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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

October 3, 2003

Lines drawn over urban limit plan

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Monday’s meeting in a large City Hall conference room packed with about 20 onlookers turned contentious for a time when one committee member accused another of a possible conflict of interest.

The committee’s charge is, indeed, to establish a greenbelt around the city to define the urban growth limit and help city staff plan development for as much as 50 years. Property outside the line would be prohibited from developing, a hardship on some owners who may have plans to take money out of their property.

The committee has not had extensive discussion on how landowners might be compensated if their land cannot be developed based on the limit line boundaries.

A greenbelt was described by Councilwoman Hedy Chang and committee vice chair as adding to the quality of life in Morgan Hill - the reason most people want to live here.

“We have things here other cities wish they had,” said committee member Mark Grzan. “If we don’t plan now we will lose this and become just another Mountain View or Sunnyvale. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

As might be expected, the committee’s dividing line is between property owner/developer contingent and the environmentalist/open space people. The committee makeup reflects both aspects but is more heavily weighted toward property owners.

A meeting Monday was more contentious than usual, said Mayor Dennis Kennedy, chair of the committee. He is less than optimistic that a consensus could be reached that will satisfy everyone or anyone.

“I’m hopeful but I don’t think so,” Kennedy said. “Property owners are so adamant in their positions that it’s going to be tough to come up with a consensus.”

As an example he said that committee member George Thomas, a former member of the county Open Space Authority, had advocated moving the eastern limit line up against the eastern hills, to what is called the 20 percent slope line, removing great chunks of potential open space from protection.

Thomas and his family own quite a bit of property between Hill Road and the hills, Kennedy said.

Thomas was absent from Monday’s meeting.

The committee was chosen by the council, Kennedy said, to represent certain categories.

Tim Chiala, active in agricultural; Jan Guglielmo, vintners; Rocke Garcia, developers; Jessica Fitchen, environmentalists; Grzan, a citizen representative.

“I was accused of making the committee too balanced in a previous meeting,” Kennedy said.

Now the balance has shifted.

Monday’s meeting dealt with the southeastern limit. Should the limit line be lined up with Hill Road, drawn along Foothill Avenue or moved up to the 20 percent slope line; the committee decided the further east the better.

Each line adds or displaces someone’s property from future development and adds or subtracts it from the greenbelt.

The committee is also deciding where to select additional acres for another industrial park, away from the northern part of the city where three other industrial areas are located.

Attorney Bruce Tichinin, who is on the committee and normally is found in the environmental camp, has been hired by the DiVittorio family - Jim DiVittorio is on the committee - to protect their interests in land they own south of Tennant Avenue and near U.S. 101.

“The DiVittorios want to have their parcel not be placed in the open space area,” Tichinin said Thursday. “That land is suitable for industrial use because it is close to the freeway with easy access.

“It appears that, on the order of 340 acres of high quality industrial park land is needed for industrial use between now and 2020 if Morgan Hill continues it’s historical industrial land absorption rate of 20 acres a year. There are apparently 100 acres left in Morgan Hill Ranch, the only remaining source of really high quality industrial land. That means another 240 acres are required out to 2020.”

Tichinin said he had not included the unoccupied buildings in the existing industrial parks in his calculations.

Tichinin said he was comfortable representing the family even though he is a member of the committee. Grzan had brought up Tichinin’s potential conflict of interest at the meeting’s beginning.

City Attorney Helene Leichter backed Tichinin up at Monday’s meeting saying she considered his connection to be “attenuated” - meaning not seriously connected - and as long as he would not make more money if he voted a certain way she was reasonably comfortably with it.

Tichinin said fee is not based on the outcome of the vote but on an hourly fee.

Grzan questioned property owners being able to vote on the disposition of their property. Leichter discussed Grzan’s concern that those with financial interests voting would violate ‘common law’ with the committee but said she didn’t think there was a problem.

Tichinin conceded that Grzan’s concern is a legitimate one.

“But it’s off the mark in the sense that, under the political reform act, no conflict of interest so long as the city representative (committee members) serve only as an advisory function, not one which will make final decision.”

Tichinin said his interest is to recommend to the council an Urban Limit Line and greenbelt which ties the decision about dividing the land between urban and greenbelt uses to the amount of development which will be permitted under the proposed updated Measure P to the 2020 official time horizon.

He also wants to see the City Council immediately determine a mechanism for ultimately purchasing - or otherwise acquiring - title to either all of the real property or open space easements from owners of the land designated greenbelt at its full market value and that funding come as much as is legally and practically feasible from developers under Measure P’s extension.

He suggested that developers trade an acre to be developed for the price of an open space acre. Morgan Hill requires a similar trade in land or money to mitigate burrowing owl habitat on land to be developed and the City of Gilroy uses something similar when mitigating the loss of agricultural land.

At the meeting, Jenny Derry, Farm Bureau executive director, said this compensation plan was not feasible.

“It’s not a given that the city will have the funds to purchase land to create a greenbelt,” she said.

“We had an advisory vote in the late 1980s,” Kennedy said, “in which the public voted in favor of establishing a greenbelt around the city.” He said the matter was so controversial it hadn’t been tackled until recently.

“Any changes must still go to the Planning Commission and to the City Council,” Kennedy said, “ and there are opportunities for changes at each level. Hopefully won’t be any lawsuits, but you never know.”

Kennedy said the committee had decided to “do a first pass (of a limit line around the city) and then go back and take a second look.”

The committee, which has already met eight times, will meet again from 6-10 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13, and again on Monday, Oct. 27, in The Villas behind City Hall.

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