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Participants in the county-run meetings took a two-hour tour of the community, focusing on sensitive undeveloped areas, before the previous sit-down meeting this month.

County meetings seem headed for a debate over development guidelines

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Published Monday, March 28, 2005

After two civil but constrained meetings, the next in the series of county-facilitated talks between developers and development opponents seems to be headed for a debate over development guidelines for Rancho Murieta.

The meeting takes place Wednesday, March 30, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Country Club.

Senior Planner Rob Burness touched off a flurry of e-mail comments among the participants in the talks when he sent out a 12-point “discussion draft” of guiding policies March 21. Some of the policies he proposed were much more specific than the county guidelines now in effect and included limitations on the percentage of trees that can be removed from individual projects and the maximum slope of developable land.

Several members of the Rancho Murieta Development Concerned Citizens Committee responded with e-mails supporting the direction Burness was taking, while developer Gerry N. Kamilos wrote, “the spirit of our discussion (at the March 16 meeting) was to focus on creating a list of elements related to the planning, design, and development of properties within the current Rancho Murieta master plan that need to be evaluated as part of the application process. … I do not believe the intention was to quantify these elements.”

On March 26, the RMDCCC came out with its own policy recommendations in the form of a nine-page document entitled “Comprehensive Resource Management Plan for Rancho Murieta.” The far-ranging plan covers the management of the community’s natural, cultural and recreational resources, and included the lakes, as well as oak woodlands and open space.

Both policy proposals are related to a discussion at the March 16 meeting that evolved from a two-hour tour of the community conducted before the meeting. The tour concentrated mainly on the most environmentally sensitive undeveloped areas of the North.

The tour determined the focus of the meeting and crowded out agenda items dealing with the county’s affordable housing ordinance and the community’s infrastructure.

The 18 people on tour were, for the most part, county officials, developers and RMDCCC members who are participants in the meetings.

Burness provided sets of maps and overlays showing vegetation, soil suitability, and slope considerations used to designate land uses in the 1984 master plan. The group referred to the maps as they visited various sites.

The first stop on the tour gave the group a vantage point from the cable TV tower site on Stonehouse Road that offered a panoramic view of the property planned for the Residences of Murieta Hills subdivision.

Clay Heil of Warmington Homes, one of the two Murieta Hills property owners, pointed out that the grove of oak trees on the property has been preserved in the plan developed by Murieta Holdings and noted the project has about 53 acres of open space.

Later, at the meeting, Alcides Freitas, retired director of the county Department of Environmental Review and Assessment, said he was “impressed” and “gratified” that the plan kept the large grove of oak trees intact.

After driving through the Fairways subdivision, the group gathered at the top of a steep hill overlooking Lake Clementia Park. The view was dominated by tree-covered hills on the opposite shore of the lake.

Burness observed that the county-approved land use plan in the 1984 master plan showed 10 units of housing per acre mapped for the park location and indicated a different area as a park site. He added that he had found no county documentation for the existing park sites. Murieta Holdings Developer Robert J. Cassano commented that a master plan for the parks does exist, and RMDCCC member Brad Sample speculated that a “disconnect” had occurred between the county and the community on the matter.

The tour also visited property located uphill from the third and fourth holes of the North course. The 180-acre site appears as River Canyon Estates in the development plan Murieta Holdings first made public in November, 2000.

At the spot where the tour vehicles parked, the pioneer cemetery located above the North course was on the right, while on the left, trees obscured the fact that the property slopes down to the Cosumnes River.

Bill Deyer, the owner of Granlees Estate, which adjoins the property but is not part of the Rancho Murieta development, said the river corridor and the steep slopes are the “most critical” features of the property. Cassano replied that, as a developer, “you want to stay out of there anyway.”

Less than one house per acre is proposed for the area under the Murieta Holdings plan, which reduced the total number of units from a maximum of 160 in the 1984 master plan to 118.

Even so, Cassano remarked that, under the Mutual Benefit Agreement, the caps for the individual projects allow for a maximum 10 percent shift of dwelling units from one project to another and “may have to go away” because “some areas may not be built at all.” For that reason, he said, all the projects need to be planned at the same time.

Of the 10 areas the Murieta Holdings’ plan proposes for development, only two projects -- Murieta Hills and the Retreats -- have been mapped and are currently in the county approval process.

The tour visited the South as the last stop. There, RMDCCC member Ted Hart pointed out a cut made by the South developer in the land behind the 11th green of the South Course. At the meeting, Hart used this to illustrate his belief that “the idea of cutting and terracing on the hills is just unacceptable.”

South developer Reynen & Bardis is not a participant in the meetings.

Burness opened the meeting with a report on county policies covering development. He noted that there is no maximum slope limit for determining the suitability of land for development, but there are applicable building standards and determinations have been made on a case-by-case basis when necessary.

He also said there is no absolute prohibition on development that involves cutting down oak trees, but there is a county oak tree mitigation policy. “Generally what we do is we identify trees for protection on the approved maps” and require a mitigation plan, he said.

Soil suitability and compaction issues have not typically been dealt with, he said. The approach the county generally takes is to review a soil engineer’s reports as part of the review process for a plan. “That doesn’t mean if there are very sensitive soils that we can’t consider development restrictions on the plans.”

