Take a Lode Off: Slouching toward a general plan

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

During last week’s joint board of supervisors and planning commission study session on the updated county general plan, Supervisor Cliff Edson indicated that to discover the reason the general plan update has taken so long, we need only “take a look around.” I am unsure what the supervisor meant, but perhaps he is unaware that the general plan update has been slouching along for the past nine years due to a lack of continuity in leadership with both the county planning department and the board of supervisors.

There have been nine planning directors in as many years and every current supervisor is in his or her first term. There appears to be no institutional memory among staff or our elected representatives. And let us not forget the biggest setback of all: in 2012, the nearly completed draft general plan prepared by the original consultants, Mintier-Harnish, was abandoned.

Supervisors were asked to give direction to planning staff on whether or not to include the 2008 draft “vision statement.” Both commissioners and supervisors repeatedly referred to the “Mintier-Harnish vision” in their discussion until they were corrected by Commissioner Fawn McLaughlin, who pointed out that it is not the consultants’ vision, it is the vision of the people of Calaveras County.

The consultants wrote the vision statement based on “input from community groups, community workshops, board of supervisors and county staff.” When Supervisor Debbie Ponte asked Planning Director Peter Maurer if this was true, Maurer replied that he had to assume so, but did not know for sure. The reason for his uncertainty, he said, was that had received the draft vision statement from “a member of the public.” But a “visioning workshop with general plan update (from) contractor Mintier & Associates” was on the Oct. 23, 2007, board agenda. The draft plan is not hard to find because it is still posted on the county’s website.

Anyone familiar with the nine-year process would know that there have been a series of important landmark documents prepared to inform the content of the general plan. These include the Calaveras County General Plan Evaluation (2006), the Phase I Community Workshop Results (2007), the Baseline Report (2008), the Draft Working Vision and Guiding Principles (2008), the Issues and Opportunities Report (2008), and the Alternatives Report (2010). The Baseline Report has been replaced by the Background Report (2014), but it is instructive to compare the two.

These documents were prepared based upon comments received from three rounds of community workshops attended by more than 800 people in 2007 and 2010, as well as input from four joint board of supervisors and planning commission study sessions in 2008 and 2010, and input from planning staff. All of these documents remain posted on the county’s website under archived general plan documents.

The public, which has been engaged in the update since it began in 2006, is still operating under the assumption that the work we have done over the past nine years is relevant, but current county officials don’t seem to agree. As Edson said, the 2008 draft vision statement “doesn’t represent me.” Perhaps not, but it does represent the county’s public process and direction provided by former staff, commissioners and supervisors. We can’t start over every time a new supervisor is elected, which could happen again in 2016.

During the study session, the board finally gave direction on whether community plans will be included in the updated general plan. The answer, though, seems to be both “yes” and “no.” Those plans that have been updated and ready for adoption are in, including the District 2 plans, as well as San Andreas, Rancho Calaveras and Wallace. Community plans for Valley Springs and Copperopolis, both of which were designated as planning priorities when the general plan update began, will not be included.

I don’t know the current status of the Copperopolis Community Plan, but I know that Valley Springs has two competing updated community plans. Both were submitted to the county and appear ready for adoption. However, the District 1 supervisor, Edson, seems unable or unwilling to choose between the two, or even find a way to facilitate a blending of the plans. The result is that Valley Springs will be left without any plan, which will frustrate local control and hinder orderly growth and development.

A majority of board members also gave direction to keep population projections “flexible” in order to facilitate development potential, which may include making changes to the third draft of the county Land Use Map. This was done in spite of the fact that, according to the planning department, the current draft map can accommodate 50,000 to 73,000 new residents. On the issue of including a discretionary water element in the new general plan, the supervisors said “no” and punted a final decision on the vision statement and format of the general plan to the planning commission for further discussion.