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Resident Karen Thurston talked with developers Gerry Kamilos, left, and Robert J. Cassano following the October "town hall" meeting.

Developer and opponent resume argument about requirements for open space in RM

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Published Monday, October 6, 2003

Developer Gerry Kamilos and development opponent Candy Chand resumed their disagreement about open-space plans for the community at October's development "town hall" meeting.

At the previous session, Chand challenged the Murieta Holdings developers, who are planning the final build-out of Rancho Murieta North, to address her group's discovery of a 1972 document that they say shows plans to preserve more than 1,200 acres of open space in the 3,500-acre Rancho Murieta development.

At Thursday's meeting, Chand referred to an addendum to the 1973 environmental impact report that specifies additional acreage -- a total of 1,806 acres -- would remain as open space.

Kamilos argued at Thursday's meeting, as he had in September, that the 1974 community plan was amended a dozen times and the 1984 community plan is the legally recognized document that governs development now.

He said under a 1983 environmental impact report, which fed into the community plan approved by the county supervisors in 1984, the number of homes planned for Rancho Murieta stayed at 5,000, but the development density dropped and open space was absorbed as the individual lots increased in size.

Earlier in the session, Ted Hart, another opponent of the development, spoke of sales brochures used to promote the community in the early days of the development.

"You will find endless glowing reports of this acreage to be set aside as open space," Hart said, holding one brochure.

"Without any question, at that moment in time, when that application was filed with the county, with this EIR report, one would believe from all of this that this (land), whatever the exact number is, was going to remain as open space."

Hart argued that the amendments had nothing to do with open space. "This open space, this number that's out there, it never changed," he said.

At the developers' request, Bruce Walters of the MacKay & Somps engineering and surveying firm presented the map of the 1984 master plan with a comparison he prepared between the 1972 list of land uses and the land uses illustrated by the 1984 map.

He pointed out facilities in the 1984 master plan that didn't exist in the 1972 outline -- the wastewater treatment plant and the corporation yard, as well as agricultural preserve land and county parkland along the river. Both Hart and Chand maintained that agricultural preserve land could not be counted as open space. Kamilos disagreed.

Kamilos later characterized the 1974 plan for the community as a "very broad-brush conceptual plan" which was defined by the many amendments to it. Kamilos and partner Robert J. Cassano -- who was present for the session but did not speak -- are awaiting the completion of the environmental impact report for their first two planned development phases, the Retreats and the Residences of Murieta Hills. Public hearings will be scheduled after the report is released by the county.

Five members of the public were present for the meeting, which lasted 45 minutes.

Most of the meeting's heat came in Kamilos' exchanges with Chand.

"You're misleading the audience," he told her at one point. "The facts are this community plan, that was adopted by the board of supervisors … was part of the EIR that was approved and certified."

The environmental impact report didn't mention any open space was being taken away, Chand replied, adding, "Either it's a big boo-boo or it's fraud."

Capping one exchange, she concluded, "I don't want to bargain with you. I don't want to negotiate with you. I want to shut you down."

For the first time in months, a resident addressed the meeting in favor of the development plans.

Karen Thurston, whose home on Puerto Drive backs up to the planned Murieta Hills project, told Kamilos she appreciates that the developers plan fewer homes there than allowed.

Thurston said she welcomes the growth.

"What we're looking for here is homes for people," she said. "I think the more people who have moved to our community the better it has become. ...

"What I hate to see happen is see single family homes be priced out of the range of families that would like to live here. … I don't know if that point of view has ever been expressed (at these meetings)."