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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 9, 2008 Vacaville council should adopt urban line
A proposal to establish a growth boundary for Vacaville heads for a hearing before the City Council this month. When signatures are verified by the county, the council is expected to receive petitions signed by more than 10,500 registered voters - three times the number required - requesting an urban limit line be established to determine where the city's growth can take place during the next two decades. The council - which could hear the matter as soon as Tuesday but likely won't until March 25 - has three options: Adopt the initiative as is, send it to the voters for approval, or postpone making either decision until city staff reports back on the proposal's potential effects. The best course of action is for the council to adopt it. The proposal has the backing of a broad coalition - environmentalists, the business community, the trades - and its petition drive, conducted in winter weather, quickly brought in more signatures than the number of Vacaville residents who voted in the last election (9,862). If widespread support isn't enough, consider that the proposed boundary largely follows and slightly expands the city's own General Plan map in determining the areas where growth would be acceptable. There is enough land inside the boundary to provide ample growth opportunities for the next 20 years, and the initiative does not limit the city's ability to amend its land-use designations within the boundary. An urban limit line would also offer an extra layer of protection for areas outside the city limits that perennially pique developers' interests: Pleasants Valley, Upper Lagoon Valley, agricultural land east of Leisure Town Road and north of Vaca Valley Road. Those areas are largely outside the proposed limit line, which can be changed only by a vote of city residents. As long as the county continues its policy of pushing urban land uses into the cities, those areas would be protected from development. Before proceeding, the council may desire a staff review of the potential effects of setting such a limit. If so, it shouldn't take long to prepare. After all, this proposal has been in the making for 3 1/2 years, ever since the city, Seattle-based developer Triad Communities and Greenbelt Alliance came to an agreement concerning the development of Lower Lagoon Valley. That agreement reduced the scope of Triad's proposed development from 1,300 homes to 1,025, set aside 71 acres of open space, and secured promises that the developer would improve the lagoon itself, build a fire station and pay for public safety. In exchange, Greenbelt Alliance dropped its lawsuit opposing the project and secured the blessing of the city to circulate the urban limit line petition. Greenbelt Alliance waited to begin collecting signatures until another lawsuit, filed by Friends of Lagoon Valley, had made its way through the judicial system. The Friends lost their argument and the state Supreme Court last fall declined to hear an appeal. There may be critics who believe that this proposal should go to voters, in hopes that they will turn it down and thwart the development of Lower Lagoon Valley. That just isn't going to happen. The agreement worked out in 2004 says that if voters reject the urban limit line, Triad would have to acquire and donate 1,400 acres of permanent agricultural land before it began building. But it would be allowed to build. There have been a lot of hard feelings during the nearly two decades since Vacaville agreed to allow development in lower Lagoon Valley, and plenty of complaints that local voters never got to decisively voice their opinion about it. Ironically, if an urban limit line had been in effect when all of this started, the council would have had to ask the blessing of voters. It's one more reason that this council should adopt an urban limit line for Vacaville. ### |
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