What's holding up the school? In a word -- water
A non-injury car accident outside Cosumnes River Elementary School last week triggered safety measures at the school and ended a summer of silence about what's delaying plans to build a new school.
The reason for the delays -- water.
"We are working hard to get a school built and keep getting obstacles thrown up one by one by one. ... Water is the main one right now," said Elk Grove Unified School District Board of Education member Brian Myers.
Paul Frank, the owner of the Stonehouse Road property proposed for the school, has been critical of relying on ground water to meet the school's needs. The other day, he recalled telling one district official, "My experts are saying there's a very good chance you could build that school and it could be useless, uninhabitable, because there's not enough water."
Both Frank and the school district, negotiating the sale of the property, have been pushing the Community Services District to deliver water service to the land.
"We're still in dialogue," CSD General Manager Ed Crouse said this week, "but I think that's about all I can really say."
He's not the only one being tight-lipped. The school district, which began a series of community meetings on the school last year, has gone silent since May. Repeated requests for school progress reports, or plans for the next community meeting, have yielded nothing.
Last week's car accident brought a spotlight to the school situation once again. Safety barriers were placed along the school's Jackson Road fence, and patrol cars sat outside at the beginning and end of the school day, slowing the commuter cars that usually rush past.
When there was no word from the school district after test wells were drilled on the Frank property in June, many wondered if it meant the water was lacking.
That wasn't the case, according to Myers. He said the test well results confirm there is enough water to meet the school's needs.
What brought things to a standstill, he said, were allegations that the testing adversely affected neighboring wells, including the well for the Franks' home, which is located at the opposite end of the 220-acre property from the school site.
"Paul Frank alleges that the district damaged his well when we drilled for four days and we pumped for four days, and he says that there's eight other people who also suffered some damage for their wells," Myers said. "We've not been able to verify any of that, but that's an important issue legally. ... He was on the front page of the River Valley Times standing in his bathroom with a dirty bathtub saying, 'Look what the district did to my water.'"
After the complaints were reported, the school district turned to the CSD for water. But it's not simply a matter of requesting service, because the property is outside the CSD service area. Additionally, the CSD water treatment plant is at capacity and requires a multi-million-dollar expansion to accommodate new customers.
"We asked the CSD to please put us at the top of their list and we haven't been able to get an answer from them in four months," Myers said. "Ed Crouse keeps saying, 'Sure, we'll hook you up,' 'Sure, we'll hook you up,' and we keep saying give us the paperwork, give us how much, tell us when, where and all that, and we don't have an answer still in four months. ... You're not going to buy a piece of property if you can't build on it, if it doesn't have water access either by drilling or by hookup."
For his part, Crouse says the CSD is not in a position to make "a hard and fast commitment" to have the facilities in place on the school district's timetable for the school. "We said we would try to work with them given the limitations of our plant capacity and our water rights," he said.
If the CSD is to provide all the water for the school, "it would require us to petition the state Division of Water Rights to expand our place of use to include the school site," which could take years, Crouse said.
"When we first started talking to the school district three or four years ago, the development projects were imminent, and once that happened they were going to be coming with hard money to build an expansion of the water plant," Crouse said. "But now, who knows if and when those projects will be kicking off ... It just may not occur, given the economy. ... I'm not sure there are such things as certain dates any more in this environment."
John Sullivan, the Franks' representative in negotiations with the school district, said he has urged the school district to get together with the CSD about providing the school's water, calling it the "best idea," and a way to save money. He has made the same recommendation at CSD committee and board meetings, which he attends as the representative of Murieta West, a development plan that includes the Frank property.
Sullivan is a longtime Murietan who has served on the CSD and Rancho Murieta Association boards.
The way Sullivan sees it, the CSD service area could be expanded to include the school site and the two bottom parcels of the Frank property as well. This would provide CSD services for the Community Church and development planned as part of Murieta West.
Sullivan said he thinks Paul Frank would "reluctantly accept" a purchase offer from the school district if the CSD provided all the water for the school.
