County residents should be developing an updated General Plan
for San Benito County with public meetings and by seeking a broad
consensus of opinions and inputs from all interested parties of the
county, not by means of an initiative that mislead petition signers
into thinking that they were signing a petition to
”
protect the long range viability of agriculture
”
and stop an
”
explosion of intrusive and ill-conceived developments.
”
Measure G would make major, permanent changes to the General
Plan, supposedly to avoid
”
the caprice of politics
”
without the public discourse or discussion demanded to avoid the
caprice of misleading petitions.
County residents should be developing an updated General Plan for San Benito County with public meetings and by seeking a broad consensus of opinions and inputs from all interested parties of the county, not by means of an initiative that mislead petition signers into thinking that they were signing a petition to “protect the long range viability of agriculture” and stop an “explosion of intrusive and ill-conceived developments.”
Measure G would make major, permanent changes to the General Plan, supposedly to avoid “the caprice of politics” without the public discourse or discussion demanded to avoid the caprice of misleading petitions.
There is no impending “explosion of…intrusive developments” or “San Jose sprawl (to) swallow up our agricultural lands, bring more cars and overload(ing) our infrastructure” as is suggested by Measure G supporters. These scare tactics are being used to obscure the facts that the total agricultural acreage converted to new urban, commercial and industrial uses from 1984 to 2000 in San Benito County has been less than half of 1 percent. The conversion of agricultural land in San Benito County is lower than the state-wide average. Apparently, the General Plan and Board of Supervisors have been restraining growth.
Most of the population growth in the county since 1970 has been in Hollister, which houses five times the population that it did in 1970. The current moratorium on sewer hookups in Hollister has effectively stopped the main source of population increase in the county.
Underneath the rhetoric of slogans like “safeguard the future of our rural, small town way of life before it’s too late” is the imposition of more restrictions on the very enterprise Measure G claims it will save: agriculture. More restrictions on agriculture do not “keep our agricultural economy viable.”
Furthermore, the claim that creating larger agricultural parcel sizes will somehow help “protect the long-range vitality of agriculture” is pure deception. The vitality of agriculture has little to do with parcel size, but a lot to do with factors such as climate, soil, water, labor, successful marketing, globalization, federal “free trade” policies and regulations. Larger minimum parcel sizes by themselves will mean that only those who can afford to buy 20 or 160 acres for a house will be able to live here. Real substantive changes that actually protect the long-term viability of agriculture are needed rather than the mockery that Measure G proposes.
Measure G’s compensation to land owners for “downzoning” (increasing the minimum parcel size) in AP and AR zones is proposed through a Transferable Development Credits program. These credits can be bought and sold, but no value is established by Measure G. The value of the credits can fluctuate with supply and demand or the Board of Supervisors’ “caprice” to adjust the supply or extinguish credits. This is a recipe for taking rather than compensating.
There is no good reason for Measure G. There is time to develop an updated General Plan that includes all interested parties, not just the agenda of a few.
Dale Coke,
San Juan Bautista
