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County Senior Planner Rob Burness retired quietly after 30 years.

County planner retires as development meetings head to conclusion

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Published Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Two days after the latest in the series of facilitated meetings between Rancho Murieta developers and development opponents, Senior Planner Rob Burness retired from the county Planning Department after almost 30 years.

In his retirement letter to colleagues, Burness included among his fond memories "revisiting resource protection issues at Rancho Murieta with Al Freitas, (Supervisors) Don Nottoli and Illa Collin," but said he was leaving his county career without "any great sense of fulfillment or accomplishment." He urged his colleagues in Planning to keep the common good in mind in framing the issues. "Property rights are important, but good stewardship is more important," he wrote. "It is among government's roles to foster that stewardship. … Perhaps someday we really can learn to design with nature."

It was Burness who provided the structure for the county meetings, which stem from the workshops held at the county Board of Supervisors last fall. The workshops centered on the results of Burness' research into the land use history of Rancho Murieta. He tracked how the nature and uses of open space changed over time, and unearthed forgotten maps and documents.

At one of the recent meetings at the Country Club, as he stood before the master plan maps for 1969, 1974 and 1984, Burness remarked that the community would look much different today if plans he'd worked on for a parkway along the Cosumnes River -- plans on the order of the American River Parkway -- had come to fruition in the 1970s.

At the March 30 meeting, Burness mentioned he wouldn't be able to attend the April 11 meeting, scheduled to be the last in the series, but never let on he was retiring.

"Thursday was my last day of work before retiring. I hope your discussions are fruitful and you are able to reach compromise. I have enjoyed being the planner for Murieta. So many issues....," he wrote in an e-mail to the participants several days later.

At the March 30 meeting, participants began a discussion about policy guidelines that could be applied to all development projects and offer uniform protections for the community's natural and cultural resources.

In preparation for the meeting, Burness had prepared a list of discussion points and the Rancho Murieta Development Concerned Citizens Committee drew up a 10-page document.

At the meeting, Alcides Freitas, former director of the Department of Environmental Review and Assessment, said that although he "strongly supported" the RMDCCC's outline, "I have a feeling this is leading to the so-called revised master plan." He told the RMDCCC that because the Board of Supervisors has indicated there are no funds for redoing the master plan, "you should rally behind some fundamental policies that can safeguard the interests of the community and provide some very strong guidelines … " Freitas commented that a new master plan was "highly desirable," but it wasn't going to happen in the short-term.

The developers' list was offered at the meeting and triggered comments from RMDCCC members that it should be rejected since it hadn't been offered in advance and they'd had no time to study it.

After it turned out, the developers' list identified the same issues the RMDCCC had included under the natural resources section of its document. Eventually a discussion about the first item, oak tree preservation, took place after a recess was called for the RMDCCC to discuss whether the developers' list should be part of the discussion.

During the discussion about the oaks, the developers emphasized the qualitative aspects of analyzing land for development and said overall quantitative restrictions don't allow flexibility. Clay Heil of Warmington Homes said planning needs to be specific to a project because there are always trade-offs. Preserving oak trees in flat areas of a hilly site like The Residences of Murieta Hills can result in more grading to build homes, he said.

Warmington Homes is one of the two builders for Murieta Hills, where 94 percent of the trees will be preserved, including a large oak grove in the middle of the property. Plans call for subdividing the 146 acres into 238 lots.

Developer Robert J. Cassano of Cassano Kamilos Homes contrasted that with the planning for three parcels of land totaling 30 acres that make up his project, The Retreat, planned for 95 homes. There the tree take is expected to total about 52 percent, in spite of reductions in project density, because the trees are scattered throughout the smaller sites, he said. The homes will be surrounded by open space instead of having yards and fences.

The RMDCCC's goal was to have quantitative measures for overall development and for specific projects to limit how many trees could be removed and to decide how much area would be left undeveloped. "The pie is only so big," said RMDCCC member Brad Sample.

"All of you are going to catch the fallout of what has happened on the South," RMDCCC member Ted Hart told the developers. "It's been a disaster as far as what the developers have done .... concerning the oak trees, concerning mitigation.… We saw what was in place supposedly, what those developers on the South were supposed to do, but they didn't do it. … As a result, this community is looking at developers with a very, very cautious eye."

Heil noted that the South developer is not a participant in the talks. Land-use attorney John Taylor, who represents the developers, said what's happened on the South is useful in a discussion of guiding principles.

"I think there's an element of consensus sort of starting to build," said Burness late in the meeting. He said he had "thrown out" for discussion a tree-loss limit of 15 percent for individual projects as "a general rule of thumb." More than 25 percent would be "a significant threshold," and a maximum limit of about 50 percent could be considered, he suggested. He recommended having tree mitigation take place on-site on common land instead of private property. He suggested incorporating into the planning process a comparison of tree loss in one project with tree loss in others, and an evaluation of the impact on the total oak canopy.

The meeting ran almost an hour past its official ending time of 5 p.m. During the two public comment periods, close to two dozen members of the audience of approximately 60 spoke. At RMDCCC member Candy Chand's request, speakers were permitted to address topics unrelated to the agenda. The facilitator's other groundrules that caution speakers to be concise and to avoid personal attacks were unofficially set aside by several who spoke. The developers asked that one speaker's remarks be excluded from the record after he referred to developers as liars.

Close to half a dozen speakers talked about a rumor concerning the possible sale of the Rancho Murieta Airport to a developer to build houses. Calls made by RanchoMurieta.com in recent weeks to verify the rumor that the homebuilder who plans to build 200 homes next the airport submitted an offer to buy the facility were not returned by airport legal counsel. Dave Lucchetti, trustee for the Anderson family trust, owner of the airport, said he would not confirm or deny the rumor at this time.

A few speakers were under the impression that there is no master plan for the community and called for the preparation of one. Other speakers were aware of the 1984 master plan that's in effect and proposed preparing a new one at developer expense.

After one speaker asked where the CC&Rs were for the homeowners association that's been formed for new development on the North, Taylor, the developers' attorney, handed him a copy. Gerry N. Kamilos of Cassano Kamilos Homes said he would make an electronic version available to participants in the talks.

At the April 11 meeting, the discussion on the oaks is expected to wrap up and the group will move on to other items on the natural resources list, including grading. Planner Sheryl Lenzie will take over for Burness.