February letter to San Jose Envision 2040 Task Force on jobs:housing balance

(CGF submitted this letter regarding the balance between jobs and housing in the forthcoming San Jose General Plan revision.  -Brian)

February 22, 2010

Envision San Jose Task Force

Re:  recommended amendment to land use scenarios to rely upon "actual jobs" and not just jobs capacity for balancing employment and housing

Dear Envision San Jose Task Force members;

Several issues have become clear regarding the "jobs capacity" concept that is central to the choice of land use scenarios:

1. The jobs capacity number given in each scenario will not actually occur.  Staff has openly admitted this; they have discouraged those of us who are dismayed by environmentally destructive Jobs:Employed Residents ratios from taking them seriously; and they have said the numbers should be seen at most as indicating relative degrees of emphasis.

2. The numbers are being used for planning purposes as if they will actually occur.  Last meeting's discussion of VMT used the numbers as if they would occur, and the General Plan EIR will do the same.

3. If for some reasons the numbers are actually reached or nearly reached, the CEQA process for mitigating or stopping the environmental consequences will have long passed, because the EIR will be finalized many years before the actual development.

As has been discussed in many previous communications, any ratio of actual jobs to employed residents that exceeds a 1:1 ratio will require massive amounts of commuting from outside Santa Clara County , primarily residents of Central Valley coming to our area by car.  City staff is concerned that any jobs capacity to employed residents ratio of 1:1 or less will result in an actual jobs level that is far lower, and hurt the City's finances.

The Committee for Green Foothills proposes the following compromise that could be included as an amendment to any current land use scenario:

The land use scenario should include a performance criteria requiring that the actual jobs to employed residents ratio to remain no higher than a 1:1 ratio.  Development of jobs capacity in the City should happen in stages for different areas, and once the 1:1 ratio is reached, additional areas for additional capacity should not be readied for new jobs until the residential development level is also matched and planned to occur at approximately the same time.

An alternative recommendation is to "backload" the excess actual jobs, so that once the City has reached the 1:1 actual jobs:employed residents ratio, the jobs development cannot occur faster than residential development until all the planned residential development has occurred.  This alternative is inferior to our main proposal because it will still allow severe environmental consequences from inadequate housing relative to jobs, but it is superior to the proposals currently in front of the Task Force.

The Committee for Green Foothills notes that adopting this recommendation as a mandatory performance criterion can greatly improve the planning process and reduce the environmental impacts in the resulting EIR.  It places an upper limit on actual jobs that is much closer to what will actually occur, which means such issues as VMT calculations can reflect something approaching reality.  It also eliminates the worst environmental impacts from commuting that staff would otherwise have to acknowledge in the EIR,[1] so the EIR that the City would publish with this criterion included will show fewer negative and more positive environmental effects.

As we have mentioned before, any increase over the current baseline jobs-to-employed residents ratio would be environmentally harmful, but we also recognize that some change is likely.  Including larger levels of residential development in the City is important in our housing-poor region, especially transit-oriented and senior-oriented development.  Above and beyond all that is the need to keep a balance of actual jobs to employed residents that is not available in most of the current land use scenarios.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

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[1] We believe a feasible mitigation for those impacts would be a similar performance criterion in the EIR, so the City has to consider this idea in any case.

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Letter to San Jose Envision 2040 Task Force on jobs:housing balance

(Below is a letter we sent to the San Jose General Plan Task Force.  -Brian)

January 15, 2010

Envision San Jose Task Force

Re:  Economic Strategy discussion reinforces need to choose an appropriate jobs-to-employed-residents ratio

Dear Envision San Jose Task Force members;

I appreciate the opportunity I had yesterday to talk with Kim Walesh at the City to understand the difference between jobs capacity and actual jobs under the various land use scenarios.  As I understand it, the City anticipates based on past history that all housing that it plans for under any land use scenario it adopts, will in fact be built, but the same does not hold true for jobs.  The City plans for a wide variety of places and options that could allow for jobs, while knowing that only some of those places and options will ultimately be viable for jobs development, depending on future economic conditions that we cannot easily predict.  To further rephrase it in my own words, the City's jobs-to-employed-residents ratio for the various scenarios might be better described as a jobs-capacity-to-employed-residents ratio under each scenario, and the actual jobs-to-employed-resident ratio will not match the ratios that the scenarios describe.

The above is the economic planning perspective of City staff, assuming I described it correctly, but the City's environmental planning perspective is different.  The EIR process requires it to assume that all areas it is planning for will, in fact, be built out as planned, so the City will assume in the EIR that all the jobs capacity will be utilized.  At the same time, we environmental organizations have been encouraged NOT to worry about these ratios when, if realized, they would result in massive commutes from other areas to work in the city.

