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An environmental fresh start for the San Jose general plan Like all California cities and counties, San Jose has a General Plan that provides overall guidelines for city governance that, under state law, must be updated every 15 years. The last major revision occurred in 1994, so the city needs to start now in order to finish by 2009. The General Plan revision represents an opportunity to tighten and extend environmental protections to wildlife habitats and other areas threatened by development. San Jose has policies protecting streamside riparian habitats with 100-foot buffers, but the developers evade it through the use of loopholes. The General Plan revision can fix that problem, as well as similar problems with wildlife protection. Even more broadly, over ten thousand acres of San Jose jurisdiction extend up into the hills near Calero and Anderson Reservoirs, far away from any existing or planned city infrastructure. It’s long past time to end this 1960’s imitation of Los Angeles-style planned sprawl, and rezone that undeveloped land to open space. Unincorporated Almaden Valley represents another decision point. Agriculture still survives in this area, but it has long been targeted by San Jose for a sprawl-type subdivision. That proposal should be removed from the General Plan in order to avoid repeating the current train wreck that constitutes the Coyote Valley development process. An updated General Plan can help fix Coyote Valley as well. Most importantly, we believe there’s growing recognition that no final decision on the Coyote Valley Specific Plan should be done until it’s placed in the context of a revised General Plan. Building on that recognition can help fix the mistaken proposal for Coyote Valley development, all in the context of a much-improved San Jose General Plan. Published Summer 2007 in Green Footnotes. Page last updated August 22, 2007. |
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