Californians for Property Rights

The following are (as the subject line says) CPR’s analysis of arguments being circulated against the Board of Supervisors Subcommittee recommendations. (You can download a pdf version for printing out here)

Honorable Supervisors:

A number of written arguments critical of your Subcommittee’s November 9th recommendations have been circulated in anticipation of today’s meeting. This document will analyze some of the arguments pertaining to the more contested subjects. They include:

1. Residential Growth Rate Limit (Issue #4)
2. Infrastructure Demand At Buildout (Issue #3)
3. Dispersed Infill Affordable Housing (Issues #5,6, And 23)

Briefly on the first subject, the primary argument against the Subcommittee’s recommendation on the residential growth rate limit – that it is significantly greater than Half Moon Bay’s – will be shown to be factually untrue. As a matter of fact, the Subcommittee’s recommendation of a fixed maximum of 75 MidCoast residential units per year would allow significantly less housing over the next generation than Half Moon Bay. HMB’s 1-1/2% limit on the city’s population growth allows approximately 70 residential units in the first year of Measure D’s implementation, and goes up from there as the population increases in the coming years.

On the second subject, the arguments against improving Highway 1, or increasing our water supply, rely on the mistaken assertion that needed infrastructural improvements will inevitably cause unplanned growth, that is, be ‘growth-inducing.’ On the contrary, the presence of infrastructure doesn’t determine our rate of growth: planning policy does. However, the absence of infrastructure will always trump public policy, making virtually any development impossible. That is why MidCoast residents have been subjected for many years to a pervasive extra-legislative technique – practiced by Coastal Commission staff as well as local activists and special district directors – that obstructs County-legislated planning policy by blocking or delaying long-overdue infrastructural projects. It is CPR’s observation that the Supervisors’ planning authority will continue to be usurped so long as our public works infrastructure is allowed to be deliberately stunted, in order to make the public policy you legislate unimplementable.

Finally concerning the Subcommittee’s affordable housing initiative – the most innovative recommendations before you – some minor arguments will be rebutted.

1 Residential Growth Rate Limit (Issue #4)

It has been widely alleged that the Subcommittee’s recommendation of a fixed yearly maximum of 75 residential units would allow the MidCoast to grow more rapidly than Half Moon Bay. This is demonstrably false, for the following reasons:

• Half Moon Bay’s Measure D allows not a 1%, but a 1-1/2% yearly growth rate, as HMB’s “Downtown Area” is allowed 50% more annual growth than the non-downtown areas.

• The 1-1/2% growth rate limit cannot necessarily include already-permitted ‘planned development’ (i.e., new subdivisions), or planned development that is in litigation.

• Measure D imposed a 1-1/2% growth rate limit on population, not residential units. As the population increases, the number of allowable residential units also increases. Last summer, Half Moon Bay’s Planning Department estimated that approximately 70 residential units will be buildable in the first year of Measure D’s implementation. Ten years from now, that number will rise to about 100. Twenty years from now, about 140. Thirty years from now, about 200 residential units per year will be allowed in Half Moon Bay. In contrast, according to the Subcommittee’s recommendation, during that entire period the maximum number of buildable units for the MidCoast will be fixed at 75 per year.

• While the Subcommittee (and Planning Commission) recommend down-sized buildout numbers for the MidCoast, Half Moon Bay has not adopted a limit on the maximum number of residential units. Without a fixed buildout number, Half Moon Bay can continue to grow long after the MidCoast has finished growing.

• Both Half Moon Bay’s Measure D and the Subcommittee/Planning Commission recommendations variously provide for the exclusion of affordable housing units and credits from the annual growth rate limits. For that reason, affordable housing provisions do not impact the relative growth rates of the MidCoast and Half Moon Bay.

Infrastructure Demand At Buildout (Issue #3)

A. Improvements To Highway 1

Your Subcommittee recommends that LCP Policy 2.50 be amended to allow up to four lanes as necessary on the urban MidCoast. Different criticisms have been offered, which will be treated in turn.

Committee for Green Foothills (CGF), in its November 29th correspondence with you, states that the “Coastal Act specifies that Highway 1 remain two lanes in rural areas.” The area under consideration is classified urban however, not rural, a fact CGF must be aware of, as its letter repeatedly refers to the ‘urban’ MidCoast.

CGF argues that because the Devil’s Slide tunnel will be two-lane, and Half Moon Bay has no plans at present to widen all of Highway 1 in its city limits, that there is no reason to add lanes on the urban MidCoast. This line of reasoning could be used to argue against relieving congestion in any area, because drivers will inevitably encounter other areas of congestion. It also fails to recognize that Highway 1 through the urban MidCoast is currently a series of bottlenecks because it is urban, with many cars entering and leaving the roadway, a traffic situation that cannot be compared to a tunnel.

Nor has it been acknowledged by critics of the Subcommittee’s recommendation, who lament the ‘charm’ and ‘character’ lost by road improvements, that the current two-lane highway through the MidCoast is extremely unsafe. Attempting to take a left turn onto or off of Highway 1 continues to result in traffic fatalities. In the absence of turn lanes, many addresses and destinations cannot be reached without waiting to cross traffic while sitting in a narrow lane, often without a shoulder, that has cars approaching from the rear at highway speeds. For example, horrific accidents have occurred recently while drivers attempted to make left turns in front of the Point Montara Lighthouse property. It is unconscionable (and a flagrant violation of the Coastal Act) that a popular oceanfront public recreation site continues to front a high-speed, two-lane highway that offers ‘coastal access’ guaranteed to cause more traffic deaths.

