District 5 and the General Plan update

By Muriel Zeller | Posted: Friday, May 30, 2014 6:00 am

As a resident of District 5, I read with interest the Enterprise’s “District 5 Questionnaire” completed by the incumbent Supervisor Darren Spellman and his three challengers in the upcoming election – Roy Estakhri, Steve Kearney and Marti Crane.

I was particularly interested in responses that related to the interminably ongoing update of the county’s General Plan and whether community plans should be included in it. Given that future growth and development is most likely to occur in our community centers, it is apparent that including community plans in the General Plan is critically important.

Estakhri said, “The only planning that should be done for private property is by the property owners, not the community or the government.” Unfortunately for him, that hasn’t been a tenable position since 1926, when the Supreme Court ruled that Euclid , Ohio , had the right to enforce its zoning ordinance to protect the character of its community.

Unless we abolish the General Plan, which isn’t a legal option, Estakhri is going to have to wrap his head around planning for private property if he is to be an effective supervisor. His planning philosophy led to his declaration that community plans “have no place in the General Plan.” This could be problematic for Rancho Calaveras, which makes up the bulk of District 5, since its Special Plan, which is similar to a community plan, restricts the use of property within its boundaries.

Kearney took a more circumspect approach to the community plans. Let’s wait and see “what the new planning director proposes,” he cautioned, even though it is ultimately the decision of the Board of Supervisors. Kearney said, “We could get a defensible General Plan by the end of the year without the community plans, with a chance to update them twice yearly.” Actually, the General Plan can be amended four times per year.

This strategy is problematic for a variety of reasons. Many people do not trust the county to add the community plans at a later date; an updated General Plan without the community plans may not be legally defensible; and even tiering off the General Plan environmental impact report, there would still be costs associated with a separate environmental review for each community plan, if and when it is added.

I have a “Marti Crane for Supervisor” sign in my front yard, so it is not surprising that her views on the General Plan and the inclusion of community plans are most closely aligned to my own. Crane said, “Community input is a required component of a General Plan, and prior delays are not due to community planning efforts.” Delays in the General Plan update are the result of having eight planning directors in as many years and a change in the consultants hired to write the plan.

After five years, the county allowed the contract for Mintier-Harnish, the original consulting firm, to expire at the end of 2011 and hired Raney Planning and Management in November 2012 to complete the General Plan at the urging of former Planning Director Rebecca Willis. For the 15 months prior to the hiring of Raney, Mintier-Harnish was not paid for any work on the General Plan, but they had previously received $909,236.

Incumbent Spellman believes the General Plan “process has been hijacked… by people who don’t care about economic growth or prosperity the majority of us want and need.” How can anyone claim a process has been hijacked when it’s been eight years in the making and unmaking? When Raney was hired, one supervisor called it “starting over.”

Spellman favors including community plans “that have been completely vetted (legally) and can be inserted without making the county vulnerable to lawsuits or impeding completion of a legally defensible General Plan as soon as possible.” I can’t argue with that, but I fear his underlying assumption is that it’s not possible.

Spellman was one of the three supervisors who voted to replace Mintier-Harnish with Raney. In a December 2012 letter to the supervisors, Mintier-Harnish pointed out that “the county has paid Raney Planning and Management $50,000 for General Plan-related work and approved a contract with Raney Planning and Management for an additional $300,000 to complete the General Plan Update,” even though Mintier-Harnish had pledged to complete the update for approximately $140,000 “in a year or less.”

In addition to Raney, Augustine Planning Associates was hired on May 16, 2013 , to assist with General Plan preparation and adoption for an amount not to exceed $50,000. That amount was increased to $113,630 on May 27, 2014 . The new Augustine contract includes the optional “Task 13: Prepare Community Plans.”

The public doesn’t know what was wrong with the Mintier-Harnish plan, because we never saw it. Our new planning director faces pressure to just get the General Plan done without community plans. But I would urge voters to demand that we have a complete General Plan, not just a completed one. Ultimately, shortcuts will cost us even more money.

Muriel Zeller is a poet, writer, and Valley Springs resident. contact her at murielzeller52@gmail.com.