Californians for Property Rights

The following are CPR’s recommendations to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisiors. (You can download a pdf version to print out here)

Honorable Supervisors:

Please find below the Californians for Property Rights (CPR) response to your November 9th document. While the Supervisors’ Subcommittee has addressed most of the issues raised by CPR’s March 8th, March 29th, April 26th and June 7th position papers, its conclusions in many cases do not align with our prior recommendations. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the Subcommittee has employed a moderate approach that attempts to balance conflicting, but equally legitimate, MidCoast community interests. Because of this moderation, and with the proviso (elaborated below) that two crucial LCP implementation issues are not treated in the November 9th document, CPR endorses the Subcommittee’s recommendations as far as they go. It is an old saw of policymaking that if all the conflicting interest groups have something to complain about, the policymakers must be on the right track. That is certainly true here, and explains why the two MidCoast political extremes, ‘no-growth’ and ‘pro-growth,’ both feel betrayed. Immoderate political factions, who do not recognize the need to accommodate legitimate interests with which they conflict, will never be satisfied with a ‘win-win’ balancing approach. Their vehemence provides all the more reason to adopt the Subcommittee recommendations.

LCP Implementation Issues Not Treated By The Subcommittee Recommendations

1) LCP Policy 2.14b, Requiring The Redrafting Of Boundaries Of Midcoast Special Utility Districts, Remains Unfulfilled

Topic 21 of the November 9th document, “LCP Tasks Assigned to the County,” states (p. 30) that “The LCP includes policies directing the County to perform specific tasks unrelated to development review…The Planning Commission recommends that the Board direct staff to promptly complete these tasks….” LCP Policy 2.14b is an unfulfilled task that does not appear on the November 9th task list. The policy reads:

The County will redraft the boundaries of special districts or public utilities providing urban level services to correspond to the boundaries of urban areas…and rural residential areas established by the Local Coastal Program.

Contrary to this policy, both the Montara Water & Sanitary District (MWSD) and Granada Sanitary District (GSD) continue to include MidCoast rural lands within their boundaries, areas which the LCP prohibits those districts from serving. Members of your own Board, San Mateo County Counsel, your LAFCo Executive Director, and Coastal Commission Regional and Executive Directors have publicly acknowledged that current boundaries violate Policy 2.14b and need to be redrafted. CPR’s March 29th position paper documented at some length the ongoing taxation and electoral irregularities that persist due to the boundary discrepancies. Because of the incorrect boundaries, rural-area voters cast illegal ballots in MidCoast special district elections last month. This month, general taxes from rural properties will be wrongly distributed to MidCoast utility districts, monies that should go to cash-strapped agencies (school, harbor, fire, library, community and junior college districts, etc.) that do serve the rural MidCoast. Rural properties continue to be assessed special taxes to finance utility services those properties are prohibited in perpetuity from using.

The primacy of Policy 2.14b within our Local Coastal Program is underscored by the extraordinary protections it has from changes or amendment. Whereas LCP policies can usually be changed by a majority vote of your Board, a handful of asterisked foundational LCP policies can only be amended by a County-wide plebiscite recommended by a 4-of-5 supermajority of your Board. In fact, only two other policies within the Public Works Component are accorded this degree of protection, one of which (Policy 2.4) stipulates that, as a condition of any permit approval, special districts shall be required to conform to the policies of the Local Coastal Program.

Policy 2.14b is accorded extra levels of legislative protection not least because it keeps the LCP in conformity with State Elections, Public Utility, Taxation and Government Codes on the need for a special district’s service area to be coterminous with its electoral and taxation jurisdictions. It should be noted that the same principle is referred to in the Subcommittee’s recommendation for Topic 14 (p. 22), where the suggestion to exclude rural residential areas from utility service is rejected in part because those properties are assessed taxes by the utility district. By the same reasoning it is equally true that rural properties, which by definition are excluded from utility service, should not be assessed taxes by the utility district. The need to implement Policy 2.14b is indisputable. This can be ensured by adding the following clause to page 30’s list of LCP tasks assigned to the County:

6 Redraft the boundaries of MidCoast utility districts to correspond to the urban and rural residential areas.

2) The Subcommittee’S Proposed Affordable Housing Policy Offers A Key Incentive – A Priority Water Connection – Which Is Unavailable In The Montara Water & Sanitary District’S Service Area

The Subcommittee’s initiative on dispersed affordable housing is an inspired piece of progressive policymaking. Unfortunately, MWSD’s self-imposed ‘moratorium’ on new water connections threatens to thwart the effectiveness of the affordable housing policy’s implementation, while creating a number of undesirable side effects. For example, because the Coastside County Water District (CCWD) does have priority water connections, the incentives to create affordable housing will be greater in CCWD territory, which is the southern part of the MidCoast. As expensive as the El Granada area is, it is actually the northern part of the MidCoast – Montara and Moss Beach – that needs affordable housing the most. Disincentivized affordable housing in MWSD territory is also unfair to CCWD, which has a fixed number of priority water connections.

There are other foreseeable problems for the implementation of a progressive affordable housing policy while the moratorium exists. Because of the other incentives, a property owner may choose to create affordable housing in MWSD territory despite the unavailability of a water connection, by drilling a well. The subsequent buyer, who can be assumed to scarcely afford the purchase, is then saddled with a domestic well that can be very expensive to maintain and repair. If the well fails (as some have), the owner has no options, since MWSD does not provide connections to relieve failed wells, or even allow transfers of an unused connection from one property to another in its service area. In another scenario, suppose that the district at some time in the future has surplus water connections, and compels well owners to convert to its system. An ordinance describing this compulsory scenario has already been adopted by MWSD. The lower-income affordable housing owner would then face the considerable expense of purchasing the compulsory connection, paying for its installation to the residence, and decommissioning and removing the property’s well and equipment. It is predictable that affordable housing owners could not afford such expenses.

The obvious solution to these problems is for MWSD to increase its water supply and offer water connections as soon as possible, so that the Supervisors’ affordable housing policy is not thwarted. The roadblock to that solution – equally obvious – is that a majority of the MWSD directors are politically opposed to providing the increased water supply, because they believe it will be growth-inducing. This tension, between the directors’ mandated responsibilities to supply water and their desire to exercise an anti-growth planning authority by limiting water supply, has caused the district to play a ‘blame game’ with the County over the pace and process of bringing newly-drilled, high-yield MWSD wells into production.

CPR requests that the Supervisors frankly assess the dangers to public safety and health that result from MWSD’s footdragging on supplying water, and recommends that a five-member Working Group be established to fast-track bringing water supply into line with the community’s current and future needs. The Working Group could be comprised of two MWSD employees (e.g., general manager and chief engineer), two County employees (e.g., directors of environmental services and planning), and one community member residing within MWSD’s service area. The Working Group could report regularly to the Board’s Subcommittee, who would then provide updates to your entire Board. The sorry truth is that without a mediated MWSD/County Working Group, the process of bringing our water supply to levels protective of public safety will be measured in years and decades, when it should be measured in weeks and months.

Thank you very much for your careful consideration of CPR’s recommendations.

Respectfully submitted,

Terrence D. Gossett, CPR Director Don Bacon, CPR Public Policy Advisor