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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAug 12 - Joint PCHeld Monday, August 12, 2002 6:30 p.m. City Council Chamber, City Hall 1501 Truxtun Avenue Bakersfield, California. ROLL CALL CITY PLANNING COMMISSION Present: RON SPRAGUE, Chairman JEFFREY TKAC, Vice Chair TED BLOCKLEY BURTON R. ELLISON DAVID GAY TOM MCGINNIS MURRAY TRAGISH KERN COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION Present: DOUG ZIMMERMAN, Chairman KAY PITTS, ViceChairman CHRIS BABCOCK ROSS MCCLINTOCK VERNON STRONG ADVISORY MEMBERS: Present: Staff: Ginny Gennero, City Attorney Stanley Grady, City Planning Director Ted James, KC Planning Director Glenn Lajoie, Project Consultant Bruce Divelbiss, County Attorney Marc Gauthier, Principal Planner Present: Pam Townsend, City Recording Secretary Pat White, County Recording Secretary 2. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE 3. PUBLIC STATEMENTS None. Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 2 4. PUBLIC HEARING TO RECEIVE COMMENTS ON THE ADEQUACY OF THE DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT (EIR) FOR THE METROPOLITAN BAKERSFIELD GENERAL PLAN UPDATE Staff report given by Mr. Grady. CEQA guidelines were read. This update will incorporate all the land use changes that both the City and County made and make the City's land use maps consistent with the County. Mr. James explained that the EIR addresses: 1) the existing conditions, 2) the base line areas; 3) project impacts; 4) mitigation measures; 5) levels of significance after mitigation; and 6) cumulative effects. Glenn Lajoie from RBF Consulting, the project manager for the preparation of the General Plan EIR, explained the process. He indicated the primary areas starting in Section 4. Staff report concluded and the following comments were made by the public. Hal Bopp, Bakersfield District Manager for the California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, made the following comments: DOGGR supervises the drilling maintenance and plugging and abandonment of oil and gas wells. DOGGR also is responsible for the State's oil and gas conservation laws, including the wise development of the resource for the State of California. Metropolitan Bakersfield is a very significant oil producing area, accounting for some 14% of State-wide production. In the year 2001 some 40 million barrels of oil were produced. The potential exists in Metropolitan Bakersfield for significant additional exploration and development. The DOGGR encourages the General Plan and the goals, policies and implementations developed be consistent across City-County boundaries. He noted that State law requires protection of what you could call surface minerals, such as sand and gravel. But, oil and gas are not required to be protected under State law. It is only by the goals, policies and implementation of the General Plan that this occurs and they do note that Kern County and the City of Bakersfield are one area where they feel that oil and gas is addressed, and they appreciate that. Mr. Bopp stated that they have three general concerns. Concern number one is that some of the wording in the General Plan Conservation Element seems to say that oilfields have encroached into urban development. With the exception of the Panama Lane area, Stockdale Field, all of the oilfields existing prior to urban development have been encroached upon. They realize that is going to happen but such encroachment on an oilfield necessarily leads to public nuisance and public safety issues. So to the extent that that can be avoided they want to pursue it. Concern number two, which they feel is very important, is that access be maintained for continued operation of existing wells, and future exploration and development. This includes buffering encroachment with compatible land uses such as drilling island petroleum extraction combining district zoning. They like the RMP's but to the extent they encourage buffering and maintaining access to oil and gas production and development. Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 3 Concern number three is that the General Plan update land use map doesn't seem to include all of the existing oilfield productive areas. Mr. Bopp said they would be glad to work with the City Planning Department to make sure these areas are delineated. Finally, DOGGR also recommends that oil and gas wells be addressed in the safety element from the standpoint of set backs, leakage testing, abandonment and reabandonment issues. Mr. Bopp said they would follow this up with written comments. John Fallgatter, President of the Smart Growth Coalition, thanked everyone for the opportunity to speak. He made the following statements: In the comments it talks about significant unavoidable situations that are going to occur in the metropolitan planning area. Traffic circulation, traffic noise, air quality, and the conversion of ag land. We are going to be judged in 20 years as what we did, and will do over the next 20 years by our children and by our grandchildren. In the last 10 years since this plan was originated, the growth patterns have brought us to the state where we are, and the EIR tells us that it's going to get worse, based upon how we've been growing. Even with the mitigation that the Vision 2020 has requested, and both staff's have tried to do, we're going to deteriorate as a community. That is unacceptable. They believe there are more things that can be done. We believe that there should be a moratorium of some sort because we don't need to convert anymore land. Mr. Fallgatter stated they would be submitting a list of comments before the August 30th date Phillip Ryals, consulting petroleum geologist in Bakersfield stated he wrote a letter to City Planning several months ago discussing trying to leave building islands, and it was turned