General Plan Update Action Alert

The Board of Supervisors is holding a General Plan Update Workshop on Tuesday, December 13, at 1:30 pm, at the Board Chambers. The Staff Report provides direction for dealing with the Draft Water Element and the Draft Economic Development Element. You can download the agenda and board packet including staff comments and draft documents here. You’ll need to scroll about 8/10s of the way through the packet to the General Plan Workshop item.  You may also find the agenda and draft elements here under the recently added documents section.

The CPC supports the staff recommendations:

1) To work with the Water Element Group to change the formatting of the policy and implementation measures.

2) To work with the Water Element Group to identify the core issues to be incorporated into the General Plan. We agree with staff that the majority of the Element should be included in the General Plan.

3) That the General Plan should include policies to support economic development. We hope that the County will be open minded when it comes to accepting such policy suggestions as the formal public input process continues during CEQA scoping, DEIR review, and general plan workshops.

Regarding the Water Element, we remind the Board and the Planning Department that a number of suggestions for improving that document were deferred by the Water Element group to later be worked out with the Planning Department during the remainder of the General Plan Update process. These included issues raised in comments by CPC member groups including the Foothill Conservancy. Two critical concerns are the need for an implementation measure for each of the policies, and the need to properly designate the government entity responsible for implementing each policy. Any additional work on the Water Element should include addressing these issues.

Regarding the Economic Development Element, this is the first time the public has had a chance to view the element since its first draft was made public in September of 2008. If the process had been more open, we could have fixed it by now. We hope that from this point forward, the development of policy for General Plan Update will no longer be carried out by a selected few stakeholders to the exclusion of all others, and that draft documents in need of work by the public will not be imprisoned behind the closed doors of County Planning or its consultants.

The Economic Development Element has many good goals, policies and action items. What is missing is a body to implement these action items, and agreement on how to fund these endeavors. We at the CPC believe that the community can use the remaining time in the General Plan Update process to flesh out those implementation details. Since County government is a key player in approving or denying land use development projects, and in securing public funding for economic development, we feel that it is essential to find a way to fund the participation of County staff in economic development efforts.

What can you do?

1) You can attend the workshop and briefly tell the Board of Supervisors that you support one or more of the staff’s recommendations.

2) You can send the Board of Supervisors an e-mail briefly telling them that you support one of more of the staff’s recommendations listed above. The Board of Supervisors email addresses are as follows:

Gary Tofanelli:          gtofanelli@co.calaveras.ca.us
Steve Wilenksy:        sph@volcano.net
Merita Callaway:      merita9@comcast.net
Tom Tryon:                ttryon@co.calaveras.ca.us
Darren Spellman:    dspellman@co.calaveras.ca.us

Please send copies of your email to the Planning Director, Rebecca L. Willis, at rlwillis@co.calaveras.ca.us , and to the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors at dseverud@co.calaveras.ca.us .

An e-mail to the BOS would be great. You need not attend in person. We do not expect this to be an earth shattering study session. However, the next general plan study session will be January 10, 2012, when the new land use map will be the topic of discussion. That could be a very big deal. Keep your eye out for that action alert.

Thank you for your continuing efforts to promote a brighter future for Calaveras County!