A previous proposal would have had the CSD providing water for inside use only and getting well water from the school district in return under what's called a wheeling agreement.
"We told the school district the wheeling arrangement is a way for us to give you service so that if you want water by ‘x' deadline, absent waiting until our water rights get approved, if it ever gets approved. And they said, all well and good," Crouse recalled.
Now, said Myers, "We couldn't wheel if we're destroying people's wells."
Not Water
Water is not the issue. Water for the Escuela site was approved decades ago along with units 3 and 4.
I remember a meeting held at the country club on November 4th 2003, where the plan for the Escuela School was presented. http://www.ranchomurieta.com/localnews/school110703.html
At that meeting conceptual drawings of the site layout were presented which detailed where the buildings were to be located, where busses were to turn around and where faculty and visitors were to park. These drawings were made by the EGUSD’s planning staff and reflected a considerable amount of thought. Also at that meeting, the owner of the13.8 acres designated as a school site expressed a willingness to sell. For the majority of the meeting, those of us who were in attendance were elated by what we were told and it seemed that we were going to have our long awaited school. There were plans to mount a private effort to bring Stonehouse road up to county standards and pave it to the Escuela gate. This effort would have allowed the busses to use Stonehouse road. Near the end of the meeting a voice was heard that was not on the agenda. Brian Myers took the microphone and said that the site was too small and that the road effort would create more problems that it would solve. He talked as though he had never looked at the plans that were presented. His complaints seemed to me to be coming from someone with an agenda of his own. He was mouthing the position of a very vocal minority who tied the school issue to the development issue and threatened to vigorously litigate against the Escuela site. His solution was the site now deemed to be without water that is out of CSD’s jurisdiction. Frank was characterized during this meeting as a developer who suddenly bought the property "out from underneath our interests." Several decades ago Rancho Murieta voters turning thumbs down on the ballet issue that eventually funded the school districts rapid expansion. The rumor that seems to persist to this day is that after the votes were counted and Rancho Murieta voted the bonds down there was a statement made, “it will be a cold day in hell when Rancho Murieta gets a school.” Could that still be the reason we don’t have our school? The real issue is a lack of resolve by the EGUSD board and in particular Brian Myers. It is time to dust off those original plans and commence nogotations with the trust that now owns the Escuela site.
Could school traffic go through the North Gate?
Do we think the school district is ready to reopen the Escuela wound?
Five years ago, opposition to school-traffic access through the North Gate sent the district and community in search of other answers. (Some of the letters from that era.) Among the other answers was the improvement of Stonehouse Road to allow a school entrance there, with traffic sealed off from the rest of the community.
It doesn't seem likely that the Stonehouse Road improvement idea -- a one-man show that happened largely outside official channels -- can be resurrected. So we're left with North Gate access.
Is the community OK this time around with school traffic coming through the North Gate?
Could School Traffic Go Through North Gate?
Ralph, probably a moot point considering RMA Board approved such access in formal agreement with EGUSD back in 2002. Refer www.ranchomurieta.com/localnews/rma052202.html. Incidentally, the Director (the "one-man show") who introduced the motion to approve, and later became RMA President, was challenged the next year for potential conflict of interest. Seems money exchanged hands between developers Murieta Holdings/Cassano/Kamilos of NewNorthMurietaLLC and member(s) of that Director's family, while that Director played a key role/proponent in the later signed Developer Agreement/MBA, allowing subsequent developer control of all remaining PTF projects in Murieta North, and de facto, RMA. So what did the developers really attempt, and stand to gain in such a quid on the school access agreement, the much larger issue being passage of the MBA? What is the legal terminology for such "involvement"? Was there "even the appearance of impropriety" on Director's and developers parts in all this? That connection to the MBA has never been answered, yet that MBA bears directly on the County's recent shoddy approval of the developer's North Murieta projects' rezoning. Development (PD Ordinance) Conditions for those projects are yet to be determined.
Oh, Terry...
Your penchant for the false and the slanderous is really getting out of control, and reflects poorly upon RMCCC.
And it was precisely such slanderous slime that cost us a school at Escuela.