The environmental perspective, at least for Committee for Green Foothills, is that any ratio of actual jobs above a 1:1 jobs-to-employed-residents ratio will cause significant environmental harm.  If San Jose were situated in an area that was jobs-poor and housing-rich, then adding jobs would reduce commutes, but in fact the reverse is true.  For the surplus jobs above the 1:1 ratio, there is no place in the City for those workers to live.  Everywhere north of San Jose also has insufficient housing, while Morgan Hill, Gilroy, and Hollister have strict residential growth limits.  Those workers will have to live even further away and commute in, most likely from Central Valley.  This will significantly affect the environment.[1]

From our perspective, we worry that what the City perceives as unlikely may actually occur, and that we may see the City with a 1.5:1 ratio of jobs to employed residents, or something short of that but still destructive.  The current process is our chance to affect the planning process, while at the same time we are told to not worry about what is being planned.

There is a potential solution to this issue that would allow the City to plan for whatever jobs capacity it thinks appropriate while maintaining control over the actual jobs-to-employed-residents ratio, at an environmentally appropriate level.  The City should include an actual ratio safeguard for whatever land use scenario it chooses, so that the jobs number never surges ahead and exceeds an environmentally-appropriate level, which we believe would be no higher than 1:1.  The City could plan for jobs capacity that is far higher, but if jobs for some reason outpace residential development, the safeguard would stop further development of new areas for jobs until residential development catches up.  The safeguard would prevent the full jobs capacity from ever being built.

We hope the City will consider this as part of its planning, especially as part of its environmental review.  The alternative is for the City to acknowledge that actual jobs scenarios may likely be far lower than the majority of the scenarios currently under consideration, which raises the question of whether the City is analyzing the full, reasonable range of alternatives.  Last May, we sent a letter to the City suggest they include what amounts to a reduced scope alternative based on the ABAG scenario, a 1:1 ratio with less housing and fewer jobs than ABAG proposes.  If what we suggested in May is a likely future outcome for the City, and the City's own jobs capacity scenarios are unlikely, there is little justification for excluding our proposal from analysis.

We appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with City staff and the Task Force, and we hope the City will consider these suggestions.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

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[1] It could be argued that given the regional housing shortage, ANY increase over the current baseline jobs-to-employed residents ratio would be environmentally harmful, but we also recognize that some change is likely.

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News Alert: Success in Gilroy and great progress in San Jose!

(CGF sent out the News Alert below about victories in Gilroy and San Jose. -Brian)

We've had great news in Gilroy and San Jose that we want to share with supporters.

All four sprawl proposals in Gilroy that we've been fighting have now been defeated or withdrawn! Since 2008, Committee for Green Foothills fought the proposals for over 1,000 acres of sprawl and inappropriate development that would move the City of Gilroy’s current boundaries outward.

We testified at hearings and sent several highly critical letters about the deficient environmental analysis. We were joined in this by other environmental organizations, local community organizations, and several government agencies that also wrote letters critical of the environmental documentation and the proposals themselves.

Two of the four proposals had already been withdrawn by the applicants when the issue finally reached the Gilroy City Council last week. On a 4-3 vote, Mayor Al Pinheiro and Council Members Peter Arrellano, Kat Tucker, and Perry Woodward voted against certifying the environmental documentation (EIRs) for the projects, which had the effect of killing the proposals. While we regret that it had not been a unanimous vote, Committee for Green Foothills salutes the City Council for making this sensible decision.

Turning to San Jose, the Envision 2040 Task Force has supported a strong policy for protecting streamside riparian corridors from inappropriate development and for closing loopholes in the current policy. For the first time after years of CGF efforts, the City of San Jose agreed to examine whether to continue the current practice of letting developers write the initial version of environmental documents that the City uses for examining streams.

Thank you for your support of CGF! Your support makes it possible for us to continue to be ever vigilant about land protection.

We will lobby Gilroy to develop a Climate Action Plan that will discourage sprawl proposals. We will track San Jose as it considers whether to remove developers' role in preparing the City's environmental documents, and encourage them to expand that change from stream issues to all environmental reviews.

We will continue to monitor the many issues throughout Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.

We'll keep active and keep you informed.

- The folks at Committee for Green Foothills

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CGF News Alert: Success and progress in Palo Alto, San Jose, and the Water District

(The following News Alert went out today to our Action Alert subscribers. -Brian)

Dear

We want to let CGF supporters know about recent advances in local environmental protection: protecting Palo Alto foothills from sprawl, the takeout bag ban in San Jose, and increasing Water District support for environmental protection. We thank all of you for your generous help with your time and your donations, and we'll be sure to keep you informed about next steps where we can use your help.

