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County supervisors are cool to call for development moratorium and reworking of master plan

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Updated and expanded Sunday, October 3, 2004
First published Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Development in Rancho Murieta will continue without a moratorium or a review of the master plan. That was the county Board of Supervisors' indirect message to the community at the conclusion of Tuesday's land use workshop.

Although the matter never came to a vote, three of the four supervisors present for the 3½-hour session indicated by their comments that they don't support a course of action that would halt the approval process for already-submitted development projects to allow a review and amendment of the current master plan.

A petition circulated by the Rancho Murieta Development Concerned Citizens Committee calls for the supervisors to impose a moratorium on development until a new master plan is created. At the workshop, it was said the board had received the petition, with more than 2,000 signatures, about three weeks before from the group.

The RMDCCC opposes current development plans for the North and South. For nearly four years the RMDCCC has gathered signatures on two petitions, lobbied county staff and officials, spoken at community gatherings, shut down the development "town hall" meetings and become a political force in the community.

The group made a presentation to the board at Tuesday's meeting, beginning with a slide show of scenic and wildlife photos set to the music of "Big Yellow Taxi." One slide read, "Please don't let the developers pave over our paradise." Of the 11 speakers who addressed the board, seven were related to the RMDCCC presentation.

Spokesperson Candy Chand and RMDCCC founder Terry Hanson spoke on issues that are familiar to anyone who has followed the development debate in the community, including open space and annexation. Resident Brad Sample introduced a new issue when he presented findings that he said showed the Community Services District's wastewater operations could not handle even current development.

The CSD is preparing a response to Sample's report.

The district's wastewater plant also came under scrutiny in Senior Planner Rob Burness' presentation to the board. Burness said the county needs to review the capacity of the plant and verify that it was expanded since he was unable to locate a use permit for the expansion.

After the meeting, Acting CSD General Manager Greg Hall characterized the issue as a "misunderstanding" between the county and the district. He later issued a statement saying the expansion of the plant was a precondition to development on the South and was addressed by the county and the planning department "in connection with the 1989 approval of the development of those subdivisions." The expansion was funded by the Mello-Roos bond issue for Rancho Murieta infrastructure, he stated.

The developers and representatives from the CSD and the Rancho Murieta Association were present but did not address the board in an official capacity.

Supervisor Don Nottoli indirectly referred to a moratorium and the need for a new master plan at the start of the board's discussion following the staff and public comments.

He pointed out that development projects would come to the board "in pieces" and suggested holding another workshop to place issues such as open space in a "broad context."

It was Supervisor Roger Niello who noted that the supervisors would "effectively be declaring a moratorium" if they acted on Nottoli's suggestion instead of evaluating the individual development projects as they come before the board. Niello said he was "not comfortable with that."

Supervisor Roger Dickinson said the projects that have been submitted to the county by the developers "aren't coming out of context if, in fact, we're living by the master plan." He noted that the existing review process would determine whether the projects conformed to the plan.

Burness, who gave the key presentation on land use at the meeting, told the supervisors that changing the master plan was "a pretty big step" that would require time, money, and "a lot of effort."

"I don't know how you can not do the things that are in the pipeline," commented Supervisor Muriel Johnson, who chairs the board.

Burness estimated earlier in the meeting that the county has received applications for the approval of about 900 housing units in Murieta. His estimate included two projects proposed by Murieta Holdings for Murieta North, two Reynen & Bardis subdivisions on the South, housing proposed as part of the commercial project across from the Plaza, a project for the school site, and an inactive project proposed for the apartment site located behind the Rancho Murieta Association Building.

Rancho Murieta is planned for a maximum build-out of 5,189 units. At present there are about 2,400 units.

Burness said projects for "the most sensitive areas" haven't been submitted for approval at this point. These projects are part of the overall development plan Murieta Holdings has proposed for the remaining property on the North owned by the Pension Trust Fund of the Operating Engineers. The PTF is the original owner and developer of Rancho Murieta.

Burness acknowledged that the concerns raised by these projects about oak tree groves, outcroppings of rock, and proximity of housing to the lakes possibly could be addressed during the approval process.

