While Hollister planning commissioners Thursday are set to weigh whether to allocate 185 units for a proposed housing development along the Highway 25 bypass, city planners and top officials have another couple of months to complete a successor document to the recently expired “Growth Managerment Plan.”
That Growth Management Plan – a 244-unit annual allocation cap approved by voters in 2002 – hit its sunset at the end of 2012. According to the related ordinance, the city must come up with a new growth plan within six months of its expiration, said Bill Avera, Hollister’s head planning official.
For nearly two years before the Growth Management Plan’s approval, the city was already following a council-imposed, 244-unit annual allocation cap. Avera said he expects any new allocation figures to stay in the same range and close to the city’s general plan number of 250.
He said the city must balance the state’s desires as well. The city can’t go too low on housing allocations allowed because it has to absorb its fair share of the growth burden.
It can’t go too high, either, Avera said, due to constraints such as those outlined in the general plan. Still, he said if council members wanted to amend the general plan and increase the anticipated allocation rate, they could do so. Elevating a cap to, say, 500 would not be a problem for issues related to capacity at the 5 million gallon sewer plant, Avera said.
As for any proposed figures headed to council members for consideration, Avera said he had asked a staff official to examine factors such as the general plan, sewer plant capacity and growth rate to come up with a prospective plan.
Avera, though, said he doesn’t “have people beating down my door every day wanting to build 100 homes.” The bypass development proposal from former county Supervisor Harold Cerrato and a company called UCP – seeking a 185-unit allocation at this week’s planning commission meeting on top of nearly 100 previously awarded allocations for the site between Meridean Street and Hillcrest Road – is the only one Avera could recall from the past five years in which the builder had yet to receive all of its requested allocations. Cerrato initially requested 400 units, Avera said, while the owner faces some urgency due to an option on the property that is expiring soon.
Avera said it is important to note, meanwhile, that allocations are an initial step that merely allows developers to go through the tentative map process. He said he expects to have a conversation about the growth plan with council members at a May meeting.
“Like I said, if there’s not demand for it now, it’s probably something fairly simple,” Avera said regarding the growth plan update.
Mayor Ignacio Velazquez when reached this week said he had not heard about the growth plan update and stressed that he wants to have “a lot of discussions” about it.
As for the 244-unit cap?
“We’ve learned our lesson by saying ‘no’ to everyone,” Velazquez said.
