how isolated from emergency services threatens lives. All of these threats to your safety are part of the 2019 Calaveras County General Plan Update (GPU).

Protect your Community.

As the petition for writ of mandate states, “What makes the GPU controversial is not so much what is in the plan but what is missing from the plan after 13 years of work.” The GPU is not lawfully comprehensive because it rescinded without replacement community plans for Ebbetts Pass, Arnold, Avery/Hathaway Pines, and Murphys/Douglas Flat. Click here for photos of citizens who want community plans in their communities. The GPU is also lacking specific objectives required for the protection of communities from the unreasonable risks of wildfires and floods.

Protect our local economy and natural resources. 

The County’s excuse for a General Plan Update that refuses to commit to measures to protect the built and natural environment guts California environmental law. The County’s efforts to gut land use and environmental law would justify immediate legal action if they were perpetrated anywhere in California, but Calaveras County is not just “anywhere.”

Calaveras County is blessed with a wealth of natural resources. It has tens of thousands of acres of productive farm and rangelands. It has tens of thousands of acres of productive forest lands, in both public and private holdings. These lands provide habitat for the State’s fish and game, and for dozens of special status species in need of careful management. Flowing through watersheds in Calaveras County, are the mighty Mokelumne River, the vibrant Calaveras River, and the turbulent Stanislaus Rivers, all of which provide water and power not only to people in Calaveras County, but also to distant farms and to urban developments in the San Joaquin Valley and in the East Bay.   

However, rather than conserving valuable natural resources and preserving open space lands as intended by state law, implementation of the Calaveras County 2019 General Plan Update is expected to have significant unmitigated impacts including the conversion of farmland, the destruction of oak woodlands, and the loss of habitat. This is because the County rejects measures to mitigate these impacts that are routinely applied in other jurisdictions throughout California. As the request for relief at the end of the petition explains, the CPC filed the case, “Because our dear friends, neighbors, and family members deserve to benefit from a future that includes lawfully planned economic development, lawfully prescribed resource conservation, and lawfully accessible public documents…”

Click here for photos of citizens who want to see natural resources protected from the General Plan.

Protect your right to see what the County does with your tax dollars. 

In the suit, the CPC seeks release of the 2011 Mintier-Harnish General Plan “which was executed under a public contract exceeding $900,000” so that “the people can remain informed about the people’s business.” Though the County maintains the “draft” plan has been revised beyond recognition, Mintier-Harnish has retained a copy of the plan submitted to the County in its original form. The County’s excuse for not releasing the document would gut the public’s right to review the work done by the many consultants the County routinely hires with taxpayer dollars. 

Both the CPC and a local newspaper, the Calaveras Enterprise, sought release of the Mintier-Harnish plan after the County failed to renew the Mintier-Harnish contract in 2011. A February 2015 article in the Enterprise said, “The scrapped general plan that cost taxpayers nearly $1 million will only see the light of day if someone files and wins a lawsuit against the county, according to a staff attorney for the California Newspaper Publishers Association.”

Consult the petition for more details.  

The 145-page CPC petition for writ of mandate includes a 20-page chronology of the general plan update process from 2006 to 2019 and a 22-page primer on the relevant law along with a lengthy and detailed explanation of each alleged violation.