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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
March 8, 2006 Urban limit line not yet on June ballot By Kiley RussellContra Costa County voters don't get to decide in June where to stop development. The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously postponed placing a growth control boundary on a countywide ballot, citing concerns raised by a few cities and environmentalists. "It's not quite soup yet," said Supervisor Gayle Uilkema. After more than a year-and-a-half of painstaking negotiations to include every city in a comprehensive urban limit line plan, the board was poised Tuesday to start down the final leg of the process: the march to an election. But the proposed growth boundary, beyond which no large-scale development would be allowed, still doesn't sit right with several cities and the environmental community, however. Brentwood, Clayton, Discovery Bay and Concord all sent letters to the county asking for changes that either would allow developers to build more homes or that would limit the scale of a neighboring city's development. The urban limit line debate was sparked by Measure J, a 25-year, half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2004 that will go into effect in 2009. It will raise $2 billion for transportation projects throughout the county. A provision in Measure J requires every city to comply with either a new "countywide, mutually agreed-upon, voter-approved" urban limit line, or to adopt one of its own. In exchange, cities will receive a share from both a $360 million street maintenance fund and a $100 million pot of money for alternative transportation projects. The original plan was to place a countywide line on the ballot that all the cities and the Board of Supervisors could tolerate. That plan failed when supervisors refused to agree to urban limit line expansions in fast-growing East County around Pittsburg, Antioch and Brentwood. The three neighboring cities walked away from negotiations and placed developer-drawn lines on citywide ballots. Last November, voters in Antioch and Pittsburg approved the expansions, which will result in 2,400 new homes in the coming years, but Brentwood's voters rejected the plan placed before them. The proposal in front of the supervisors Tuesday incorporated the new voter-approved lines, but otherwise resembled the existing urban limit line, with some exceptions. Representatives from the environmental groups Save Mount Diablo and the Greenbelt Alliance asked the board to postpone a vote on the ballot measure, objecting to the part of the boundary that incorporated the new Antioch and Pittsburg lines. They say they also don't like language in the proposal that would allow a review and possible expansion of the line every five years. Clayton City Coucilwoman Julie Pierce told the board that her city is disappointed that the county's urban limit line would divide several parcels, leaving some inside the line and some outside. The supervisors expressed willingness to talk to the city about those areas. Supervisor Mary Piepho also urged a delay on the ballot measure proposal. She pointed to "infrastructure" problems around Discovery Bay that need to be worked out and last week the town's board president said the community wants to expand into 4,000 nearby acres to primarily to accommodate commercial development. Uilkema also noted that the ballot measure should spell out more precisely how to judge whether a city is in compliance with the new growth boundary. In addition, Concord wants policies placed in the ballot measure that would require Pittsburg to build "less visible" homes on the ridge line and hills separating the two cities. The county, however, believes that's an issue between Pittsburg and Concord and the board seemed unlikely to intervene.
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