The future of the proposed San Benito County Slow Growth
Initiative will be in the hands of the San Benito County Board of
Supervisors Tuesday.
The future of the proposed San Benito County Slow Growth Initiative will be in the hands of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
During its meeting at 9:30 a.m., the Board will consider certifying the growth-control petition, which generated a raw number of 5,684 signatures.
The County Clerk’s office selected a random sampling of 500 signatures from the petition, of which 422 were found to be valid signatures of registered voters. By state election laws, that rate of 85 percent valid signatures is considered enough to consider the petition valid.
Once a petition is considered to have the appropriate number of valid signatures, it is forwarded to the Board of Supervisors, which must either adopt the initiative, unaltered, as an ordinance within 10 days of the meeting where it is presented, or place the initiative on the ballot so residents can vote on it.
The initiative is the result of a grassroots petition drive by a group called Citizens for Responsible growth in San Benito County.
“This is intended to limit and stabilize development at a level that the county can live with,” spokeswoman Janet Brians said in an earlier interview. “We just want to have a good life here.”
Brians, a long-time county resident, said the initiative is not intended to bring all development in the county to an end. She said it would redirect growth within Hollister by first “filling in” open and unused areas of the city, and then by suggesting that any other developments be placed in areas other than prime agriculture lands.
The initiative would limit new housing to 1 or 2 percent of the number of households in unincorporated areas. Senior, modest, low and very low income housing would be given special consideration.
Areas of special environmental concern cover protection of wetlands and slopes too steep for building. Visual safeguards direct building away from ridgelines as well as generally reducing adverse visual effects.
To save agricultural lands and enhance farming and ranching, the initiative would increase the minimum size of a parcel zoned as agriculture productive land from five to 20 acres in specified areas north of Hollister and in the San Juan Valley.
Although proponents believe the initiative would help local agriculture, both the San Benito County Farm Bureau and the county cattlemen’s association have come out strongly against it, saying certain provisions of the initiative violate property owners’ rights.
