Hollister
– Even if it gains the support of local voters at the ballot
booth, developer DMB Associates’ plan to build a mini-city with
nearly 7,000 houses in northern San Benito County will ultimately
need approval from the Board of Supervisors if it is ever to become
a reality.
Hollister – Even if it gains the support of local voters at the ballot booth, developer DMB Associates’ plan to build a mini-city with nearly 7,000 houses in northern San Benito County will ultimately need approval from the Board of Supervisors if it is ever to become a reality.
Many in the county believe that voter approval or disapproval of a general plan amendment needed to accommodate the DMB project, El Rancho San Benito, would be the final word on if the development is allowed to proceed. But according to a section of the county code, which some find unclear, even if voters approve a general plan change for El Rancho San Benito, the fate of the project is still in the hands of county supervisors.
“I was recently informed of that,” Supervisor Reb Monaco said. “With this little wrinkle, I’m not sure voters understand what they’re voting for. That concerns me. This thing is very, very confusing to me.”
Planning Commissioner Dan Devries said that Monaco is not alone in his confusion over the 8-year-old ordinance that calls for large-scale developers to take their plans to voters before going through the county planning process.
“Nobody gets it,” Devries said. “The reason that nobody gets it is that the ordinance is super screwed up.”
Regardless of voters’ decisions, the county board of supervisors has the power to overrule public will and decide differently on a project, under the ordinance. Monaco said, however, that he would seriously consider how the public voted before making any decision about a project.
“That’s one thing that I’ve always held near and dear, I am a public servant at the will of the people who put me in office.”
In April, 1998, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution that amended the county’s general, adding to it a new Potential Residential Growth Increase land use designation – an temporary designation, which, if approved, stands for one year.
Under the ordinance, developers of large projects submit an application to the Board of Supervisors. The board, rather than approving the application, determines if the application is complete and then calls for an election so that voters decide whether the PRGI designation will be granted.
If voters approve a PRGI designation for a particular project, it will proceed through the county planning process, which includes environmental review, public hearings and review by the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. The board makes the final decision on whether the general plan change will be permanent.
It is unclear what would happen if voters denied a PRGI designation for a project, according to Devries.
Devries said that he has several concerns about the ordinance. First among those is the question of what constitutes an application for a PRGI designation, he said, and what requirements have to be met for an application to be complete.
Supervisor Anthony Botelho said he understood that the board has the final say on whether a general plan change would be approved, but, he added that the ordinance is difficult to comprehend.
“I’m not clear on it,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of gray area.”
Local DMB representative Ray Becker said that DMB, which is the first developer to go through the PRGI designation process, has also had some trouble figuring out exactly how to comply with the ordinance because there isn’t consensus on what it requires.
“We plan to follow the ordinance to the letter. Once we figure it out,” he said. “Part of the problem we have is that the ordinance is not very clear.”
When the PRGI designation process was discussed by the Planning Commission Wednesday, Becker proposed an alternative scenario, which would put the public vote at the end of the planning process rather than before it begins. The Board of Supervisors also requested a report about the PRGI designation process to be put on the agenda for its April 25 meeting.
“We did not initiate discussion of this. We’re not trying to get this changed,” Becker said. “But when questions are raised, it’s reasonable for us to say, ‘we have another idea.'”
The DMB idea entails switching the order of the PRGI designation process, so that locals wouldn’t vote on a general plan change on a project until it has gone through the entire planning process. That way, Becker said, voters would be well informed about the project before they make a decision at the polls. In the DMB scenario, according to Becker, voters would have the final say on whether a project would be approved, leaving the possibility that the public vote could supersede the board’s decision.
Botelho said that it might be a good idea for voters to have all the information before making a decision, but that he would need to hear more about the DMB scenario before making up his mind about what’s best.
“I’ve always had reservations about ballot box land use policy. Right now it’s kind of a beauty contest,” he said. “I certainly don’t want to circumvent input from voters.”
No matter the process, however, Becker said that DMB is committed to taking the El Rancho San Benito Project – a 6,800-house community on about 4,500 acres just south of the Santa Clara County line – before the voters. DMB does not plan to send the issue to voters for at least another year.
“If the board sticks with the ordinance,” he said, “we’ll stick with it.”
Becker said that DMB, at this point, hasn’t determined what it would do if voters did not support its project at the polls.
“I guess we haven’t thought about that,” he said. “At this point our objective is to do everything we can to get a favorable vote.”
Del Webb, which has proposed a 4,200-house senior community near the Hollister Municipal Airport, will not have to go through the PRGI designation process. Del Webb will request that its project site, which is now unincorporated, be annexed into the City of Hollister, thereby making it a city issue. Del Webb has announced that it will put an initiative on the November ballot seeking a new Hollister general plan designation for its project and exemption from the city’s growth control ordinance, which limits residential allocations to 244 per year.