Can't you find another hobby?
Escuela site and a school
Terry:
Even with the RMA's 2002 action, the backdrop of community opposition caused the school district to walk away from the Escuela site. Whatever the district's legal rights to access, it didn't want the grief.
Does the district feel any differently now? Given all that has happened since, does the community?
Escuela School Site
I have no objection to the use of the north gate as a school entrance as long as people remember that our gate will become meaningless.
It will become impossible to ever turn anyone away from the front gate as long as they say they are here on some school business. Remember, it's not just the kids and teachers that will be coming through the gate. There will be school administrators, federal, state and local government officials, substitute teachers, politicians, maintenance personnel, food, beverage and equipment suppliers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. brothers and sisters and on and on and on.
I would recommend getting rid of the north gate altogether because it would no longer serve any useful function. We could still preserve the gate on the south.
I hope if we ever use the Escuela site that it will only be accessible to vehicular traffic by means of Stonehouse.
Jim Moore
Developers and Trojan Horses
Ralph, In response to your question "does the community now feel any different"...sic, about the Escuela school and access? I really don't know, except to say in my personal opinion, the same emotions pro and con would be expressed if it again appears on the radar. Nor do I know the real reason behind EGUSD action or inaction. Maybe its as Mr. Roper states "The real issue is a lack of resolve by the EGUSD board and in particular Brian Myers", and maybe that "lack of resolve" has been influenced by Murieta residents. Personally I believe its a result of many factors: community, water/sewer, internal EGUSD politics, competing priorities, and mostly apportioned funding subsidies or a lack thereof in the present economic environment. What I do know is that RMDCCC as a group has never endorsed any position on the school issue, one way or the other. RMDCCC has always been focused solely on developers and the impact of their announced plans on Murieta, and remains so. To be sure, the emotions of group individuals on the school subject are as varied as the community at large. Personally I believe education in our youth is the best investment we can possibly make, I support the regeneration of CRES for this community for students in and out of Murieta, and I applaud the appropriate efforts of the school group which is furthering these goals. Ironically any linkage between the development issues and the school issue has been perpetrated by none other than those same developers, not RMDCCC. This started early-on, circa 1999, in their deliberate strategy to seize control of our established community, and carry-forth a faux community mandate supporting their devastating plans in the County Planning approval process. This commenced with none other than RMA's own legal counsel's introduction of these, in my opinion, "Trojan Horse Borne Carpetbaggers" into Murieta while he all along had also been counsel for certain of those developers. Their grand Town Halls, some 26, assisted by that counsel and certain local shills, were sequenced to play into all the emotional hot topics of our time: community center, olympic swimming pool, new front gate, shopping mall, major fitness center, (Disneyland) vineyards at calero, new cable system, parks, and yes the new school. They "promised" to consummate all of these, "something for everyone goodies", in return for endorsement of their devastating plans. Every unsavory tactic was used to "divide and conquer" the emotions of residents, and a lot of this manipulation worked with their success through enablers in eliciting that totally lopsided ill-gotten MBA. PTF/developer performance on any "promises" throughout the history of Murieta is dismal at best. They now use this ill-gotten MBA at the County as their Holy Grail for "community support" in approval of their maps/projects. And certain ill-informed new Supes have bought into that empowerment, assisted by the influenced Planning/Environmental Departments and County Counsel. We have, and continue to expose all of this developer "manipulation" in the Planning Process to the Supes, in any media venue available, to make it very transparent. They must be made to know that many eyes are watching their every actions on Murieta, and they will be held accountable. Again, RMDCCC's passions on the separate school issue are as strong as anyone's, and it is totally unfair to lay blame for school setbacks or any other developer promissary setbacks on RMDCCC, yet we understand that goes with the turf when daring to confront "developer giant's" greedy devastation. RMA, as a master Common Interest Development (CID) formed by PTF does indeed have common interests; New North/Murieta Holdings/CassanoKamilos intended new/separate CID/Association obviously has different common interests other than our RMA common interests at heart, else they would easily annex into RMA... and their common interest is greed at our expense.