In Palo Alto, the City Council reviewed extensive revisions to zoning which controls development in the foothills that extend from Page Mill Rd. all the way up to Skyline Drive. CGF Advocate Brian Schmidt was the only environmental group representative on the advisory committee and while city staff made certain improvements over an outdated ordinance, Brian encouraged them to go further. By decisive votes, the City Council rejected the proposal for inappropriate second residences on these parcels, directed planners to develop maximum house size limits, and even started considering the issues of giant basement developments that are the latest aspects of monster mansions. CGF will continue to work on these improvements that have been suggested.

In San Jose, the City Council took the first definitive step for the strongest take-out bag ban for any major city in the US, banning plastic and requiring paper bags be made from 40% recycled content. Contrary to media reports, a fee on paper bags isn't required but will be considered in the future. They will consider other options in an EIR, which actually gives us a chance to push for a few improvements. Councilmember Liccardo, one of the two leaders on the issue along with Kansen Chu, thanked CGF and other groups from the dais for our work on the issue.

Finally Santa Clara Valley Water District considered recommendations for environmental enhancements and erosion control from the District's Environmental Advisory Committee, where CGF Advocate Brian Schmidt is the chair of the committee. While they didn't take final action on the recommendations, the Board of Directors were very receptive and appreciative of the recommendations and will return to consider them further at a later date.

Thanks again for all your help and support of our work. Each of these advances requires that CGF be present for follow-up work, so we'll keep active and keep you informed.

Thanks for speaking up for environmental protections! Your voice does make a difference!

- The folks at Committee for Green Foothills

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Action Alert - Support San Jose's plastic bag ban

(The Action Alert below went out to our San Jose members. -Brian)

Dear Friend,

This Tuesday, September 22, San Jose's City Council will decide whether to have the best control of plastic bag litter and paper bag pollution of any major city. Seven of eleven voting City Council members have already supported a ban on plastic take-out bags and a requirement that paper bags be at least partially-recycled content. Please contact the City Council to help get us to the finish line on this groundbreaking proposal, and make it even better!

What's Happening

A County Commission proposed a fee on both plastic and paper take-out bags to reduce pollution and fund cleanup of bag pollution. While fees have the advantage of giving customers a choice, they are controversial in some circles, so many local cities are considering bans on plastic bags with some limited exceptions. Because paper bags also have environmental liabilities, San Jose has proposed requiring they have at least 40%-50% recycled content. Other Santa Clara County cities will soon be making their own decisions on these issues.

Why this is Important

Litter from plastic bags defaces our streets, lines our streams, and smothers both the San Francisco Bay and a significant part of the Pacific Ocean. Many local streams, including Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek, have so much trash that they have been listed or are considered for listing under the Clean Water Act as "impaired" waters due to trash. Paper bags are little better with even greater energy costs and the economic support they support for destructive logging projects like the recent San Jose Water Company proposal to log the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The proposal will increase education about reusable bags, the real solution to the bag problem.

While over a dozen local cities will make their own decisions about bags, San Jose has half of the County population and can solve half of the problem at one stroke. Its proposal is even better than San Francisco's because of the recycled paper requirement and could be a model for the country.

What you can do

Tell the City Council you support the plastic bag ban and recycled content for paper bags. Please also tell them you want them to consider either a fee on paper bags or higher recycled content now, or by reviewing the issue two years in the future.

Please email your support to the Mayor and City Council (just copy and paste the emails below):

mayoremail@sanjoseca.gov; district1@sanjoseca.gov; district2@sanjoseca.gov;

district3@sanjoseca.gov; district4@sanjoseca.gov; district5@sanjoseca.gov;

District6@sanjoseca.gov; district7@sanjoseca.gov; district8@sanjoseca.gov;

district9@sanjoseca.gov; district10@sanjoseca.gov

by this Tuesday, September 22 at 9:00 a.m. Attending the meeting to voice your support is even better, if you can go.

Please let us know that you have written or fax us a copy (650) 968-843

For more information, see the Committee for Green Foothills letter, Coyote Creek as the #2 Litter Hot Spot according to Save the Bay, and San Jose City Council Agenda Item 7.2.

Thanks!

- The Folks at Green Foothills

________________________________________________

Committee for Green Foothills

Our mission is to protect the open space, farmlands, and natural resources of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties through advocacy, education, and grassroots action.

Shopping online? Visit the portal www.Maatiam.com, click on the link to CGF, and then to one of over 80 online retailers. At no additional cost to you, these retailers make a 2 – 5% donation to CGF, an easy way to support our work!

You have received this action alert because you are subscribed to Committee for Green Foothills' email alert list. To be removed from this list, please reply to this message with REMOVE in the subject line. To be added to this list and receive alerts about local open space issues, just send your name, address, and email address to info@GreenFoothills.org.

