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From the Monterey County Herald
Serving Monterey County and the Salinas Valley

Posted on Thu, Mar. 18, 2004

Public weighs in on general plan
Salinas: Familiar issues of growth, housing dominate hearings

By JOE LIVERNOIS
jlivernois@montereyherald.com

Growth in Monterey County will put the hurt on government services, but putting the brakes on development would aggravate the county's housing shortage.

New development will provide housing to low-wage employees who keep the agriculture and tourist industry afloat, but an onslaught of development will replace farmland and give tourists less reason to visit the scenic Central Coast.

Those competing certainties are at the heart of the years-long contention over the creation of a new general plan, a blueprint for how Monterey County will look in 20 years.

Those issues surfaced again Wednesday at the county courthouse in Salinas, where county residents told the Monterey County Planning Commission what the economy and the housing market will be like if the proposed plan is adopted.

The meeting was the third of four public hearings before the Planning Commission in this latest incarnation of the general plan. A final hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday.

As has been the case for the past four years, since county planners first tried to update the existing general plan, opinions vary wildly.

"This plan does not seem to offer the kind of certainty that agriculture needs to remain economically sustainable," said Edward Thompson, state director of the American Farmland Trust, a group that is dedicated to saving farmland from developers.

Efforts by the general plan to increase building fees help pay for the services needed to build new houses "will make it financially infeasible to create... affordable housing," said Alfred Diaz-Infante, president of Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association, which builds low-cost homes for the area's poorest residents.

And, according to Gary Patton of LandWatch Monterey County, the high cost of housing is not so much a product of supply and demand in Monterey County. Instead, most new development is geared for high-end consumers, rather than for workers in local industry, he said.

Patton and others pointed to findings from a recently-completed economic analysis of the county's proposed general plan as reason to discourage aggressive growth policies.

That study, written for the county by a Berkeley economics firm, concluded that the county would need an additional $11 million to pay for the government services needed if the seven "community areas" identified in the general plan are fully developed.

"Under the current cost/revenue structure of the county, lower growth scenarios provide a better fiscal outcome for the county than do higher growth scenarios," according to the report.

But Tom Carvey, manager of Common Ground, said that a slower approach to growth will not provide housing to the thousands of county residents who already live in overcrowded and substandard conditions.

"Half of the people here can't afford to buy a home now," he said.

After Monday's final public hearing, the Planning Commission will try to piece together a final plan it can send to the Board of Supervisors for final adoption.

The commission has scheduled meetings April 7, April 21 and April 28 to craft its recommendations.

Commissioner Juan Sanchez of Salinas said Tuesday he's been disappointed with the testimony he has heard during the three hearings held by the commission so far. He said he was expecting to receive specific recommendations from interested citizens, but so far has heard mostly general comments about the plan.

As a result, he said he expects the commission will only "tweak" the existing plan, rather than making wholesale changes to policies.

"We don't want to plan for a nightmare," he said. "I'll be looking for a middle ground."

Long-time Commissioner Miguel Errea of San Ardo agreed. "We haven't been given clear direction from the testimony we've heard so far," he said.

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Joe Livernois can be reached at 753-6753.