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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

January 27, 2006

Lodi greenbelt may go to voters

Growth issues increasingly heading to polls

LODI - Some Lodi leaders believe voters will take planning matters into their own hands with dialogue stalled over how to preserve farmland between Lodi and Stockton.

Last week, representatives of property owners living along Armstrong Road - the center of a mile-wide swath envisioned as an agricultural buffer from Interstate 5 to Highway 99 - did not present their plan for the area at a meeting of Lodi's Community Separator/Greenbelt Task Force.

They were expected to deliver a response to the task force's November 2004 recommendation to create a system that would allow property owners to either build one home for every 10 acres they own or sell that right to others in the targeted area.

City Councilman John Beckman said he's frustrated by the slow pace and warned that rural landowners might find themselves in a no-growth zone decided by city voters.

"I don't know if they're trying to stall or not," he said, "but the result is, it's stalling. If they don't come up with a plan very soon, I think the citizens of Lodi will come up with a ballot measure."

Bruce Fry, unofficial leader of the rural landowners' group, insists there's a draft proposal that just needs final approval by property owners before it's printed and distributed. Even so, Fry said he doesn't know when it will be revealed.

"This takes a long time," Fry said. "We have a plan. We've always had one; it's just not finalized. What's frustrating to me is there's a belief out there that there is no plan."

Voters throughout the Bay Area have used the polls to create urban growth limits, borders that define the farthest their cities will extend. The limits typically last for 20 years, after which voters can renew, revise or allow the limits to expire, according to Elizabeth Stampe, a spokeswoman for the Greenbelt Alliance, a nonprofit group that fights to preserve open space in nine Bay Area counties.

Stampe said Lodi's approach is unusual because there are far easier methods. Urban growth limits are usually successful at the ballot box and cost nothing more than the expense of an election. "The process can often be positive, because it's an opportunity for the whole community to get together and decide where to grow," Stampe said. "They're saying, 'Let's commit right now to not going any further than that.' "

Stampe said in the Bay Area, 23 cities and five counties have established urban growth boundaries. In Sonoma County, eight of the county's nine cities have set geographic boundaries for future growth. The ninth, Cloverdale, may have its residential and commercial development limits created at the ballot box next year.

In 1990, Sonoma County voters created an open-space district and adopted a quarter-cent sales tax to fund land conservation programs. The $13 million collected each year is used to buy property or easements from landowners to keep the land from being developed.

"Central Valley residents need to get more informed and involved about what's going on," Stampe said. "They have the power to control growth and plan well for it, but if they don't take that power, sprawl will take over."

Lodi Mayor Susan Hitchcock said she favors an urban growth boundary and is optimistic voters would approve a measure that established a rural zone to the south. But she's not sure others on the City Council would adopt one or support putting a measure on the ballot.

"You're talking about a whole bunch of hurdles to get our council to agree to an urban growth boundary," she said.

City Manager Blair King said there are steps the City Council can take to preserve rural land between Lodi and Stockton, such as amend Lodi's 15-year-old General Plan, its blueprint for growth.

Contact Lodi Bureau Chief Jeff Hood at (209) 367-7427 or jhood@recordnet.com

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