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Sprawl effect from San Jose planning scenarios

San Jose has the following scenarios in its proposed General Plan for future growth:

Scenario K - 339,530 new jobs and 158,970 new dwelling units (1.0 J/ER) (Jobs:Employed Resident ratio)

Scenario E - 360,550 new jobs and 135,650 new dwelling units (1.1 J/ER)

Scenario C - 346,550 new jobs and 88,650 new dwelling units (1.2 J/ER)

Scenario J - 526,000 new jobs and 88,650 new dwelling units (1.5 J/ER)

Generally accepted figure is that residences will have an average 1.7 people who are employed full time (or the equivalent of full time when multiple people employed part time are counted). Scenario J has a massive imbalance of housing and jobs. The 88,650 residences will provide housing for 151,000 employees and their families, while the 526,000 new employees will actually need 309,000 residences. The outcome then is that 158,000 residences will have to be built, somewhere, to accommodate these people. Most likely they'll be built in Central Valley, and those employees will be commuting. How this fits the City's claim to be planning for compact development is less than clear.

-Brian

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CGF comments to San Jose City Council Meeting today

(I would have made the comments below to today's City Council meeting on its General Plan, but the mayor cut the time in half. I summarized instead. -Brian)

(UPDATE: The City Council protected Almaden Valley and mid-Coyote Valley, but not north Coyote Valley. So not too bad, but there's more to do.)

I want to address the suggestions in the supplemental documents for this item. The second Supplemental, from June 15, contains landowner suggestions to develop Almaden Valley and Coyote Valley Urban Reserves, and I think Councilmember Liccardo addressed this.

Developers have proposed in the June 3d Supplemental memo, suggesting that Scenario K be modified to add 10,000 residences to the proposed 50,000 jobs in North Coyote Valley. This is a bad idea, maybe the most environmentally destructive one in the packet. I would describe it as a "zombie idea," the walking dead version of the Coyote Valley Specific Plan that we thought we had been put down to rest in peace over a year ago. The proposal is really a stalking horse to get residential development and downplay jobs. All the reasons for not doing this became clear during the collapse of the Coyote Valley proposal and it shouldn't be revived now.

So what would be better? We suggest modifying Scenario K to remove the proposed 50,000 jobs from North Coyote Valley, based on the assumption that the Coyote Valley Research Park permits will expire without being used in 2011, as now appears highly likely. A certain number of the 50 thousand jobs could occur elsewhere, but mostly this scenario could be made much more politically realistic by somewhat reducing the total number of jobs and housing while keeping an appropriate balance. There is no need to expand the city outward and destroy this environmentally crucial area.

All the environmental and economic reasons for not developing urban reserves also apply to CV

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CGF Letter on the San Jose General Plan Revision

(We sent this letter out last week regarding preserving farmlands and stopping sprawl in San Jose. -Brian)


May 21, 2009

San Jose City Council
Envision San Jose Task Force

Dear City Council and Task Force Members;

The Committee for Green Foothills urges you seize the opportunity presented to you both to preserve the farmlands adjacent to San Jose and also to plan for a balanced future of jobs and housing, not an imbalanced one forcing thousands of drivers to live elsewhere and commute to San Jose. Specifically, we ask you to do the following:

· Withdraw the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) from South Almaden Valley.

· Plan for no development in Mid-Coyote Valley.

· Withdraw the UGB from North Coyote Valley. This would "grandfather" existing development and existing permits, but the Coyote Valley Research Park permits would not be renewed if they expire without construction, as seems very likely. A less-valuable but still beneficial alternative would be to leave the UGB unchanged but not plan for any development in North Coyote Valley during the General Plan timeframe.

· Require the development of a Farmland Mitigation Program prior to the conversion of prime farmland to other uses anywhere in the City

· Develop a "Green Vision" planning option with reasonable job growth numbers below ABAG projections, and with housing numbers that do not exceed a 1:1 Jobs:Employed Resident ratio. These are feasible numbers that keep development within the City's existing footprint without exporting housing needs to other cities and counties.

We live in a time of crisis and opportunity. We could repeat the many mistakes of previous decades, expanding development outward instead of making it more vibrant, quite possibly at the expense of making existing areas less vibrant by sucking development away from the City and into Coyote Valley. We could condemn thousands of acres of farmland immediately abutting San Jose, spreading the sprawl that currently washes from San Francisco to San Jose and bringing it so close to Morgan Hill that the alleged Coyote Valley "Greenbelt" would convert into a new wave of sprawl that merges San Francisco through San Jose all the way to Gilroy. Or we – starting with your leadership - could choose a different future.

You have the opportunity to transform the growing Silicon Valley into the "Silicon Archipelago" whose shores begin at San Jose. Cities of economically vibrant, high-tech development would be surrounded by productive farmland and environmentally vibrant, natural open space. The San Jose/Alviso/Milpitas area, excepting development merging with Santa Clara, already qualifies with open space and Baylands on three sides. The wonderful news just this week about protection of 966-acre Rancho San Vicente adds to this legacy, a feat that was possible expressly because Coyote Valley development has been stopped so far.

