San Luis Obispo County 2000-2001 - California Grand Jury Reports

April 27, 2001 — Land Use and the California Environmental Quality Act in San Luis Obispo County*

45 pages 4 findings 6 recommendations

Findings & Recommendations 4 findings

F1: The Resource Management System (RMS) is a z) County follow-up could be enhanced to assure separate process from cumulative impacts that all the required mitigation measures have analysis. been undertaken and completed. m) There is a fundamental weakness in the RMS aa) The environmental staff lacks available time to process because the Board of Supervisors does gain first-hand field experience regarding not certify the level of severity. mitigation measures. This can result in n) A water resource capacity study, resulting from inadequate environmental protection. the RMS process, needs to be completed. bb) The Board of Supervisors granting of the o) A capital budget to fund resource capacity Woodlands appeal of the scope of work discounts expansion to sustain growth and development is the efforts of the county staff to be responsive to inadequate and incomplete. CEQA in its broadest sense. p) The RMS/Growth Management System and cc) Adequate funding is required to accomplish growth rate setting discretionary decision is made CEQA and general plan objectives. The basis of with the use of an inappropriate CEQA general fees, including general and administrative fees is rule exemption. an important aspect. The county's project tracking q) system is dd) The Planning and Building Department has antiquated and in need of updating. formed a task force called "Vision 20/20" whose General r) amendments to the Growth job it is to implement improvements in the Management Ordinance, Title 26 of the County planning process. Code are inappropriately limited to the South ee) The Planning and Building Department's County Planning Area. strategic plan is an excellent management tool s) The El Pomar Estrella Area Plan update offers an that ties objectives with the budget and provides a opportunity to establish a general plan based systematic follow-up to assure objectives are approach to CEQA and cumulative effects achieved. analysis. t) The Board of Supervisors has not developed a uniform statement of roles and responsibilities for these councils. u) RFP PS-704 for an EIR for the South County mixes general plan amendments and growth management amendments. v) RFP PS-704 requires the selected consultant to prepare the project description. This is inappropriate; this should be a fundamental function of the Planning and Building Department. w) The substantiation for negative declaration determinations are not easily accessible for the general public. x) A mitigation monitoring and reporting program's effectiveness depends in large part upon the quality of the mitigation measures themselves. Measures need to be specific - what is required to be done, when it is to be done, and who is responsible for ensuring its completion. Mitigation measures sometimes fail to address the y) actual environmental impact of projects and are not always effective or reasonable.

Related Recommendations (1)

R1: The county should enhance planning and environmental staff communication with the public and related resources by: and advisory councils by: A. creating and maintaining a San Luis Obispo identifying adequate funding sources for 0 planning and environmental work to provide the County web site, which would contain: budget agendas for and minutes of meetings of the necessary accomplish the to 0 recommendations contained herein, Board of Supervisors, Planning Commission and the Subdivision Review Board, assuring that all fees recover all costs including 0 the staff reports that support resolutions and general and administrative costs, 0 establishing a dedicated account to assure that recommendations to the bodies discussed above at the time the reports are provided to those the fees collected are utilized for planning and bodies in advance of their meetings, environmental work only, fully staffing the Planning Department to assure a description of each project that is granted a 0 all plans are up to date and environmental CEQA exemption with the reasons for the processes are fully supported, and exemption, adding sufficient staff to allow adequate 0 other information developed in consultation with ٠ understanding and enforcement of mitigation the advisory councils and the public, and requirements. access to the county's project tracking system. As 0 part of this effort, the project tracking system

F2: change how the allocations will be dispensed (2000); Ludhorf & Scalmini water study (2000), as follows: a) redefine categories from "Major Santa Barbara Co. 1999 Groundwater Report; projects" and "Small Projects" to "Category 1 - Multi- Woodlands Specific Plan EIR (1998); family residences in phased or specific plan b. due to uncertain water availability, the annual development (allotted 20%)", "Category 2 - update of the County's Resource Management Developers of one single family residence (allotted System recommended and Board of Supervisors 50%)", and "Category 3 - Developers of more than required, that a Resource Capacity Study be one residence (allotted 30%)"; b) if the allotment is completed to determine groundwater availability; not used in any one category it can be transferred to a. State water is now being provided to another category; c) no single applicant shall receive communities within the groundwater basin, namely more than 6% of the maximum annual allocations; Santa Maria, which is providing additional recharge and into the basin.

