::: COMMUNITY NEWS

County leaves two RM parcels off low-income housing list

Previous coverage: County supervisors challenge low-income housing in Rancho Murieta (April 16, 2004)

Published Wednesday, April 21, 2004

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to exclude two Rancho Murieta parcels of land from consideration for inclusion in the county's inventory of low-income housing sites. A third parcel, to the east of the North Gate, is already part of the inventory.

The vote came at a hearing where the supervisors discussed ways to meet the county's legal obligations to provide acreage that can be used to construct low-income housing.

Although the county faces a shortfall of 66 acres in the low- and very low-income categories, several members of the board said at a hearing last week that Rancho Murieta is not a good fit for low-income housing because of the lack of jobs and transportation. (See story here.)

At Tuesday's meeting, Supervisor Don Nottoli, whose district includes Rancho Murieta, called for the vote to exclude the properties, saying, "It makes sense for our purposes not to include those 23.8 acres."

The two properties that were eliminated from the list are part of the development proposed by Murieta Holdings developers Robert J. Cassano and Gerry N. Kamilos for the Pension Trust Fund of the Operating Engineers, the owner of the remaining undeveloped property in Murieta North.

Kamilos appeared before the supervisors last week and again Tuesday to ask that the sites be removed from the list of acreage being considered for inclusion in the county inventory. According to a chart that was presented by county planners at last week's hearing, the 23.8 acres could hold 600 units -- about 25 units per acre.

The two properties are part of the Retreat project, three parcels of land situated near the Rancho Murieta Country Club clubhouse and along several holes of the North Course. The properties were included on the list after county planners realized the land is designated for multi-family housing in the community's master plan. Multi-family housing fits the low-income housing profile.

Under the Cassano and Kamilos plan, now being processed by the county, the density on the two sites would be reduced to fewer than four single-family homes per acre. The clusters of single-family homes are on the same model as the developers' Retreat project at the Valley Hi Country Club in Elk Grove. Homes there are selling for more than $500,000.

Last week, Kamilos asked the board to keep the Retreat land out of the county housing plan, saying the community has "an expectation" for the development and the tentative map was submitted to the county two years ago. Both last week and again on Tuesday, Kamilos emphasized that the planned development ordinance for Rancho Murieta gives the master plan "a tremendous amount of flexibility" and allows the low density, single-family development that's proposed without amending the master plan.

Last week, Kamilos told the supervisors he was not asking to remove the 17.8-acre apartment site by the North Gate from the inventory. But on Tuesday, he noted that "a key portion" of the decades-old zoning for the apartment site is also under the PD ordinance and thus has the same flexibility with regard to density as the other properties.

"(The site) might be, ultimately, multi-family," he said, "but 30 units per acre might not be an appropriate density for a multi-family project in the Rancho Murieta community." Kamilos said 18 to 20 units per acre would "probably be more appropriate" and indicated he would return for the next hearing on housing scheduled for May 12 to address that possibility.