Between a rock and a hard place
County Planner Tim Heffington watches over Stanford GUP
by Brian Schmidt

County's Planning Office staff planner Tim Heffington sits between environmentalists carefully watching Santa Clara County's oversight of Stanford University and Stanford's jealously guarding its autonomy. CGF Legislative Advocate Brian Schmidt recently met with Tim to discuss his work and the Stanford issues that are now before the County.

Brian Schmidt: Tim, your job is different from anyone else's in the County Planning Office. Is your job title different? And how would you describe your position?

Tim Heffington: My job title is simply Planner, but my work focuses on ensuring Stanford University implementation of conditions that the university agreed to in the December 2000 General Use Permit (also called "post-approval monitoring"). I also work with Stanford staff on implementation of land use policies contained within the Stanford Community Plan. Within the County's unincorporated jurisdiction, Stanford is unique because campus development is similar to urban development of cities outside the County's unincorporated jurisdiction.

Stanford's permission to develop its property over the lifetime of the permit included hundreds of conditions of approval and numerous environmental mitigation measures. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a monitoring program to track compliance with these mitigation measures. I work with Stanford, the community, local jurisdictions and regulatory agencies to monitor Stanford's compliance.

Tim Heffington works daily with the stacks of documents governing the impementation of Stanford's General Use Permit and Community Plan.

Brian: You work full-time on Stanford issues, right?

Tim: Yes. There is plenty of work to be done by both Stanford and the County for implementing the conditions and monitoring compliance with the permit. The Community Plan policies and General Use Permit conditions have to be implemented. Both documents call for developing sophisticated plans for managing various environmental issues, and there's a lot of work that goes on long after the approval of the plans and permits.

Brian: Your work also involves the Community Resource Group. Can you explain to our readers what the CRG is and does? (Schmidt is one of the members of the CRG, which includes 8-12 individuals. - Ed.)

Tim: The CRG brings together groups like yours with Stanford staff and members of the community in order to review implementation of the policies that the County adopted with respect to Stanford. A prior version of the CRG functioned before December 2000 to help develop the policies, and now the current CRG provides feedback on policy implementation. I coordinate CRG meetings and facilitate its work.

Brian: Let's turn to the work that is going on right now. Stanford committed to dedicating trails in return for its permission to develop. Isn't Stanford lagging on its commitments?

Tim: No. Stanford presented a signed agreement identifying proposed trail dedications within a year of receiving its permit, as it was required to do. The County does not consider Stanford to be out of compliance with this General Use Permit requirement.

Brian: But the permit says an agreement on trails will be reached within a year (from the signing of the GUP in December 2000 - Ed.), not that Stanford will just present whatever it feels like presenting.

Tim: The County Board of Supervisors continued consideration of the trails so as to allow consideration of variations that were not included within Stanford's original proposal, and environmental groups -- including yours -- had supported doing that.

Brian: I'm not sure that gets Stanford off the hook when it failed to present adequate trails, but we don't need to settle this issue here. What exactly is happening with trails now?

Tim: For the S1 Trail, near Page Mill Road, we hope to have a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Report available for public review in June. The County Board of Supervisors directed us to work first on the S1 Trail and later on the C1 Trail, so we will develop a timeline for the C1 Trail when we get further along in S1 Trail process.

Brian: Okay, what about the Special Conservation Areas in the Stanford Foothills? What is happening with them?

Tim: The Special Conservation Areas include land with natural resource constraints and habitat for special status species. Both the Community Plan and the GUP required Stanford to submit a Special Conservation Area Plan for those areas. Stanford submitted the Draft Special Conservation Area Plan concurrently with other GUP-required plans (Wetlands, Water Conservation, Special Events Traffic, and others).

Based on County review and outside reviewer comments, the County worked with Stanford to revise the other plans first because they required less revision. Those plans are now completed. (Tim points to a stack of documents on a table.) After June, when the Draft Trail SEIR has been reviewed by the public and we have completed the Stanford Annual Report, we plan to initiate the process for revision of the Special Conservation Area Plan and adoption of the zoning ordinance amendment before the end of 2004.

Brian: And in the meantime, are the Special Conservation Areas protected?

Tim: Yes. The Stanford Community Plan established land use policies that protect the Special Conservation Areas.

Brian: Has Stanford proposed any development for the Special Conservation Areas?

Tim: Stanford has not proposed any new development within the Special Conservation Areas. However, Stanford did apply for and receive approval for a golf course reconfiguration within the County. This reconfiguration involves golf course turf that is technically within the existing Special Conservation Area (within County jurisdiction) as part of a larger Sand Hill Road widening project.

Brian: We'll keep watching the Special Conservation Area issue. Are you involved with monitoring the Carnegie Foundation building project?

Tim: Carnegie, not Stanford, is the official sponsor of that project, although Stanford as the landowner is also involved. I know that biological monitoring has been implemented there, but you'll have to go to our other staff people for the details on Carnegie.

Brian: It sounds like you have plenty to do with everything else regarding Stanford. What do you do when you're not stuck here at work?

Tim: I live in Santa Cruz with my wife and dogs, and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors whenever I can, including bicycling, skiing and occasionally getting out on whitewater. And I enjoy hiking on trails.

Brian: Using trails sounds great -- we'll look forward to doing some of that here. Thank you, Tim.