U.S. Bureau of Land Management under the Trump administration have taken the first step of opening 1.6 million acres of California public land to fracking and conventional oil drilling, triggering alarm bells among environmentalist. US BLM said it’s considering new oil and natural gas leases on BLM-managed lands in Fresno, San Luis Obispo, and six other San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast counties. If BLM goes ahead with the plan, it would mark the first time since 2013 that the agency has issued new leases for oil or gas exploration in the State. The notice was released by BLM last week, which allows for 30 days of public comment, specifically “public input on issues and planning criteria related to hydraulic fracturing.” The Center of Biological Diversity has vowed to fight the move.
San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Center Finally Opens
On Sunday August 12 bus service began at the new $2.16 billion Transbay Transit Center, which stretches nearly three blocks just south of Mission Street. Above the station is a 5.4-acre park that fills the roof above the concourse with eight distinct gardens and a long, oval path. The park includes a picnic meadow, playground, and two-story restaurant with a terrace 80 feet in the air. While the transit center is now complete, there are still questions on whether commuter trains will ever make it. The earliest date for train service is 2029 and the budget for the rail phase alone is at least $4 billion, where $4.2 billion was the original budget for the entire project. The transit center is now named Salesforce Transit Center with Salesforce Park on top. In an effort to keep the rooftop garden free of drugs users and troublemakers, visitors in the first week can expect craft booths and exercise classes. Games, free music, Toddler Tuesdays and a lunchtime writing workshop will be offered Wednesday. The transit center will have multiple layers of security and be open from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily. The park will close at 9 p.m. during the summer and fall and 8 p.m. the rest of the year.
Karuk Tribe’s Bid to Restore Reservation in Peril
Research done by a Professor Stephen Dow Beckham, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, found no Native American ever lived on the 441-acre Ruffey Rancheria outside Etna. This is a major blow for the move to restore federal tribal recognition to a long defunct Siskiyou County Indian Rancheria. Josh Saxon, executive director of the Karuk Tribe, hired the professor to investigate the tribe’s legitimacy. Saxon says, “This is an attempt to resurrect a tribe where there was no tribe.” However the chairman of Ruffey Rancheria, Tajh Gomes, says Beckham’s report is factually wrong and that he overlooked a list of tribe members who were residents “on or near the original reservation lands or on other lands purchased or leased for the Ruffey Rancheria members”. Congress terminated the Rancheria along with 40 others as part of the California Indian Rancheria Act of 1958. Ruffey Rancheria is one of the last few remaining terminated California Indian Rancherias that has not yet been restored to federally recognized status.
HDC Steps Up Efforts to Review Compliance with Housing Law
The Housing and Community Development (HCD) Department has announced its process to hold cities and counties accountable to provide housing opportunities for more Californians. Assembly Bill (72) granted enforcement powers to clarify HCD’s authority to review a city or county’s compliance with state housing laws and revoke their finding of housing element compliance. HCD can also refer issues of noncompliance with this and other housing laws – such as the Housing Accountability Act and State Density Bonus Law- to the State Office of the Attorney General.
Quick Hits & Updates
Tim Draper, author of the initiative to split California into three states, announced he’s dropping his proposal after the state Supreme Court’s decision to remove it from the November ballot. The justices invited Draper to present arguments about why his measure meets constitutional standards. Draper wrote in the letter to the court, “I did not qualify Proposition 9 for just any future ballot. I wanted it to be on the ballot this year. The political environment for radical change is right now – such change is sweeping the globe.” (See prior CP&DR commentary.)
The City of Palo Alto is considering abolishing a policy that currently limits new non-residential development in downtown. The proposal to scrap the cap was originally approved by City Council, 5-4, in January 2017. The five councilmembers in favor argues the policy is no longer necessary given the other restrictions on commercial growth already in place. Palo Alto has a citywide limit of 1.7 million new square-feet of office and R&D growth. A citizen initiative to reduce the limit to 850,000 square-feet will be on the November ballot. While the council removed the downtown cap from the updated Comprehensive Plan, the city must now actually implement the policy change by removing the downtown cap from the zoning code.
