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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 30, 2003 County plan signed and sealed, but cities have to deliver Subheading By Lisa VorderbrueggenContra Costa County has rolled and kneaded a plan to grow smarter. Whether this raw vision, Shaping Our Future, rises now hinges on political will. Before the plan can produce a transit village, preserve one acre of farmland or launch an express bus, the county's 19 city councils and the Board of Supervisors must embrace and fund it. Getting a voluntary compact is not worth the money spent on the plan, said county Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier of Concord. "We have to implement it. Will it happen? Three words: to be determined." Securing an unprecedented shift in growth patterns in this economically and ethnically diverse county presents a formidable challenge. Two-thirds of Bay Area cities and counties, including Alameda and Contra Costa, this year signed a nine-county vision of how and where to grow, called the Regional Livability Footprint Project. Tri-Valley cities endorsed a smaller initiative in the mid-1990s called Vision 2010. Neither plan includes enforcement mechanisms. Shaping Our Future asks its members to adopt a regional plan with teeth, a threat to local interests. Cities vigorously resist regional intrusions into their control over growth. "If Shaping Our Future usurps local control, it will not succeed," said San Ramon Vice Mayor Jerry Cambra. "It will be successful only if it balances regional concerns with the needs of cities." The plan Shaping Our Future asks a great deal of its members: • Cities must incorporate the county urban limit line to their general plans. The line bars urban development outside its perimeter. Cities today can legally disregard it. • The transportation authority, governed by elected city and county officials, must fund tens of millions of dollars in essential traffic-easing projects. The money would come from the extension of the county's half-cent transportation sales tax, which needs voter approval. • Cities must revise general plans to permit denser development that helps bring jobs, housing and shops closer together. Some cities would see fewer homes and jobs; others would have more. The urban limit line may prove the most fractious element. Some view it as a concrete wall at the county's ultimate urban edge. Others consider it a barbed wire fence easily moved when development demand swells. John Fregonese, the Shaping Our Future consultant, says the line has room for most of the growth expected in the next 20 years if the county builds smarter. But the draft compact requires a review every five years to maintain a five-year supply of buildable land. "I won't support anything that expands the urban limit line," said Danville Town Councilwoman Millie Greenberg. She lobbied fiercely for the county's recent vote changing the line to preclude development on 15,000 additional acres. "It might be true that sometime in the future we will need to consider moving the line but we don't need to do it now." Other city officials fear a locked-up line. The voter initiative that established the line expires in 2010, but if every city adds the boundary to their general plans the line would be more difficult to shift. San Ramon voters in March 2002 adopted a local growth boundary inconsistent with the county's -- some of it is more restrictive, but another segment exceeds the line. Antioch, Brentwood and Pittsburg officials have identified land outside the limit line where they want to build. "To never move the line is unrealistic given the growth projections for our city," said Brentwood City Councilwoman Ana Gutierrez. "We have to be pragmatic." Cash needed No matter how many cities rally to the vision, it stands little chance without money. Housing-rich east Contra Costa needs expensive transportation improvements to attract jobs. Mired in Highway 4 congestion, the area seeks a BART extension and expanded links to the Tri-Valley and Tracy. West Contra Costa cities need improved public transit and amenities to compete for high-end jobs and houses. Transportation upgrades ease impacts where the vision concentrates Central County growth in downtown Concord, Walnut Creek and Martinez. "The vision is just a dream unless we find some greenbacks," said Richmond Mayor Irma Anderson. "That's why we're at the table. West County needs its fair share of the benefits of growth in this county." Shaping Our Future relies on the sales-tax extension for a cash infusion. In turn, some extension backers seek to condition a portion of the money on the recommended regional planning. Advocates must secure wide support because the extension requires two-thirds voter approval, a steep hurdle. Some of the vision's ideas have attracted ire from environmentalists, a group key to voter approval. The Greenbelt Alliance particularly dislikes widening the Byron highway between East County and Tracy. It questions building on undeveloped land where Antioch, Oakley and Brentwood converge rather than closer to job centers. "Shaping Our Future has some really good things in it and there's some really scary things in it," said Evelyn Stivers, Greenbelt Alliance's East Bay field director. "I do think that Contra Costa is on the cusp of change, but I'm not sure that (Shaping Our Future) will get us there." Too soon to guess It's too early to predict whether cities and the county will submit to an enforceable countywide plan. It will come down to how voters handle the tax measure and how each city responds. "Academically, we all know that if we want to protect our quality of life and our environment, we're going to have to look at developing differently," said Concord City Manager Ed James. "But where the rubber meets the road is how each community reacts to specific projects." The Lafayette Homeowners Council, for example, voted March 11 to oppose the conversion of land zoned for single-family homes to apartments. There's even talk of a petition campaign to clip Lafayette from the vision. In fact, Lafayette would see 70 percent fewer new houses under Shaping Our Future, although the homeowners did not know it at the time they voted. Many cities marked for more intense development pursued smart growth before it became a trendy name. Concord helped a developer build luxury apartments near a BART station. Walnut Creek has built and seeks more housing downtown. Martinez is redesigning its downtown. Richmond has a housing and transit village under way. "I'm optimistic," said Shaping Our Future manager Don Blubaugh. "The public is telling us that they are open to new ideas and I'm seeing a new attitude among the elected officials. And really, what's the alternative? It will only get worse if we don't change."
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