down. He has made an assessment of the oil fields within the General Plan area and there has been produced some 700 million barrels of oil out of two or three major oil fields, out of maybe a dozen oilfields which is equivalent to major, major oil production. When you produce the field on what we call primary production like that, you produce less than half the oil in place. So, conservatively, there's 700 million barrels of oil under our feet, on what we call the Bakersfield arch. And for the past 10 or 15 years he has been fighting to, through our planning, to preserve some of those rights and those assets. To assess these assets is what the original 2010 General Plan called for, and we haven't done that. There's a statement in the EIR, and some of the language is crossed out in the draft plan that originally was put in there to say that we, the community, need to assess those minerals and how to protect them, and we haven't done that. We have not followed our General Plan in a big way, in minerals, and that's what he is asking for. Peter Belluomini, First Vice President of the Kern County Farm Bureau, said he was here to discuss several urban infrastructure policies, as well as farm policies, that they think would encourage the retention of successful local agriculture. The first point is just asking for clarification. In the metropolitan plan, the General Plan, in Chapter Two, Page 10, there's a statement: "As a general rule the sphere of influence boundaries were utilized to help define the boundaries of planned urban growth." After looking at the map of crop land with urban use designations, they would like to know for clarification if it is the intent of the City and County to urbanize this entire 408 square mile planning area? Also, with the General Plan, on Page 2 of Chapter 2, there is a statement that says: "There is enough vacant land designated for urbanization available to double the existing development in metropolitan Bakersfield." That is a statement that shows a great deal of Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes - August 12, 2002 Page 4 open land, but there is no mention of crop land designation. What we would like is a recognition that this vacant land is probably farm land, and we would like the recognition that it's tax paying, economic pumping crop land. Also, in the General Plan there are three goals in Chapter Five, Page 16. Number one is a nice clean statement. It talks about management and conservation. Number Two speaks of classes of agricultural soils and prime agriculture land. The Kern County Farm Bureau requests that you remove all references to classifications of soil in this whole entire plan. Because basically one man's prime soil might be another man's pile of rocks. Maybe a certain climate is just right for a certain crop or industry, but if you went to the text book and found that type of soil, it might not be worthy of growing a petunia, but it has it's fit. Subjects like contiguous non-leap frog development is much more important, we feel, in the retention of successful agriculture, and not text book definitions. Number Three of those goals is a pretty positive statement. We request a little bit of change in the verbiage; it just seems like it gives it a little more teeth. The Draft EIR lists 10 land use goals on Chapter Three, Pages 8 and 9. None of these goals relate to agriculture. We request the addition of at least one goal relating to agriculture; something very simple but direct as to accommodate the wise use of agricultural land within the planning area. There are five mitigation measures in the executive summary of the draft. Mr. Belluomini said they would like to make some requests to expand on those and there are two more that they would like to add. The first one talks about "buffers such as setbacks, berms, greenbelts and open space shall be established on separate farm land to separate farm land from incompatible urban uses". The definition of buffer is left out and they would like to add "buffers shall be borne and maintained by the project creator, and abide by provisions required by local, state and federal regulations imposed on agriculture activity." Number Two, "Right to farm ordinances shall be implemented." We think that's great. We want to go the next step farther and say that that should be recognized in real estate documents. In a disclosure statement. Number Three, "the future development which involves infill and urban area as opposed to development on urban fringes shall be encouraged." There again, we just go a little bit farther and just expand on that to define it a little bit better. Number Four says "Sensitive subdivision design of lands near or adjacent to agriculture area shall be conducted with consideration given to the impacts of non-agricultural uses on agricultural lands." We go on to say that urban development requires certain minimum infrastructure standards which needs to include mandatory sewer hookups, and a complete transportation system to accommodate full build out. Finally, Number Five of the statement: "To reduce the potential for conflicts between agricultural and non-agricultural uses, sensitive subdivision designate of lands near or adjacent to agricultural shall be conducted, including provisions for buffer zone." That Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 5 one is really a lot like number one. Let's make a buffer; what the strictest law is, whether it be state, local or federal. We added two more that we would like to see as mitigation measures. We talk about supporting the implementation of agriculture conservation programs, continued use of the Williamson Act contracts, farm land security programs, farm land security zone act contract, conservation easements, agriculture educational programs and zoning regulations. Another addition that we would like to make is "The City and the County shall recognize and give high priority to the support of agriculture or other industrial operations by supporting their actions with the necessary services to keep them viable." We all know it's a fact of life that as urbanization occurs, there's a stress and tax on fire service, public safety, sheriff, etc. As these things get to be stretched the liberal lady that runs out on the corner and needs help with her cats might take priority over the guy that just got his tractor stolen just because it's human nature. It's fine, but we just want you guys to recognize that we can't just be left in the dust as these things become stressed and strained; that we need to be kept to the forefront of what we deserve. We think one of the big answers comes in a form of some questions. If you want a viable successful plan, if you want wise and orderly urban growth and if you want to maintain a viable economical base for our community while this growth is occurring, it is infrastructure first. We feel that if you make that the cornerstone of your plan, and carry it out, that a great deal of these other problems will just take care of themselves. Infrastructure first. That's what the Farm Bureau would like you to remember when you dealing with all this. Terry Stoller said the DEIR and the General Plan update doesn't have a lot of surprises in it. Idealist policies and goals remain, with no practical solutions for implementing them. CEQA calls for exploring all possible and reasonable alternatives. Have we really done that? We hide behind overriding consideration when it comes to significant and unavoidable impacts. This is just an excuse not to address the problem. We have sprawl and more sprawl over farm land that creates wealth year in and year out. Subdivide it and it becomes a liability requiring more services then it usually pays for. And, along with it, worse traffic jams, further degradation of air quality. Who are the benefactors of this scene, and who's suffering the reduced quality of life? We are repeating the scenario of Los Angeles in the last century without the benefit of an ocean breeze. Not only have we lost tax revenues to the State, but our current patterns of urbanization have contributed to an even greater revenue shortfall in local government budgets. The high cost of infrastructure and services demanded by sprawling urban development can't be met under the current level of fees and taxes levied to cover these costs, forcing local government to choose between raising fees, or reducing their level of services. It is a fact that communities that grow in predictable concentric patterns at higher densities are better able to meet their physical obligations. Land use decisions must be based on good planning and the long term health of our communities and resources rather on short term physical gain. As quality of life continues to degrade, we throw up our hands and say unavoidable impacts. We can't do anything about it. I would challenge the DEIR and the General Plan Update to dig deeper for true enforceable mitigation solutions, and then for the political will and bureaucratic accountability to implement them. Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 6 Pauline Larwood, speaking as Executive Director of Smart Growth Coalition, pointed out that there are some discrepancies in terms of numbers that she found in the documents related to transportation, circulation and air quality. As has been stated by others, there is a concern about the growth of the area, and how it is to be managed. The EIR has a couple of pages showing the level of service as it is now for transportation and circulation, and as it is predicted to be. Ms. Larwood stated that the Kern Council of Government indicates in a review that they have done, that the number is different than the one that was analyzed in the Draft EIR. The Draft EIR basis it's prediction of growth and what's going to happen with circulation based on 520,500 people as you build out the population area of the plan. The current adopted land use designation without any additional land use designations is 520,500 --- yet the Kern Council of Governments predicts the population by 2020 to be 614,407. That's nearly a 100,000 difference. She wondered if staff needs to rerun the model on that higher figure. This document says that it is the recognized forecast by the Kern County Board of Supervisors as the official forecast for the County. And she has been told it's the official forecast as agreed to by the City. Ms. Larwood said that perhaps all of this was run prior to this adopted official forecast but the issue that she raises and the point that she would like you to consider is that those two traffic models; the one that shows where we are now, and the one that shows where we will be with the higher population figure would no longer be valid if the forecast is 614,000. Ms. Larwood further stated that many people have already indicated that in this community the air quality is a problem. The point that she wanted to make is lots of people don't like the traffic either. And, we're spoiled because the traffic here is a whole lot better than other places, but that's why people live here. One of the reasons why people live here. Not the whole reason. And, she does not believe that the community wants to live with a lower level of service, nor the air quality impacts that result from it. Her group asks staff to come up with some additional mitigation measures. Particularly if there is an additional 100,000 as the number, rather than what is in the Draft EIR. She urged the Commissioners to read the Draft EIR. If you try to reference back and forth some of the stuff between the General Plan and Draft EIR you'll find there's some discrepancies. Ms. Larwood feels it is not up to the public totally to look at those discrepancies. She