San Jose has Tule elk grazing within City limits. It has one of the best wildflower displays in the state. It has the Everglades of the West being restored to the north, and verdant river and creek courses connecting natural areas. What is missing is a vision that commits to protecting these areas, along with the farmland that physically connects natural areas together and connects the present and future San Jose to its past.

Everyone without their heads in the sand knows that the future of the climate crisis will require different planning from the past, stopping outward-sprawling expansion and preserving nearby farmland that bring us nutritious food from nearby - not from another hemisphere. You have the opportunity to plan for this future that preserves what we have and will make San Jose, and the greater region, a much better place. Please do this, and leave aside the proposals that move in the wrong direction.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Brian A. Schmidt
Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

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KRON 4 News Interviews Brian regarding Coyote Valley

It's only 30 seconds in a 3-minute segment, but they did let us environmentalists talk about how stopping Coyote Valley development was very much a good thing.

To see it, click here (scroll down to the video stories shown on the bottom left, and look for “Coyote Valley Project Halts”).

-Brian

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A great day for Coyote Valley!

(I think our press release speaks for itself. -Brian)

Committee for Green Foothills
NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 18, 2008


PRESS CONTACTS:
Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate
phone (650) 968-7243, (415) 994-7403 cell
* brian@greenfoothills.org


Committee for Green Foothills Welcomes Withdrawal of Coyote Valley Development Proposal, Calls for New Steps to Protect Against Sprawl

The Committee for Green Foothills (CGF) welcomed the decision today by the Coyote Housing Group to withdraw its proposal to develop three thousand acres of working farmland and vital wildlife habitat in Coyote Valley, and CGF called on San Jose to act now to stop new sprawl proposals. "The misguided proposal to get rid of prime working farmland and a vital wildlife corridor sank from its own weight, and from the work of all the organizations like Committee for Green Foothills that argued for San Jose's growth to be directed within the City instead of expanding it," said Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate for CGF. "The Committee for Green Foothills has worked for years to fight this proposal and the many proposals that preceded it, dating back to the 1970s. We're very glad that our work, along with the vital work of other groups like the Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Audubon Society, has helped to reach this point."

Schmidt called on San Jose to take new steps to protect this vital area.
"The Mayor has said there should be stronger 'triggers' in the General Plan to prevent developing Coyote Valley until it's really necessary. Other City Council members have called for prioritizing development in downtown and North San Jose before development comes to Coyote Valley. It's time to examine those priorities in the ongoing General Plan review."

Unanswered questions remain regarding other potential developments in Coyote Valley. "The Coyote Valley Research Park proposal received permits it never should have been granted," said Schmidt, "but economic conditions have stopped its development. In several years, those permits will start expiring, and it's time to examine whether that project should happen.
Gavilan College also has started planning a massive campus in Coyote Valley that makes little sense without urban development, and that process needs reassessment. The Habitat Conservation Plan had exempted much of Coyote Valley from its jurisdiction, and that also needs reassessment."

"We hope that the withdrawal decision creates a new opportunity for long-term agricultural survival and a vibrant ecology in Santa Clara County, and we salute the decision of the Coyote Valley developers to end the process," Schmidt continued.

Environmental organizations including the Committee for Green Foothills have closely followed proposed developments in Coyote Valley. Their extensive comments on a Draft Environmental Impact Report showed significant deficiencies in the report that failed to recognize the impacts of the proposed project. Committee for Green Foothills participated extensively in that process, and took the lead in showing how the fiscal analysis that purported to show a tax surplus for city government was based on unrealistic expectations of a continued housing boom. CGF also took the lead in showing that consultants used by the city to draft environmental and fiscal documents had first been hand-picked by the developers, and then hired by the city in a no-bid process.

# # #
About the Committee for Green Foothills
Committee for Green Foothills is a regional grassroots organization working to establish and maintain land-use policies that protect the environment throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Committee for Green Foothills, established in 1962, is a Bay Area leader in the continuing effort to protect open space and the natural environment of our Peninsula.
For more information about the Committee for Green Foothills or about our work on this issue, visit www.GreenFoothills.org.

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CGF opposes inappropriate hillside San Jose development

(CGF sent the following short letter to the San Jose Planning Commission, supporting staff's recommendation to reject the proposed hillside development in San Jose's Evergreen District. More information is available here. -Brian)


Dear Planning Commission members,

The Committee for Green Foothills agrees with City Staff recommending denial of a developer's proposal to rezone hillside land in the Evergreen District from a quasi-public designated use to residential development. Any one of the many reasons staff have provided for why this proposal is a bad idea. Intensified development that would push into the 15% slope is a bad precedent, which may actually be the reason for the proposal.

