(Committee for Green Foothills submitted the letter below to Santa Clara County Supervisors on improving the Parkland Acquisition Plan. -Brian) September 27, 2010 Santa Clara CountyBoard of Supervisors Re: Item 20, Study Session on the County Parks Acquisition Plan – comment for the Study Session and response to the Draft Summary of Public Workshops...
Category: County HCP
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Victory for riparian protection in San Jose
Good news from the revision process for the San Jose General Plan – staff has included a 100′ stream buffer from development in all but “exceptional circumstances” in the draft to be sent to the City Council. This protection was originally omitted, but I pointed out the omission at Monday’s Task Force revision, and staff...
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Why County Parkland Shouldn’t Be Considered Mitigation for County Road Impacts
Below is a video running through CGF’s PowerPoint on the mistake that Santa Clara County is making by balancing the impacts of the County roads and airports with parkland acquired by through the Parks Charter Fund. A letter we wrote is here, and I’m happy to send the PowerPoint file to anyone who wants it....
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CGF Comments on Admin Draft County Habitat Plan
(Below are CGF’s comments on the Santa Clara County Habitat Plan’s Second Administrative Draft. They’re imported from an Excel file so may be hard to understand the context, bu the first number refers to the Draft Chapter number (e.g., Chapter 9), and further numbers if any refer to chapter sections (9.2.1) and/or page numbers in...
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A PowerPoint presentation on why Parks Charter Funding shouldn’t be used for road mitigation
We’ve written repeatedly on why using Parks Funding as credit against impacts from road impacts in the Habitat Conservation Plan is a bad idea. Below the fold is a PowerPoint explanation of the problem. -Brian
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Opposing the Bush Administration attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act
We sent out an Urgent Alert to supporters over the weekend, asking them to contact the Bush Administration and announce their opposition to proposed rules that would weaken the Endangered Species Act. We contacted the Interior Department as well, and wrote the following. The Committee for Green Foothills represents over a thousand families in Santa...
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Yet another problem with the Parks Charter Fund/Habitat Plan issue
Yesterday someone pointed out to me a problem with counting parkland purchases as mitigation for road impacts that I hadn’t thought of before: the Habitat Plan treats the amount of road impacts as a fixed quantity (somewhat simplified but accurate enough for these purposes), when in fact it could be higher or lower. If the...
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Why Santa Clara County shouldn’t reduce the benefits of the Parks Charter Fund
(Below is a display we used in a so-far-unsuccessful effort to get the County Roads Department to keep its hands off of the Parks Charter fund. -Brian) Reasons why the Roads Fund, not the Parks Charter Fund, should pay for roads impacts 1. Parks Fund meant to be a net benefit, but used as a...
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Bad decision by Santa Clara County Supervisors on Parks
We told them not to convert the Parks Charter Fund from an environmental benefit to a kind of mitigation bank that pays for environmental impacts from road widening. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to persuade them so far. Below is a recent letter on this issue in the Mercury News: Parks Charter Fund not meant...
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Problem with Santa Clara County Parks funding road and airport responsibilities
(CGF sent out the following email about the County Habitat Plan and what we consider to be an inappropriate funding mechanism using the County Parks Charter funding. We will be following this closely. -Brian) Dear Members of the Board of Supervisors: To clarify comments the Committee for Green Foothills submitted at yesterday’s (May 6th) Board...