Local Planning Follies: 2021 edition

(c) by Mark Dempsey

A local resident recently wrote the Orangevale View to plead for citizen participation in land-use planning since Orangevale is "under threat." In this case, builders want more homes than the designated zoning, requesting 2 - 3 homes per acre rather than the current zoning of one on five acres. (The "Preserve Orangevale's Country Life" facebook page lists several projects that propose increased density in Orangevale north of Greenback.)

As someone who sat on a Community Planning Advisory Council (CPAC) for nearly a decade, I'd suggest the writer is counting far too much on the CPAC, and is missing the bigger picture. Incidentally, there's  a two-year term limit for CPAC members, but no one else was dumb enough to volunteer.

First, CPACs are advisory only--they do not make the final decision. The Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors do that. When my CPAC voted unanimously to reject a project, the Supervisors unanimously approved it. Guess whose opinion prevailed?

In our region, the process itself is designed to fail. Public policy makers defuse public anger with endless, and meaningless hearings when the public patronizes meetings that are advisory only. Even zoning is virtually unenforced.

The region's planning process is so meaningless that in 2004, at the height of a recent housing bubble, 35,000 acres were proposed for rezone. We don't have "plans," we barely have suggestions. 

A few years ago several locals told Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan we didn't want a Walmart at Hazel and Greenback, she rejected the request, saying the zoning was commercial, so she could do nothing about it. Zoning apparently arrives on stone tablets, engraved by lightning, at least until the land speculators propose a change.

A contrary example: by my count, the Tim Lewis' "Brentwood Village" development at Pecan and Greeenback could have respected any one of four different plans: the Regional Blueprint, the Sacramento County General Plan, the Orangevale Community Plan and an "SPA" (Special Planning Area)--a 35-page document that was probably the result of weeks of advisory hearings and community deliberation. So which plan was built? Answer: None of the above. The stone tablets turn to vapor when the mood is right.

So when the Orangevale View writer cites the proposed projects are not "following the rules" it's just a sign of inexperience with the system. Orangevale's proposals are tiny compared to 3,000 acres at Sunrise/Douglas which was rezoned from agriculture to intensive building. Sacramento City annexed then rezoned thousands of acres of agriculture in North Natomas. It's a pattern.

North Natomas is especially unsuited for development since it's 20 foot underwater floodplain surrounded by weak levees. It's so unsuitable that a federal grant to increase the regional sewer plant's capacity even required a $6 million penalty if that capacity served North Natomas. 

The speculators who controlled the North Natomas land were unfazed. They went all the way to then-vice-president George Herbert Walker Bush, who made that penalty payable in installments rather than the prohibitive up front fee, and got the speculators a $43 million grant to improve those weak levees to pre-Katrina standards.

Paying $6 on the installment plan to get $43 is a pretty good deal--but wait, there's more! The speculators paid roughly $2,000 an acre for North Natomas, and once they got their entitlements to build, sold it to builders for a hundred times what they paid (Wincrest homes was one buyer). If your calculator isn't handy, that's 10,000% gross return on investment (ROI). And since developers can trade the newly-valuable land for income producing property like shopping malls and apartments and defer taxes indefinitely, it counts as after-tax ROI!

The late Supervisor Grantland Johnson once told a public meeting that it's widely acknowledged throughout the state that our region is the most in the hip pocket of the developers. This is not a contest we want to win.

So while you're protesting a five acre rezone, ask Supervisor Sue Frost why she voted (on LAFCO) to expand Elk Grove by roughly a thousand acres when that City has at least that much vacant infill now. Ask our supervisors why we're even considering any outlying development when the region has 20 years worth of unbuilt infill. I'd encourage everyone to protest the process as much as any single project. We could have smart growth, but this ain't it. It's designed to fail, and works as designed.

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Mark Dempsey was vice-chair of the Rio Linda/Elverta CPAC who has been writing about this for a long time. Here's a piece from 1993, for one example.