We would only add to the staff comments that the proposal, if not rejected at this point, would definitely require an EIR. The conflict with existing land use policies constitute one reason for an EIR, but the loss of valuable open space, much of which could be conserved with the current use designation, and the visual impact on the neighborhood and on thousands of people driving by on Highway 101, also would be significant environmental impacts.

We urge the Commission to reject this project.

Please contact us with any questions.

Sincerely,
Brian Schmidt
Legislative Advocate, Committee for Green Foothills

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Excellent Metro article on The San Jose Process

This Metro article does a great job of discussing the systematic problem San Jose has in conducting environmental reviews:

The thing is, the science of predicting environmental impacts that haven't actually happened yet is highly interpretive.

"A lot of areas in EIRs are fuzzy," says Gary Binger, urban planning professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "There's a lot of subjectivity."

That's why many public agencies choose their environmental consultants carefully in order to minimize the potential for bias.

Prior to 1996, developers wanting projects approved by Santa Clara County could hire a consultant directly and submit the results of the study with their application.

"How can there be bias when that happens?" county Planner Rob Eastwood points out sarcastically. "No, just kidding."

Then-county Supervisor Joe Simitian changed the practice in 1996 in order to avoid conflict of interest and public criticism. Now county officials stick to a list of environmental consultants that are screened with questions like: "During the preparation of a Draft EIR, how would you respond if a project proponent directly pressures you to change a conclusion, minimize an impact, or otherwise influence the findings of the EIR?"

Many other cities and counties in the Bay Area follow a similar process: they hire consultants directly so the paychecks come from the public agency (although the money gets reimbursed by project applicants). The developers also have little or no input in choosing the consultant.

Of the eight cities Metro surveyed in Santa Clara County, San Jose was the only one that allowed developers to contract with consultants directly, essentially giving them the freedom to pick whomever they wanted to conduct the environmental studies.

We hope San Jose will listen!

-Brian

P.S. For those wondering - yes, I've since watered the plant in the picture.

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More KQED Commentary on the "San Jose Process", and a response by Mayor Reed

KQED's Forum program yesterday followed up Tuesday's Perspectives piece on how San Jose shouldn't give developers control over intial aspects of environmental review.

You can listen to the Forum program here. Our issue comes up in the second half of the show.

When I heard yesterday morning that Mayor Reed would be on the show, I emailed the following question:

Yesterday’s KQED Perspectives commentary at www.kqed.org/perspectives criticized “The San Jose Process” for environmental review because unlike other cities, private developers create and control the initial, administrative draft versions of environmental impact reports. The Perspective said that process is a legacy of the previous city administration, but will you commit to at least investigating whether this system should be changed to meet the standards found in other Bay Area cities, where the cities and not the developers select the consultants who prepare the reports?

(Full disclosure: I was the person who gave yesterday’s Perspective.)

Brian Schmidt
Legislative Advocate, Committee for Green Foothills

When asked, Mayor Reed responded as follows (after some preliminary comments):

The environmental reports we do are the City’s environmental reports, and we rely on our professional staff to make sure that the work done by the consultants is correct and eventually if people disagree with that we have to defend it in court .... we have to prepare for that so we have to do it right, and I don’t think it matters where it starts as much as where it ends up. I can’t make a personal commitment to Brian that we’ll change that. I understand his comment, I understand the perception, but we have a really good environmental staff that makes these things work, and I’m confident we’re doing it correctly and defensibly.

My reaction:

The Mayor said he can't commit on the spot to change the system. I understood that, and had only asked for a commitment to investigate it. That's an easy thing to miss in the middle of live radio, so hopefully he will still consider investigating alternatives.

Mayor Reed says it's the end result that counts the most, and I agree with that, but throwing in a barrier to a good end result in the form of a biased starting point just makes it harder for the City's professional staff. If they can get a good result with this handicapped start, then they'll do even better with an unbiased start. I would add though that in CGF's opinion we do have a problem with some of the end results, as seen with Coyote Valley.

Finally, the City's professional staff can't go out and redo shoddy fieldwork by consultant experts. They might not even know if the fieldwork was shoddy or the subjective judgment was out of line with standard expert opinion. The vast majority of environmental reviews never get challenged in court, especially Initial Studies for smaller projects, so a court-challenge safeguard is inadequate and not the way to do quality control, in any event.

-Brian

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Brian Schmidt on KQED Perspectives program

Today the KQED Radio Perspectives program ran my perspective on "The San Jose Process." The Perspective is a two-minute commentary piece, and in this piece I discuss the significant problem of San Jose giving control to developers over initial aspects of environmental review.

The Perspectives are from individuals, not organizations, but I enthusiastically agree with the position that I've represented on behalf of CGF and its members. On the radio today, the announcer identified me as working for Committee for Green Foothills, so our organization also received some Bay-Area wide media exposure.