stated she thinks it is the responsibility of both staff and the Commissioners to find some of those discrepancies as well, because they're there, and it makes a better project if you find them and comment on them. She said they will do as much as they can before the comment period is over on August 30, but they won't be able to do it all. The public portion of the hearing is closed. The hearing was opened for Commissioner comments. Commissioner Tragish acknowledged all of the comments. He thanked Peter Belluomini from the Kern County Farm Bureau and thought his comments in his handout and in his presentation were excellent and asked staff to seriously consider some of his comments. Commissioner Tragish said he read the EIR and had the following comments: He is not sure it's a real strong technique for preserving some of the prime farm land that is surrounding the city right now. It also talks about establishing buffers such as set back berms, greenbacks and open space. He thinks we already have some ordinances to that effect, and it hasn't done anything to stop the continuing of taking out agricultural Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 7 land. It talks about implementing rights of farm ordinances. Apparently, it's not been strong enough to stop the onslot of ag land being taken out of production. Commissioner Tragish stated that there is another thing that it talked about; vesting in commercial viability of the remaining ag land in the project through a mitigation bank. He thinks that's an interesting idea, and in fact, they referenced a DLRP report conservation tools in which they reference 30 strategies. He would like to see what those other 30 strategies are and would like to see the EIR discuss them as to whether they're relevant or practical for Kern County. The Executive Summary, on some of the sections that was raised under 4.7, the only two that he saw out of that letter was the buffers and the right to farm ordinances. In fact, the only mitigation he saw are one, two, three, four and five mitigations under the soils and ag resource element. He feels that there isn't any type of mitigation there, even though it's put out as being an unavoidable significant impact. He would like to see a more serious, more inclusive, or wider options put in regarding ag. The article that was referred to in the Appendix talked about 30 particular options. He would like to see the language in the mitigation measures be changed from "shall be established to separate farm land and shall be implement" to "must be established" and "must be implemented", and put some teeth into these mitigation measures. He would like the word "must" replace the word "shall" in items 4.73, 4.71, and 4.72. He thinks it's a stronger word and Commissioner Tragish stated his basic concern is that he would really like to see more options as to the preservation of ag. Commissioner McGinnis thanked everyone for their comments and stated that we've got to come up with a report for the 2020 plan that is workable so that we don't infringe on anymore of the farmer's rights than we already have; the infill. It all boils down to the one basic thing, and that's traffic. Traffic makes our air bad. The more people we have, the more roads we build, the worse our air gets. Commissioner McGinnis expressed his concern that most of our tentative tract maps we are approving are for private streets with gated communities and wondered how you get a city bus in a private street or a gated community? Commissioner McGinnis stated that the more tracts we build, the more people we have; the more cars we have. It seems like we should have an incentive in the plan that's been mentioned here in several of the updates as far as getting a more comprehensive G.E.T. program, along with Kern Transit and a couple others. And, he feels that our solution to our traffic problems, our air problems, and a number of things isn't more streets or more freeways, it's to implement the public transportation that we have available to us. He would like to see more emphasis in the plan on public transportation. Commissioner McGinnis asked if the City's Urban Forrester's had a role in coming up with the documentation. Mr. Grady responded that he did not. Commissioner McGinnis asked what the Forrester's role is and Mr. Grady responded that he did not know. Commissioner McGinnis said that the Urban Forrester is a person on staff who is qualified to help and stated that he knows that trees are one aspect of helping us clean our air up a little bit. And since we have someone on staff that probably can give us Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 8 advice on what kind of trees are more beneficial in doing that, he would like to request that maybe we can get his involvement in the way of an opinion in our plan to implement this a little bit more. Commissioner Tkac thanked everyone for their comments. He agrees with Commissioner McGinnis and Commissioner Tragish that it does boil down to a traffic issue. He stated that meetings like this are taking proactive and positive steps to try to solve the problem. He agrees with Commissioner McGinnis that we are to a certain extent caught in a catch 22. A lot of our air pollution problems do not come from Bakersfield, California and Kern County, California; they're only aggravated by the fact that we have a prevailing wind. We have a wind that blows things from other areas. So until State-wide there is more notice taken to this problem, he doesn't know that a whole lot is going to get done about this area. We're a small part of it. One of the other problems is what Ms. Larwood stated that Governor Davis has said that there will be no more new freeways in California. If there are no funds to come in we're sitting with a whole bunch of idling traffic which only makes our problem worse. So this relates to a