Help Preserve Santa Clara County’s Remaining Farmlands!

Posted April 2, 2007

• What’s happening    
• Why this is important
• What you can do    

The Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) is deciding whether to clarify agricultural mitigation guidelines that call on developers to legally protect at least one acre of farmland for each acre they convert into city land. Please contact the LAFCo Commission and tell them to support the guidelines as a significant step forward in protecting our remaining farmlands!

What’s happening
Santa Clara County LAFCo decides whether cities can expand and extend city services to new areas, such as City of San Jose is proposing to do in Coyote Valley. This means LAFCo is a crucial agency for controlling suburban sprawl and policies it develops that require environmental mitigation for expansions that do occur are critical to reducing the impacts of suburban sprawl. This Wednesday, April 4th, LAFCo will decide whether to adopt a policy that clarifies how it will consider the loss of farmland in evaluating a proposed city expansion. This policy includes a guideline that cities mitigate for farmland converted to suburban uses through legally protecting other nearby farmland from future development.

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Why this is important
Santa Clara County used to be called “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” because of the miles and miles of farms and orchards that used to cover the valley. Then cities raced each other to see which one could annex and develop the most farmland, a runaway process that resulted in the state law creating LAFCo as a means to referee and slow down the expansion process.

LAFCo must consider the impact on farmland when deciding whether to approve city expansions, but the guidelines for considering this impact, and whether preserving other nearby farmland on a permanent basis would make up for the farmland lost to development, were all unclear. LAFCo staff now proposes guidelines suggesting that at least one acre should be preserved for every acre lost. While the guidelines could be stronger, they are a significant improvement over current policy. The proposed guideline also clarifies that even if cities comply with this one-to-one replacement factor, they would have no guarantee of approval of the annexation, because the loss of farmland can still be significant. The guidelines are also stiffer than those proposed or in place by some cities.

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What you can do
The Santa Clara LAFCo Commission meets on Wednesday, April 4th, to decide whether to approve the staff recommendation. At the same meeting, LAFCo will decide whether to approve an expansion of Morgan Hill’s boundaries that seems likely to violate the new policy. Please tell LAFCo to support the staff recommendation on agricultural mitigation guidelines, and also to either reject the Morgan Hill expansion proposal or send it back for analysis under the new guidelines.

1. Please fax or email LAFCo and ask them to support the staff agricultural mitigation guidelines, and to deny the Morgan Hill expansion or apply the new guidelines to the expansion. Send your comments to:
Emmanuel Abuello, LAFCo Clerk, and request that he distribute your comments to all the LAFCo Commissioners.
Fax: (408) 295-1613
Email: Emmanuel.Abello@ceo.sccgov.org

2. Please send a copy of your message to CGF so we can track our efforts on this issue:
Fax (650) 968-8431 or
email: action@GreenFoothills.org

To learn more,
read the LAFCo staff report on agricultural mitigation.
And read the CGF letter on ways to improve the mitigation.

Thanks for speaking up — your voice does make a difference!

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