Dickinson noted that "we have a process that's been designed to act as a filter."

A compromise of sorts was reached when the board scheduled a meeting for 3:30 p.m., Nov. 23, for a follow-up report from staff covering some of the issues raised at the workshop.

Earlier in the meeting, Burness presented the results of his research into the history of the community to come up with answers about open space. (Download his report, a 1.5-MB PDF file, here.) He concluded that 325 acres of open space were dropped from the master plan between 1973 and 1993, with few dropped after 1983. There are about 3,500 acres in the development.

This open space calculation was based on digitized maps that depict the acreage of land uses described in the master plans of 1969, '73, and '83. The maps were created at the request of the Planning Department by civil engineers working for the North and South developers at the developers' expense, Burness said.

Planned unit developments like Rancho Murieta have flexibility built into their master plans because the plan is carried out by ordinances, Burness explained. Each phase of the development is approved as an amendment to the PD ordinance after going through the planning process.

A land use acreage chart that appears in the environmental impact report for the 1973 plan was not used in calculating the open space set forth in the 1973 master plan, Burness said. "What actually counts is what's on the map," he said. "What I have done here is include the measured acres from that map and characterized them in terms of the open space that was adopted in 1973."

The RMDCCC has used the 1973 EIR land use chart's open space number of 1,806 acres as a rallying cry in its public statements and latest petition. At the meeting, Chand said the chart labeled this acreage "undisturbed vegetation." She told the supervisors it was her goal to see the acreage "preserved as promised."

Burness' report to the supervisors tracked changes in the amount of open space and the character of it as development proceeded.

Units 1 through 4 were approved for development under the 1973 master plan, with circle lots turning up for the first time in Unit 2. Burness said that lot configuration provided little functional open space use. As time went on, he said, there was "extensive private use" of the common area around the lots -- people put in pools, decks, and play yards and fences, which changed the nature of the open space use.

Burness said other significant changes affecting open space occurred during the 10 years the 1973 master plan was in effect. These include the approval of an 118-acre reservoir to replace the eight-acre one at Calero, the encroachment of Unit 4 on 40 acres of open space at Lake Calero, and the wastewater treatment plant land swap, which moved the plant from the northwest corner of Murieta North to its present location behind the Community Services District Building, which "resulted in a net 142-acre open space loss with the quality and accessibility of the open space preserved in the swap being limited."

The area around the present wastewater plant is identified as open space in the master plans.

The major change in open space in the '83 master plan was the designation of 340 acres of planned open space in the north quadrant of Murieta for residential use. "Excluding the 118-acre Calero Lake, and other open space, the staff report on the project notes that about 150 acres would be opened up for residential use," Burness wrote in his report.

He also found a significant change in the way residential development is presented in the two plans.

The 1973 plan shows strips of residential development approximately 100 to 150 feet deep paralleling the road system. In between the residential strips is either the golf course open space or undesignated urban open space. The 1983 plan shows "distinct groupings of residential units of varying density," which Burness labeled the "blob pattern." The open space in the blob pattern appears as "much narrower bands of open space."

RMDCCC member Tom Brierton told the supervisors the group hadn't had adequate time to develop a response to Burness' report.

In a written statement Sunday, RMDCCC spokesperson Chand disputed Burness' interpretations.

"It appears Planning might be linking arms with the developers in an attempt to justify massive open space loss within our community," the statement said in part. "While parks, lakes and golf can be counted as open space elsewhere throughout the county, the Murieta plan was specific in its exclusion of those areas.

"If anyone lost our acreage over the years, it was the Planning Department. … While Mr. Burness claims we've only lost a little over 300 acres of open space, when the proper definition, defined by Murieta's EIRs, are used, we are actually short over 800 acres."

Of the future, Chand wrote, "I hope the concerns of the overwhelming majority of Murietans who've signed our controlled development petition will be resolved soon. If not, there are several individuals in Murieta who have already set the groundwork to file a class-action law suit. I really hate to see it come down to that, but time will tell."