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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

June 10, 2005

Urban limit line accord reaches end

The Contra Costa Transportation Authority hammered the last nail in the coffin of a countywide urban limit line when it voted unanimously and with little debate to remove itself from the process established by Measure J.

Measure J, approved by 70 percent of voters for the $2 billion it will raise for transportation projects, required all cities and the county to comply with an urban limit line in order to receive millions of dollars for street maintenance and alternative transportation programs.

The Transportation Authority would have paid for the environmental review for an urban limit line to which at least three-quarters of the cities that represent three-quarters of the county's population and four of the five supervisors agreed.

The talks to reach that agreement lingered painfully on life support over the past months. Negotiators from all the cities, the board of supervisors and environmental and business groups met dozens of times in large open meetings, in subgroups representing each region of the county and in small gatherings behind closed doors in an effort to hammer out a compromise line that everybody could live with.

Nothing worked.

The Authority's vote "is a rather pragmatic response to that," said Clayton City Councilwoman Julie Pierce, who sits on the authority's board along with nine elected officials from the county's cities and two supervisors.

"We're at a point where we have to agree to disagree and move forward," said Supervisor Federal Glover.

The CCTA vote means all the cities, either individually or in groups, and the county must now proceed with their own plans to craft separate urban limit lines for their own borders and pay for their own environmental reviews, if necessary.

Wednesday's vote comes on the heels of residents-sponsored growth boundary initiatives that recently emerged in three East County cities -- Antioch, Pittsburg and Brentwood -- paving the way for mass confusion at the polls when voters will be asked to decipher all the different line permutations for their own towns and for the county.

At the Antioch City Council meeting Tuesday, Mayor Don Frietas was obviously chagrined by the possibility of multiple ballot initiatives, all offering different lines for his city.

"If we had a countywide urban limit line, it would trigger a countywide vote if anyone wanted to change it, which is a tremendous safeguard," he said.

But they don't.

So if, as expected, environmentalists put an initiative on the Antioch ballot, it could be one of at least three Antioch voters might face. Contra Costa County will need to win approval for its line, which all city voters will need to weigh in on, and the City Council could sponsor its own.

Also, any individual or group that disagrees with any of those lines could join the fray.

Multiple lines on the ballot means "it's going to be that much more important that we knock on every door and talk to every person, because it's going to be confusing," said David Reid of the Greenbelt Alliance.

The Greenbelt Alliance is working to put a line on the Antioch ballot that excludes about 1,000 acres the City Council wants included for upscale housing developments.

Residents' initiatives differ from government-sponsored measures because only government efforts are subject to the expensive and time-consuming environmental review process.

That could prove helpful to Brentwood and Pittsburg, where prominent local developers have already launched their own initiative drives. The proposal in Brentwood by the Nunn family and in Pittsburg by the Seenos are similar to the lines those cities have pushed for during the countywide urban limit line talks.

Neither city has yet to endorse or oppose the developers' initiatives. But in remarks to the Antioch City Council on Tuesday, Pittsburg City Councilman Bill Glynn noted that the Seeno plan leaves outside the urban limit line the Norton Valley area, 84 acres south of town where the city wants to allow about 150 new homes.

That leaves the city with a choice: either endorse the Seeno plan without Norton Valley, or craft one of its own that includes the land.

Also, environmental or other groups could place competing urban limit line initiatives on those city's ballots.

For voters in cities such as Richmond, Danville and Walnut Creek, which have little or nothing at stake in the process because they've asked for no urban limit line expansions, things will likely be a bit simpler.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to place a line on the ballot that mirrors the existing line or modifies it only slightly. Because it would include very little or no land inside the line that's now off limits to development, the environmental review process would be much less complex, time consuming and expensive.

Cities whose voters approve the supervisors' line could simply decide to abide by that boundary in order to be in compliance with Measure J and earn all of their road improvement money.

"For those of us who would like a different line ... we'd have an opportunity to adopt the county line if our voters agreed with that, or go along after a line of our own," Clayton's Pierce said.

The only thing that's certain at this point, however, is that each city's leaders will have to make up their minds about whether to use the county's line, their own line, a line proposed by residents groups or even a line crafted by two or more cities in a region that want to work together.

And since Measure J doesn't require any line to be in place until 2009, it could be years before it's all ironed out.

Kiley Russell covers growth and development. Reach him at 925-952-5027 or krussell@cctimes.com.

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