See what your neighbors are saying about
this in Community
Views
•
Pop-up
window: Click for archive of
development coverage -- news, maps, photos and more
Updated
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
The
Rancho Murieta Association released the draft version of
its Mutual Benefit Agreement with the Murieta Holdings developers
Friday.
On Wednesday,
the RMA amended one page of the agreement and released that,
incorporating several words that make it clear the agreement
only allows a gated community inside Rancho Murieta in the
case of an age-restricted development.
(In
its initial coverage of the document, RanchoMurieta.com
reported gated communities would be allowed in Rancho Murieta,
which is what the initial public version of the agreement
said.)
(You
need to have the Adobe Acrobat reader installed in
your computer to do this. You can download the Acrobat
reader here
for free.)
On Wednesday
the RMA also released its summary of the agreement, which you
can read here.
The agreement,
which runs 60 pages in print, outlines the responsibilities and
possibilities in the final build-out of the community, almost
1,100 new homes to be added to Rancho Murieta North.
A brief,
draft version of the document was first released in November 2000.
For much of the negotiation process, it was referred to as the
Development Agreement.
The agreement
documents released Friday make no mention of the obligation for
a river crossing between North and South, an issue the RMA board
had said was delaying the agreement.
Among highlights
of the overall agreement and a separate easement agreement:
Governing
documents for Rancho North, as the new development is known,
do not contemplate annexing the new development to the RMA at
any time during the development process. The door is open to
annexation after that.
One
association would govern all the new neighborhoods to be
developed in Rancho North.
The
RMA would get a voting membership in the Rancho North's architectural
or design review committee.
Each
lot in the new development would pay the RMA’s regular
dues. Included would be costs for basic cable, but not any dues
connected to expanded cable-related services such as broadband
Internet access unless Rancho North opts to participate in expanded
services.
Rancho
North would transfer ownership of the community's cable TV site,
on Stonehouse Road, to the RMA. The agreement guarantees Rancho
North an easement to the property, to allow for the possibility
of offering its own cable and other electronic services.
$1.4
million would be provided by the developers for improvements
to the North Gate, the Lago entrance and landscaping on Jackson
Road and Murieta Parkway. The funds would be placed in escrow
when builders close on the first 333 lots to be sold on the
North, or when the Murieta Hills and Retreats developments close
escrow. Any improvements would be coordinated with the RMA,
which would own the North Gate when it's complete.
Rancho North
would pay parks fees -- funding for park and recreational facilities
-- when a final subdivision map is recorded. Fees are on a per-lot
basis.
Rancho
North would pay $75,000 for construction of a gate at Escuela
if construction gets under way within three years of the approval
of a development map for Murieta Hills. Beyond this payment,
construction of the gate would be the RMA's responsibility.
Any Stonehouse Road improvements required by the county would
be the RMA's responsibility.
"Subdividers"
-- as the document calls builder/developers -- would pay the
RMA a road mitigation fee of 20 cents per square foot of homes
being built. The payment, to cover damage to community roads,
would be based on total living space being built, including
garages.
In
a three-way swap of land, the community would acquire about
40 acres of parkland at Lakes Calero and Clementia as well as
Stonehouse Park. An additional 11-plus acres at the north end
of Murieta Parkway would be acquired and could be exchanged
for land at the North Gate. The CSD would gain 10 acres adjacent
to the CSD Building in the swaps.
The
minimum size of Rancho North homes would be 1,800 square feet.
Murieta Holdings
is acting as development agent for the Pension Trust Fund of the
Operating Engineers, which owns almost all of the undeveloped
land in Rancho Murieta North.
The RMA, which
negotiated the document for more than two years, plans to gather
public reaction to the agreement for 30 days.
An accompanying
letter from RMA Board President Jack Copeland says the negotiation
has been "a long and difficult process," adding, "as
with any negotiated agreement, none of the parties to the agreement
got everything they wanted. The board feels that this is a 'pretty
good' agreement; it’s not perfect, it doesn’t have everything
the board wanted, but it has a lot of those things."
RMA members
will elect three new directors to the seven-person board at the
RMA's Annual Meeting Nov. 21. It's not known whether a vote on the
agreement will be taken before or after the board change. A public
meeting on the document will be held 6:30 p.m. Nov. 19 at the RMA
Building.
Copeland's letter
to the community invites member comments about the agreement at
the public meeting or by letter to the RMA. Any comments posted
here in Community
Views will be printed out and delivered to the RMA to meet that
requirement.
Printed copies
of the development document are available at the RMA Building.
The document
includes a dozen exhibits at the end. In the printed version, many
of those exhibits are blank.
Do
you have comments about this topic or story? Share them at
RanchoMurieta.com's Community
Views page.
See what your neighbors are saying about
this in 