Initiative gives teeth to city's stated growth plans
By Gary Emanuel
» More from Gary Emanuel
12:01 a.m. PT May 6, 2008
The "Managed Growth" Initiative proposes to have the citizens adopt the Land Use Element of the City's General Plan by initiative on the next ballot.
This Plan, approved by the City of Grass Valley in 2000 and updated as recently as January 2007, already anticipates 46 percent growth.
One important purpose of adopting the core of the General Plan as law is to require that Grass Valley's citizens directly approve any amendment increasing the intensity or density of development. Another objective is to require the zoning ordinance to be consistent with the heart of that plan.
"The land use element functions as a guide to planners, the general public, and decision makers as to the ultimate pattern of development for the city or county. The land use element has perhaps the broadest scope of the seven mandatory elements ... it plays a central role in correlating all land use issues into a set of coherent development policies ... In practice, it is the most visible and often used elements in the local general plan. Although all elements carry equal weight, the land use element is often perceived as being the most representative of the general plan. The land use element has a pivotal role in zoning, subdivision, and public works decisions. The element's objectives and policies provide a long-range context for those short term actions." (State of California Office of Planning and Research publication General Plan Guidelines).
In other words, as a constitution for the community's land use, the Element, and the General Plan as a whole, is a formal expression of Grass Valley's public policy about how it will grow.
Created through extensive consultation and research, it sets out long term expectations for citizens, developers, and city authorities alike. Stability of expectation serves the entire community.
The land use element gives folks thinking of moving to Grass Valley and those who already live here a way to anticipate how their neighborhood and community expects to grow. Developers, needing to judge costly and long-term investment, benefit from long-range, coherent, and steady expectations. Long range stability permits city authorities to invest wisely in maintenance and expansion of infrastructure and services to support existing land-use and accommodate continued growth. Balancing competing needs, compromising conflicting interests, the General Plan is the vision for Grass Valley's future on which the whole community has broadly agreed. And that is important to remember: Grass Valley's City Council approved and uses the General Plan.
While all municipalities and counties are required by the state to have a General Plan, its development and use is also a matter of good government. A General Plan provides a clear statement of a community's public policy and goals.
As a charter city, Grass Valley, unlike the usual general law jurisdictions, has enormous flexibility as to how it may interpret and implement its General Plan which can be overly convenient or awkward for its politicians facing insistent demands by well-financed, private interests to make decisions that exceed or are contrary to the General Plan.
For "as a charter city, (it) is exempted from the requirement that its zoning ordinance be consistent with the General Plan," as California's courts observed with regard to another city, continuing: "Other case law goes even further in interpreting the policy underlying the legislative exemption granted to charter cities to allow those cities to act mostly unfettered from state law mandates in land use areas." This leaves voters, developers, and city officials to wonder just what the General Plan really means and actually plans for.
By adopting, through initiative, the Land Use Element of the General Plan (not the entire General Plan, as The Union's front-page article stated [April 8]), the citizens of Grass Valley put genuine legal meaning into the agreed public policy that the Element is meant to reflect, require zoning to be consistent with it, and oblige city representatives and officials to adhere to the community vision that the General Plan expresses.
The initiative proposes no changes to the General Plan Đ significant change should come through consultation with the public. Also, citizens deserve to have changes that exceed the Land Use Element's limits submitted for their approval. It is, after all, our community, our home, and our future. Ou General Plan should reflect citizens' collective vision of how their community is to grow.
Read the initiative for yourself at ccatnc.org or check out the one-page "Title and Summary" by the city attorney at www.cityofgrassvalley.com.
Gary Emanuel is a resident of Grass Valley and a volunteer member of Friends of Grass Valley.
