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Coyote Valley Development
Too Early to Declare Victory
 
by Brian Schmidt

It’s true that San Jose has withdrawn its Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) under intense criticism from Committee for Green Foothills, and from other organizations and agencies all the way up to the California Attorney General. It’s also true that the current City Council and mayor now seem committed to preserving and updating the City's General Plan, with strong “triggers” that preclude rapid development of Coyote Valley. But contrary to rumors, Coyote Valley development is far from “dead.”

Coyote Valley — photo by Ernie Goiten

Some background on the Coyote Valley Draft EIR
Why, one may wonder, did the Coyote Valley Draft EIR sweep the environmental impacts under the rug? The answer lies in the role that the Coyote Valley developers, hiding behind the name of the Coyote Housing Group, played in picking the consultants who ultimately wrote the Draft EIR. The City of San Jose hired the developer’s consultants for the important job of writing the EIR, without considering others who had no vested interest in the outcome.

Having failed so badly to identify the environmental impacts in the EIR, one would expect that the consultants who wrote it would be replaced — or, at the very least, that others would have an opportunity to bid. Although the Committee repeatedly pointed out the enormous bias in a process that allows developers to essentially write EIRs, the City is allowing the same consultants that wrote the original EIR to revise it.

Fiscal analysis based on rosy assumptions
The Draft Fiscal Analysis, purportedly showing a tax surplus for the City, relied on unrealistic property tax growth projections based on highly inflated housing valuations. The Committee challenged these projections, and the City promised some unspecified revisions. The revisions, however, will be done by the same consultants that prepared the first draft and who were originally selected and hired by the Coyote Valley developers.

And finally, while the current political climate is not favorable to Coyote Valley development, the City is trying to correct what it considers to be a problem — that more employees live in San Jose and work elsewhere than the reverse. San Jose resents its “bedroom” status to cities to the north. This situation hurts San Jose financially, so it now wants to reverse its situation, aiming for 1.1 jobs for every employed resident and making other cities become San Jose's bedroom community. Coyote Valley development, which theoretically has more jobs than housing, could be drafted into this effort despite its many environmental flaws.

So while we have cause for celebration, any declaration of victory over the Coyote Valley development proposal should wait — more hard work lies ahead.

Published Fall 2007 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated December 16, 2007.