Now hopefully, we'll get some action for San Jose to fix this!

-Brian

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CGF News Release: The “San Jose Process” Resulted in Coyote Valley Debacle, Environmentalists Say

(The following is from a press release CGF sent out yesterday. -Brian)

Committee for Green Foothills

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 17, 2007

PRESS CONTACTS:

Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate

phone (650) 968-7243 * brian@greenfoothills.org

The “San Jose Process” Resulted in Coyote Valley

Debacle, Environmentalists Say

SAN JOSE DIFFERS FROM MOST CITIES IN ALLOWING DEVELOPER-SELECTED AND CONTROLLED EXPERTS DETERMINE INITIAL ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW

The Committee for Green Foothills (CGF) alleged today that the “San Jose Process” of using developer-selected and developer-paid consultants for the city’s own environmental review is a systematic problem that resulted in the extensively criticized and withdrawn Coyote Valley Draft Environmental Impact Report. “Most other cities in the Bay Area have abandoned the practice of letting developers themselves select and hire the consultants to prepare the administrative draft versions of Environmental Impact Reports, but not San Jose,” said Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate for CGF. “The Coyote Valley Draft EIR only varied slightly from the usual San Jose Process where the City ‘adopted’ consultants previously hired by Coyote Valley developers in a no-bid arrangement. This slight improvement still resulted in a terrible, flaw-ridden document, but the only difference is this time there was intense scrutiny. The San Jose Process needs a systematic fix,” Schmidt continued.

In most Bay Area cities, when a developer applies for a permit that requires the city to do environmental review, the developer pays a fee and the city then uses the fee money to hire expert consultants to prepare the environmental report. San Jose, by contrast, allows the developer to directly select and hire the environmental consultants who prepare an administrative draft of the environmental report. While San Jose may then modify the administrative draft, the developer-controlled draft is biased to play down the impacts. The direct expertise is in the hands of people loyal to the developers, not to the City or to a neutral evaluation process.

“The Coyote Valley EIR actually improved modestly on the usual San Jose Process, and still produced a completely inadequate analysis that had to be withdrawn,” Schmidt said. “In this case, the City took over from the developers earlier than it usually does, but even that didn’t fix the biased report. The only real difference between this EIR and what San Jose usually produces from developer experts is that this time, people paid attention, and nobody liked what they saw.”

The City received over 1300 pages of comments from agencies, non-profit organizations, and individuals. The widespread scrutiny and criticism led to the decision to withdraw, revise, and recirculate the Draft EIR.

“San Jose has not yet fixed the San Jose Process,” Schmidt continued. “That Process is a holdover from a previous administration, but the new Mayor and City Council have the opportunity to make a change. The City should stop right now in its current plans to use the same biased consultant work. They should stop any decision on the Coyote Valley EIR until after the City’s General Plan has been revised. As part of the General Plan revision, or even earlier, the City should adopt the modern process used by almost everyone else, and have the City choose and direct the consultants that prepare the technical reports and Administrative Draft EIRs.”

Draft EIRs are the first version of the Environmental Impact Report circulated for public comments, and if not found to be significantly flawed, become the basis of the Final EIR. Administrative Draft EIRs are the initial versions of Draft EIRs that summarize and draw conclusions from the information found in the technical consultant reports on subjects such as impacts to air quality, traffic, and wildlife. Most cities require developers to pay a fee so the cities control all consultants involved in this process. The San Jose Process gives all control up to the Administrative Draft EIR to the developer. The extent to which the City even disputes developer bias is unknown as it all occurs behind the scenes, and the City has no right to access information created by consultants unless the developer allows it. For Coyote Valley, the City did ultimately hire the technical consultants and the consultants who prepared the Administrative Draft EIR, but only after those consultants had first been selected and paid for by the Coyote Valley developers (see Exhibit A to this Press Release).

In the mid-1990s, the Santa Clara County government under the leadership of then-Supervisor Joe Simitian switched from a developer-controlled process to the current process, and there has been no effort since to switch back.

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About the Committee for Green Foothills

Committee for Green Foothills is a regional grassroots organization working to establish and maintain land-use policies that protect the environment throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Committee for Green Foothills, established in 1962, is a Bay Area leader in the continuing effort to protect open space and the natural environment of our Peninsula. For more information about the Committee for Green Foothills or about our work on this issue, visit www.GreenFoothills.org.

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CGF Action Alert: Protect Open Space and Stop Bad Planning in San Jose's Evergreen District!

(This may also be published on our Action Alert page, but in the interest of time, I'm putting it here on the blog as well. -Brian)
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At their meeting on Tuesday, May 15, the San Jose City Council will decide whether to approve an updated Specific Plan for the Evergreen District that relies on an outdated City General Plan, has numerous environmental impacts, and could harm efforts to slow the developers’ land rush in Coyote Valley.