Related Recommendations (1)

R2: The county should expand and should be in the format of the strategic plan. 43 develop dedicated funding provide additional sources to

F3: for areas coming out of moratoria (e.g. Los Osos), reserve 2.3% of the affected community's The recent water reports appear to come to housing inventory from overall County's annual different conclusions ranging from "overdraft" to allocations for that community's use. "water levels are near historically high levels" for the Santa Maria groundwater basin. Also, in May, 2000, the Board of Supervisors approved the following:

Related Recommendations (1)

R3: The county mitigation processes should be fully developed and updated. The and procedures should information needs of the local communities be should be sought out and included in the system. strengthened to: geographic information Α system (GIS) provide for an extensive public airing of 0 technology should be employed. environmental issues prior to the issuance of a B. Improve communications with and the negative declaration, or mitigated negative effectiveness of area advisory councils by: declaration, that is consistent with the intent of defining uniform roles and responsibilities, Planning Area. Details are given beginning on require that staff expand the negative declaration 0 checklist used in reviewing projects potentially of this report, and subject to CEQA by attaching, and placing in developing a work plan to direct the water 0 resource capacity study and preparatory work to publicly-available project file (possibly on a web enable the study should be completed in advance site), a detailed statement in plain language, of the reasons staff concludes that (a) the project of the DWR report, see of this report. will not, with reasonable certainty, adversely impact the environment in any significant way

F26: County Area Plan would be allowed until an EIR was Amendments And Cumulative Assessment prepared to address 1) the impacts of the 180 Impact Report. March 14, 2001. additional exempted residences approved by the Board of Supervisors, and 2) determine the water availability for the South County planning area. PROJECT BACKGROUND Eight county general plan amendments within the On August 8, 2000, the County of San Luis area have been authorized for consideration which Obispo "initiated" a number of amendments to the would increase the density in the South County's Title 26 - Growth Management Ordinance County/Nipomo Mesa area over what has been (GMO) relating to development in the South County previously considered. The description for each of planning area. The following is a list of those these GPAs is found in Table A and Figure 2. amendments supported for processing by the Board of Supervisors: Other factors or information that are relevant to this issue include: at a countywide level, allow for the use of

Related Recommendations (1)

R26: County Area Plan would be allowed until an EIR was Amendments And Cumulative Assessment prepared to address 1) the impacts of the 180 Impact Report. March 14, 2001. additional exempted residences approved by the Board of Supervisors, and 2) determine the water availability for the South County planning area. PROJECT BACKGROUND Eight county general plan amendments within the On August 8, 2000, the County of San Luis area have been authorized for consideration which Obispo "initiated" a number of amendments to the would increase the density in the South County's Title 26 - Growth Management Ordinance County/Nipomo Mesa area over what has been (GMO) relating to development in the South County previously considered. The description for each of planning area. The following is a list of those these GPAs is found in Table A and Figure 2. amendments supported for processing by the Board of Supervisors: Other factors or information that are relevant to this issue include: at a countywide level, allow for the use of

Additional Recommendations 2

Not linked to specific findings.

R4: The should county reevaluate recent land project/CEQA use In accordance with the provisions of the Penal processing decisions in the broad Code,44 county representatives appeared before the context of public stewardship Grand Jury on April 4, 2001, to read and discuss the responsibilities especially in view

R5: The county should evaluate policy and (b) that the cumulative effect of the project, decision making by: together with like projects, will not, with 0 directing the staff to prepare a single annual reasonable certainty, adversely impact the report that contains information about the environment in any significant way, general plan, CEQA actions, and the capital require that staff clearly identify projects 0 budget. This composite report should be recommended for approval on the basis of combined with the RMS annual report, negative declarations on all agenda as such and amending the RMS process to include an annual 0 provide full and adequate notice of such projects policy decision on the level of severity, and and of the proposed negative declaration directing the Vision 20/20 Task Force to: 0 treatment to all interested parties, including (but refine and adopt the agenda included in 0 not necessarily limited to) area advisory councils

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.