Oddly, CGF argues that because the level of service on Highway 1 through the urban MidCoast is predicted to be at level ‘F’ in the near future, according to LCP Policy 2.49 the road should not be improved. Actually, Policy 2.49 prescribes precisely the opposite:

In assessing the need for road expansion, consider Service Level D acceptable during commuter peak periods and Service Level E acceptable during recreation peak periods. (emphasis added)

While the Subcommittee is correct in recognizing that Highway 1 should be widened and improved as necessary through the MidCoast, CPR does not believe that Policy 2.50 needs to be amended to make that possible. Policy 2.52a states:

Require during Phase 1 that CalTrans monitor peak commuter period traffic and submit data reports to the County on the results of this monitoring, as a basis for documenting the need for increased roadway capacity, when a permit application is submitted.

Policy 2.53b reinforces this ability:

Guide timing by allowing later phase(s) to begin when Phase 1 road capacity has been consumed or when actual traffic development shows that road capacities should be expanded.

B. Water Supply As A Limiting Factor To Growth

Both CGF and directors of the Montara Water & Sanitary District (MWSD) are urging the Supervisors not to adopt buildout numbers and residential growth rate limits without first seeing the results of MWSD’s groundwater study. The problem here is that MWSD directors are attempting to exercise planning authority. Because they’re politically opposed to growth on the MidCoast, they’re practically opposed to increasing the water supply. Any groundwater study commissioned (and therefore influenced) by MWSD that draws conclusions satisfying the directors’ political desires is frankly suspect, and should be independently analyzed.

In the interests of public safety, neither should MWSD’s refusal to consider interties with water districts to its north and south be accepted by the County. It is highly imprudent for the MidCoast not to take measures to avail itself of Hetch Hetchy water should the need arise. Continuous water system interties between Pacifica and Half Moon Bay, that allow access both to local and Sierran water sources, offer the greatest flexibility in response to emergencies such as fire, drought, earthquake, sabotage, etc.

CGF’s November 29th letter to you criticizes contemplated infrastructural improvements that “encourage” growth. As noted on page one above, infrastructure does not cause or encourage growth, it merely makes it possible. And there is no doubt that infrastructural improvements are long overdue, not in the interests of growth, but the public welfare. Even Coastal Commission (CCC) staff acknowledged as much in their March 28th letter to you:

Public services shortfalls in the MidCoast and Half Moon Bay have resulted in significant adverse effects to public health and safety, coastal resources, and coastal access, including failed wells, sewage overflows, and severe congestion on the major coastal access routes.

The obvious solution to the public works crises is to upgrade facilities. Indeed, LCP Policy 2.6 allows expansion of public works facilities, not only to serve existing development, but up to a capacity “needed to serve buildout.”

Unfortunately, CCC staff has treated public works crises not as problems to be practically solved, but anti-growth opportunities to be exploited. For example, even though the MidCoast has a surplus of sewer capacity, simply because MWSD has stormwater storage problems CCC staff recommended to you on February 16th that “The County should consider prohibiting new residential sewer hookups until adequate capacity has been provided….” In the same letter CCC staff reacts to MWSD’s failure to increase water supply in the interests of public safety by incongruously suggesting that “…new private wells should not be permitted.” That action wouldn’t increase public safety, but it would stop all MidCoast growth, the palpable obsession of CCC staff.

The bottom line on this subject is that MidCoast planning policy will continue not to be so much legislated as manipulated, whether by State commissions or local special districts, unless the Supervisors more firmly assert their rightful planning authority. In the absence of the full exercise of that authority, MidCoast planning is controlled extra-legislatively, in a manner that was tellingly described in an October 4th campaign mailer published by MWSD directors:

The lesson is clear – it is the special districts and boards that determine the population, through control of the size of the sewer plants, the water service, the highways.

Dispersed Infill Affordable Housing (Issues #5,6, And 23)

The Subcommittee has been widely criticized for recommending that affordable housing units not be counted toward the growth rate limits. This would not constitute a change in planning policy, since existing LCP Policy 1.22 specifically excludes affordable housing from growth limits. It should also be noted that the same recommendation, when made by the Planning Commission, was endorsed by many of those who are now its critics. Whether offered by the Planning Commission or the Subcommittee, the recommendation that construction of affordable housing units continue to be unconstrained by growth limits is a good one, because it ensures the housing’s expedited completion. More than ever, time is of the essence in the creation of affordable housing on the MidCoast, and it should not be delayed or discouraged.

The Subcommittee is recommending substantial incentives to encourage the creation of dispersed affordable housing. All of these incentives involve tradeoffs, which have been cited and criticized. Nevertheless, without strong incentives an unacceptable status quo will persist: little or no affordable housing will be built on the MidCoast. Political progressives will readily acknowledge that the benefits of encouraging affordable housing, and giving a wider range of society an opportunity to live in our community, far outweigh the resulting incremental tradeoffs. It is a small social cost all of us should gladly accept as a step toward sharing and diversifying the MidCoast.

Thank you for your hard work and moderate approach toward updating our LCP.

Respectfully submitted,

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