Update: We’re pleased to report that on September 25, the Planning Commission voted to deny both appeals. The votes were 4-3 and 5-2. Thank you to everyone who emailed the Planning Commissioners!
On Thursday, September 25, the Santa Clara County Planning Commission will consider whether two development applications for residential sprawl on open space outside San Jose have expired and should be denied. Both of these developments would destroy wildlife habitat and put residents in harm’s way, and the developer missed the deadline to complete both applications.
In August, the Planning Commission denied a similar appeal because of the missed deadline. Please ask the Planning Commission to deny this developer’s appeals as well.
What’s Happening
Developers have submitted more than 40 applications to Santa Clara County under California’s “builder’s remedy” law. The builder’s remedy law says that if a city or county doesn’t have a state-approved plan for building enough homes, developers can ignore local zoning rules and build anywhere they wish, as long as the project fits certain criteria. The purpose of the law is to make sure cities and counties don’t shirk their responsibility to build housing.
However, builder’s remedy projects must adhere to strict legal deadlines for submitting completed development applications. Several of these developers have failed to submit all the required information by the deadline, and the County has determined their applications to be incomplete – meaning these projects cannot proceed under the builder’s remedy law. Now, the developers are appealing those incompleteness determinations to the Planning Commission.
In August, the Planning Commission heard the first of these appeals. The Commission denied that appeal because the developer failed to provide all of the required information by the deadline.
Now, another developer who owns two parcels of open space outside of San Jose has similarly failed to provide the required information for those applications. In fact, this situation is even more egregious: the developer was given multiple chances to provide the missing information – which includes major items that are necessary to process the application – and is still refusing to provide that information to the County even after several requests.
Other builder’s remedy projects have also been deemed incomplete and are expected to appeal those determinations to the Planning Commission in the coming months.
Why It Matters
Both of these projects would create residential sprawl on open space and wildlife habitat outside city limits. One project, on Almaden Road south of San Jose, would put 49 homes next to the wildlife corridor of Alamitos Creek. The other, on Circle Hill Road next to Almaden Quicksilver County Park, would destroy oak woodland habitat to make way for 20 homes. Both sites have been identified by wildlife experts as important habitat for threatened and endangered species, and local residents have observed abundant wildlife, including owls, foxes, rabbits, raccoons, bobcats, deer, mountain lions, coyotes, wild turkeys, quail, and numerous bird species, including native hummingbirds.
These two sites are also both in hazard zones – the Almaden Road site proposes to locate its septic field in a FEMA floodplain and liquefaction zone (meaning that in an earthquake the ground could liquefy), and the Circle Hill site is in a high fire hazard severity zone, a landslide hazard zone, and a seismic hazard zone.
Santa Clara County has received dozens of builder’s remedy development proposals totaling nearly 7,000 units, nearly all on open space or farmland and many in FEMA flood zones or wildfire hazard zones. If all of these residential sprawl projects were to be approved, County resources would be severely strained by trying to protect and provide services to thousands of new homes scattered throughout the rural countryside.
Our region needs to build more housing, but we need to build it in urban, infill locations – not in rural areas, on open space or wildlife habitat, and definitely not in areas where people would be put in harm’s way.
What You Can Do
Please email the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and ask them to deny the appeals of both the Almaden Road project and the Circle Hill project.