certain extent to our Draft EIR. Commissioner Tkac said that as much as we can all try to do what we can do, we're facing bigger problems from the outside. Hopefully, if there's help from the outside some of these things can be taken care of. Commissioner Sprague commented that this is a great start to a new update on the plan. He thinks there will be many changes made to the plan draft. Commissioner McGinnis made an on-point comment regarding traffic. It does involve a lot of traffic; development does, and we initially started work on the beltway system in Bakersfield which works with the County also. He stated he has been on the Commission four years and has been working towards that end. We need to promote that, and work on shorting the time line on the beltway issues. Not only the south beltway and the west beltway which are projected, but the east belt way and the north beltway so that we do have a loop that will absorb some of the traffic congestions that we have. Incorporated into this would be an emphasis on the interior street areas of coordinating the traffic lights, and coordinating traffic and putting in right turn lanes, and in trying to move traffic on a north south direction, instead of everything going east to west. Bakersfield is probably laid out improperly. We really didn't have control on that from past Commissioners and Councils, but the way it is set up with County island's it is very difficult from a traffic congestion standpoint. Commissioner Sprague feels an annual, if not a semi-annual joint meeting or at least one or two workshops with the joint Planning Commissioners would be helpful to work out problems, give suggestions and ideas and come up with solutions that will make Bakersfield and the citizens of the County of Kern happy and a better place to live, and a better place to raise children. He agrees with Commissioner Tkac, Commissioner McGinnis and Commissioner Tragish on air quality as it relates to oil and ag and transportation. He thinks that we are now looking forward to another leg that is going to happen in Bakersfield, and that is the high tech manufacturing and campus industry which is an educational situation, as well as manufacturing high tech items. He has seen in the last two months many, many people coming from the north and the south. They're in the high tech business. Especially Silicon Valley. Their ideas are to come in here to purchase larger portions of property to build their campus and their Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 9 manufacturing plants, which are a clean air plants, and to build housing for their employees, and offer housing to them at a much greater reduced price then what they're paying up north in Santa Cruz or San Francisco and Los Angeles area. Much cleaner living conditions, and with that is going to come transportation problems, construction problem, planning and zoning problems as we expand these areas. I am told that we have quite a few infill lots. I don't have that count down as to what we do have, but I think that both of these commissions have been working on that infill type scenario. And I think we'll continue doing that. But, Bakersfield is a supply and demand area. And, the County of Kern is a supply and demand area. To try to moratorium development I think is not the way to really look at the way Bakersfield is built. I think it has to expand, it has to grow as the needs are there. We are going to have more and more people coming to Bakersfield. With it we're going to have more and more manufacturing and other types of services and business that incorporate into this area and the County of Kern. So we have some wonderful staff, and we have some wonderful organizations working with the County and the City to promote the Bakersfield and Kern County areas. And you can see it happening. It's like the handwriting on the wall. We are growing, but we have to plan for it. We have to insert proper transportation, clean air issues. We have to abide by the existing farming operations that surround our cities, and I believe that we have to put in proper buffer zones to do that. And I think that staff has done a wonderful job of putting this draft together. I read through probably 60% of it. It's tough sledding, but you do get a much more better look at the general plan area in all facets of the City of Bakersfield, as well as the County of Kern, and what problems we have, along with the executive summary you get suggestions and ideas on how you can overcome of these, and I think with our joint efforts between the two planning commissions and the two planning departments at a workshop meeting or two prior to this being implemented, I think that there'll be a lot of good suggestions that will come out of it that will make Bakersfield and Kern County a better place to live. Those are my comments. Commissioner Gay made a motion, seconded by Commissioner McGinnis, on behalf of the City of Bakersfield Planning Commission to refer the comments to City Staff for preparation of the final EIR. The motion was approved by the following roll call vote: AYES: Commissioners Blockley, Ellison, Gay, McGinnis, Tkac, Traggis, Sprague NOES: None ABSENT: None Commissioner Babcock made a motion, seconded by Commissioner McClintock, on behalf of the County of Kern Planning Commission to refer the comments to City Staff for preparation of the final EIR. The motion was approved by the following roll call vote: AYES: Commissioners Zimmerman, Pitts, Babcock, McClintock, Strong NOES: None ABSENT: None Joint City and County Planning Commission Minutes -August 12, 2002 Page 10 5. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS ADJOURNMENT There being no further business to come before the Commission, the meeting was adjourned at 7:53 p.m. Pam Townsend, Recording Secretary September 10, 2002 STANLEY GRADY, Secretary Planning Director