This was a apparently a reference to problems the South developer has had with expansive soil in the Blue Oaks subdivision, where 85 out of a total of about 200 homes have experienced cracking and other problems related to foundation movement, according to information the developer provided to RanchoMurieta.com in late January.

Sixteen of the homes have been bought back by the builder since 2000, and another four buy-backs were pending in late January. An engineered drainage system is being installed on a house-by-house basis to keep water away from the foundations, and other measures are being taken in an effort to stabilize the foundations. The developer has switched to different type of slab foundation for the Crest and the Greens subdivisions.

Burness has been quoted as saying that slab foundations will no longer be used in Rancho Murieta because of the pockets of expansive soil that are present in the area. When he was asked about this comment recently, he acknowledged that he probably said it at a meeting last year, but since then, further research has led him to modify that view.

Slab foundations are not limited to the South. As Clay Heil drove through the Fairways subdivision during the tour, he pointed out some of the custom homes he could see had slab foundations. RMDCCC member Janis Eckard identified her home as one of those.

At the meeting, Burness said his final point about the county’s development policies was that although the county doesn’t “have a lot of strict regulatory prohibitions that set absolutes, we have policy guidance … for the protection of key resources.”

His interpretation was, “You look at the constraints and you look at the opportunities associated with each site and you develop in the areas that are least constrained and have the most opportunities.” Burness said that approach was used in the original planning for Rancho Murieta, although it wasn’t followed “very strictly.”

It was also the approach used in the development of the master plan approved by the county Board of Supervisors in 1984, he said, offering the map overlays used during the tour as proof of that.

The intent was to take soil suitability, slope, and vegetation into account in deciding land uses, he explained. And, while that explains the densities and other aspects of the master plan, it’s not known how accurate the maps are. The recommended approach is to use the maps and policy guidance to evaluate each project, he said.

Burness set the stage for policy suggestions from both developers and opponents when he said, “One thing this (meeting) process can do is give us policy guidance with respect to Rancho Murieta.”

Supervisor Don Nottoli said identifying the policies could bring “clarity and consistency” to the process of evaluating individual projects. He termed it “a guiding framework.”

Kamilos stressed that there are existing policies in the master plan that form the basis for detailed analysis of each individual project and offer flexibility.“Basically we’re looking at polices that have been set back in the original master plan and applying those to implementation policies and good planning that’s applicable today. … I don’t think the intention here is to create new policy.”

RMDCCC member Brad Sample agreed. “It’s to reiterate and clarify existing policy. … There has been policy that has not been enforced or (has been) irregularly enforced that needs to be highlighted … We want to see unambiguous statements.”

At the meeting, Sample and Kamilos agreed to separately draw up lists of specific issues that should be addressed in each development project and discuss them before Wednesday’s meeting. As of Sunday, the developer’s list wasn’t available.

The guidelines Burness has proposed for discussion raise questions about compliance with the master plan approved in 1984. One of his guidelines limits development to areas where less than 15 percent of the trees would be removed in the process of development. That apparently would mean the three Retreat properties couldn’t be developed, although they appear in the master plan with high-density designations of 25 and 10 units per acre. Those densities are reduced to under four units per acre in the Murieta Holdings plan, but the tree take is still projected at well over 15 percent.

On the other hand, the loss of trees at the Residences of Murieta Hills falls considerably below 15 percent and the project would meet the requirement handily.

Although the concern over issues like oak tree preservation and maintaining the contours of the land dominated the meeting, annexation, open space and fencing were among the other topics discussed.

RMDCCC member Ted Hart showed the wooden fence in place at a Warmington home in Serrano.

RMDCCC member Ted Hart surprised the audience when he held up a picture of a Warmington home in Serrano that had wood “wing” fences on either side of the front of the house and asked Heil if that was what was planned for Rancho Murieta. Heil replied that it was and explained that fencing in Murieta Hills would be a wood/wrought iron combination.

The developers promised to use wrought iron fencing in Murieta Hills after Hart brought the matter to their attention several years ago. Wrought iron fencing is the only kind allowed in Murieta North under RMA rules. Hart and others who spoke about the fencing said it was particularly important to solve the fencing issue because the first subdivision would set the tone for the others.

Former RMA President Dorothy Nordeen took issue with Cassano when he said proposed new development for the North couldn’t annex to the Rancho Murieta Association because of a change in the CC&Rs regarding annexation that requires super-majority approval from the membership. Nordeen said new development that agrees to abide by the RMA’s CC&Rs can easily annex through a vote of the RMA board.

Because production homes are planned for many of the proposed subdivisions, a membership vote would be required for annexation.

Eckard brought up the open space issue the RMDCCC successfully used in its last petition campaign which netted 2,000 signatures. While some on the developers’ side of the semi-circular table looked annoyed as Eckard displayed photos of open space, Burness said he thought he had addressed the issue at the county workshop held last fall. In Burness’ analysis, the RMDCCC’s claim that the community is entitled to 1,806 acres of undisturbed open space was not borne out by the master plans approved in 1974 and 1984.