Contractors building a 31-mile section of the high-speed rail project in the Central Valley have complained that the Union Pacific Railroad is causing delays and significant cost increase. The allegation may lead to a delay claim by the contractor against the state. The friction involves the Union Pacific’s “right of way”, the 100-foot-wide passage granted under President Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s. The HSR is trying to build alongside Union Pacific’s right-of-way in Fresno and Madera.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors have pushed back on Ford GoBike’s expansion in various neighborhoods throughout the City saying not enough notice has been offered to neighbors about new installations. In many cases throughout the city, the rental bike docks are placed in parking spaces meant for cars.
Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Pasadena redevelopment consultant Cecilia Estolano to the UC Board of Regents. Estolano was co-founder and CEO of Estolano LeSar Advisors, and from 2006 to 2009 chief executive of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. She attended UC Berkeley for her law degree and UCLA for a Master of Arts in urban planning.
Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an affordable housing bond and half-cent sales tax for the November ballot. The $140 million affordable housing bond would fund the development of more than 1,000 new affordable housing units in Santa Cruz County, loans for first-time homebuyers and homeless services programs. The half-cent sales tax would raise an estimated $5.75 million annually and would not apply to the four cities within the borders of the county.
San Francisco Board of Supervisor Jane Kim will introduce a set of amendments designed to squeeze more housing out of the office oriented rezoning of Central SoMa neighborhood. Kim wants to change the zoning north of Harrison Street from “mixed-use office” to “mixed-use residential”, adding housing to that part of the plan’s designated area. City planning officials say the change would result in about 250 more housing units.
Activists behind the “Calexit” proposal have scrapped their old plans in favor of a new secessionist proposals that would create an “autonomous native nation” within a new independent state. While old proposals have been criticized for not doing enough for Native Americans, the new proposal seeks to address that by handing off a large swath of the theoretical new California. According to the US census, California is home to the largest Native American population with more than 100 federally recognized tribes. There have been more than 200 efforts to cut up California since 1849. According to an opinion poll from Reuters/ Ipsos, 32 percent of voters support peaceful withdrawal from the union. (See prior CP&DR commentary.)
Marin County Supervisor Damon Connolly, who sits on the MTC and the Bay Area Toll Authority, brought up the possibility of converting the planned Richmond-San Rafael Bridge bicycle-pedestrian path into another vehicle lane during rush hour. The path is schedule to be completed in early 2019. The Bay Area Toll Authority Oversight Committee decided to study the idea in early March and allocated $100,000 to the task. While the 10-foot cycling-walking pathway would be available the majority of the time, the loss of the path during certain times worries some cycling advocates. Cycling advocates believe excluding bikes during rush hour would significantly reduce the number of people who might otherwise opt to ride bikes to work.
The Yolo County District Attorney is filing a civil suit against several developers that failed to honor rules about building on a Native American burial site in a West Sacramento neighborhood. According to the release, the complaint alleges the developers were aware they improperly handled remains. When there is a discovery of Native American remains or artifacts during construction, federal preservation laws require notification to the Secretary of the Interior and also protection of discovered remains. During the latest survey, conducted in 2015, multiple human remains had been unearthed and scatted during construction. Yolo County District Attorney, Jeff Reisig, said in the news release, “The flagrant disregard of the sanctity of the burial site is indefensible and deeply offensive.”
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment have filed a lawsuit against the City of LA to eliminate the “pocket veto” denouncing the requirement as “an illegal, unnecessary, arbitrary, and discriminatory barrier to the construction of affordable and supportive housing.” Under current city regulations, housing developers seeking funding for affordable or homeless housing projects must get a “letter of acknowledgement” from the council member who represents the area. The lawsuit argues it allows councilmembers to stop housing for poor people without any common standard or public justification.
The newly proposed Orange Line Transit Neighborhood Plans project would allow taller buildings along the 18-mile Metro Orange Line in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. The line carries about 30,000 riders per day. The plans do not offer specific development projects, but rather seeks to rezone pieces of industrial land to allow higher office towers and multi-family residential buildings within a half-mile radius of the Orange Line stops in North Hollywood, Van Nuys, and Sepulveda. The plan is partially funded through Metro grants.
Restore Hetch Hetchy lost another court battle recently. The group has argued that San Francisco should not have rooted its water supply in a national park because it overran a pristine valley and violated a provision of the state Constitution requiring reasonable water use. However, California’s Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno ruled that a Tuolumne County judge was correct two years ago when he tossed a lawsuit seeking to drain the reservoir. The Berkeley group has said they plan to fight to the California Supreme Court.