Please join us in asking the City Council to defer a major update of the Evergreen Specific Plan until after the City General Plan has been revised.

What's Happening:

Developers in east San Jose are proposing conversion of 500 acres of land to housing that is now mostly designated for industrial and commercial purposes. Currently, housing makes more money for developers, but less money for the City’s coffers. The City is considering going along with this proposal, despite the fact that San Jose uses the lack of space for commercial and industrial uses in the city as an excuse to sprawl into Coyote Valley, destroying farmland forever.

Although on a smaller scale than Coyote Valley, the Evergreen proposal will have similar impacts on traffic and air quality. Of particular concern is the 50-acres of prime farmland and a smaller amount of burrowing owl habitat that will be lost. Developers have opposed doing environmental mitigation to compensate for the lost farmland and owl habitat. They did not want to meet the standard that the City proposes for Coyote Valley, a standard that is itself insufficient.

San Jose has not revised its General Plan since 1994, and is now starting a revision that will take two to three years to complete. As is the case with Coyote Valley, an immediate, drastic change to the Evergreen Specific Plan that relies on an outdated General Plan is putting the cart before the horse. It would be far better for the City to revise the General Plan and then analyze the proposals it has received for Evergreen to decide its policy there.

Committee for Green Foothills strongly supports deferral of this project.

Why this is important:

It is likely that some change in zoning and the Specific Plan for Evergreen will be needed, but such changes should be done under the right circumstances and not at the expense of the environment. Making these changes under an updated General Plan that corresponds to the San Jose of today makes better decision-making far more likely. Constant maneuvering and pressure by developers also give a reason to put a brake on this project.

Handling Evergreen development correctly increases the chance of doing the same with the even-bigger Coyote Valley decision, so the decision on Tuesday is important.

For more information on these proposals, read the Mercury News editorial, and the Draft EIR summary.

What You Can Do:

Please ask the City Council to defer a decision on the Evergreen Specific Plan until the General Plan has been revised, and to ensure that loss of farmland and burrowing owl habitat be mitigated, if and when a decision on Evergreen ever happens.

Contact:
San Jose City Council:

Email the Mayor,

Email the City Council,

or fax (408) 277-3868

As always, please send a copy to us so we can track the efficiency of our work:
Fax (650) 968-8431 or action@GreenFoothills.org.

Thank you for speaking up for environmental protection!

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San Jose on Time Magazine in the year 2040

I participated in a preliminary planning meeting for the planned update of San Jose's General Plan. These updates are due every 15 years, and starting now makes it possible to make the 2009 deadline.

I emphasized four points:

• The General Plan should control Specific Plans, so the Coyote Valley Specific Plan should not be approved before the the General Plan is revised. After the revision is complete, the City can revisit whether it should go forward with Coyote Valley.
• There are thousands of acres of City jurisdictional land outside of the Urban Service Area where the City has no plans for development. Current residential zoning is completely inappropriate and an invitation to sprawl. The City should either de-annex these lands, reverting them to County control, or should redesignate them as "Open Space."
• The review should examine how much of the City's industrial land has been rezoned to other uses. Given the City's constant reference to the lack of employment in the City as a reason for expanding into Coyote Valley open space, the City should examine whether that lack of employment is a self-inflicted wound.
• The City's Riparian and Wildlife protection policies have loopholes that have been repeatedly exploited. The City should do a "Best Practices" comparison between its policies and those found in other cities, and update its policies to reflect the best found elsewhere.

Also as part of the process, City Staff asked us to imagine that San Jose was the cover story in a Time Magazine issued in 2040 for being the "best-managed" American city, and then describe the magazine's cover. This is what I gave them:

Time Magazine
Earth Day, 2040

San Jose: Wildlife City

From the “Everglades of the West” to hiking trails among the mountain wildflowers of Coyote Ridge, San Jose has promoted urban access to wildlife. Can other cities copy its protection of urban river steelhead, and migration corridors for Tule Elk?

Let's hope it becomes true!

-Brian

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Coyote Valley at San Jose City Council and in Wikipedia

I was at San Jose City Council late last night, trying to save the riparian zone of Calabazas Creek from a Duckett Way development that was using loopholes to bust the City's 100-foot buffer policy (we were mildly successful).

Since I was there anyway, though, I took advantage of the Open Forum to announce that City staff had informed me that they didn't plan to respond to our criticism of the Draft Fiscal Analysis for Coyote Valley. I said it was critical that the City respond, because the analysis was flawed and the project jeopardizes the City's finances. We'll see what happens, but at least the City Council now knows about it.

And thinking about the subject made me decide to update the Wikipedia entry for Coyote Valley to include the fiscal analysis issues.

We're getting the word out!

-Brian

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