-Aldo Leopold

I’m conflicted on Newhall Ranch. On the one hand, I probably wouldn’t have an affordable home in this nice community if it weren’t for Newhall Land’s Valencia development. In fact, the Santa Clarita Valley would be little more than a backwater land of inchoate, thoughtless developments if it wasn’t for Newhall Land and their high quality “master plan” which shaped the landscape of the SCV decades ago. This fact gives Newhall Land credibility to develop Newhall Ranch in my mind.

There’s also this other feeling I have as someone who has lived in the Western United States all my life. It’s in our nature as westerners and Americans, as beneficiaries of Manifest Destiny, to expand and to grow. On a gut level, I look at the landscape of Newhall Ranch and I think to myself, “It’s not doing much now. Let’s make it productive and build something great” which is pretty much the story of how the Western United States -and the Santa Clarita Valley- grew and became prosperous. And I admire Newhall Land’s ability & vision to take that risk and to create something out of nothing.

On the other hand, I tend to think that developments like Newhall Ranch (and Valencia for that matter) may be obsolete. With global climate change, increasing fuel costs, difficulty in getting water, and ever-increasing traffic, is there a market for far-flung suburban development in 2010? How about 2020 or 2050? Oh sure, Newhall Land promises that the Ranch will be different, it will not be sprawl, it will be built with local jobs available, but is that really the case? They also promise that much of the land back there behind Magic Mountain will be left as open space, but isn’t it all open space now? Why change it?

I had all this in mind as John B. and I asked to go on tour of the SCV’s back country, the property Henry Mayo Newhall and his sons received from the Spanish. It’s gone by many names over the years: from Rancho San Francisco to Portrero Valley to all the new names Newhall Land wants to apply to the various communities it hopes to build starting in a few years.

John and I wanted to document the landscape before it gets developed and we wanted to learn whether Newhall Ranch is feasible in an economic sense and responsible in an environmental sense. This post will feature photos of that back country with detailed captions; John will follow up with his more specific thoughts on what Newhall Land is planning later.

Hope you enjoy.

Our tour started in some pepper fields just south of Highway 126. This area will be the site of Landmark Village, the first development in Newhall Land's 21,000 Newhall Ranch project

Our tour was hosted by two Newhall Land developers. They helped us visualize where each development would go, and emphasized the amount of open space NL will preserve

One of the concerns SCOPE and a myriad of others have expressed about Newhall Ranch is that it will impact the river. The two developers we were with were quick to point out that Landmark Village development won't be that close to the river; they compared the proximity to what is currently built in Bridgeport, where there is several hundred feet between the riverbed and the streets

We spotted a lone coyote patrolling the fields as we entered the Ranch, a not-so-subtle reminder that this is a largely wild landscape

To get to the back side of Newhall Ranch, you have to cross some locked gates and cattle guards. Looking at the territory on a map, you get the feeling that it's a really large space, but once we were actually back there, it felt significantly more constrained by the hills and mountains. And yet you couldn't help but feel that this is what parts of Santa Clarita must have looked like before Valencia

A shot of what is called Potrero Valley, which is the site of Newhall Ranch's last (and possibly largest) Potrero Village development in Newhall Ranch. As you can see, even in the back country there is no escaping Edison's electrical lines and towers

From parts of Potrero Valley, you can see evidence of the SCV, which was rather disconcerting. We drove so far back into the ranch we thought we were miles from the SCV, but in reality, Stevenson Ranch (developed by NL's rivals) was just over a ridge

In the center of Potrero Valley is a rather strange little series of buildings. Keep in mind Newhall Ranch is an "active ranch" as NL reminds everyone; these buildings are used by authentic cowboys as they go about their authentic cowboy business. Yes. Authenticity in the SCV at last!

Another shot of the buildings on Potrero Canyon road

John B. skillfully shot this 360 degree panoramic photo. Click to enlarge

Cattle freely roam much of the territory back there, hearkening back to Newhall Land's earlier core business. Does anyone remember when we used to see cattle grazing where West Ridge is now?

In addition to cattle ranching, the Ranch is used for other purposes too. Both petroleum and natural gas are extracted in Newhall Ranch (the equipment above has to do with natural gas production I'm told). These wells will be capped off eventually as homes are built (interestingly enough, one of the plans to deal with excess chloride in the Santa Clara River involved dumping chloride down these wells)

This home is still used by cowboys and ranchers. It was built in 1945 for Barnsdall Oil Company, according to SCVHistory.com

SCVHistory.com Link

This building was once used by oil and gas employees. I think it is largely abandoned now and sits near the southern edge of Potrero Valley

This photo was taken from the top of Potrero Canon Road on the southside of the valley. Just a mile or so down the road from here is Mentryville. In other words, we had driven on back-roads all the way from Highway 126 back to Pico Canyon Blvd. Eventually this may be a major thoroughfare

NAFF’s latest video provides a good summary of Tuesday night’s council meeting and confirms, to me at least, that the rage over the Mayo expansion, the G&L donations, the campaign contribution changes and a myriad of other issues and problems has reached critical mass and boiled over.

It’s taken quite a while to get to this point. Let’s review where we are and how we got here.

For years we’ve heard from TimBen Boydston, David Gauny and others on that side of the camp that something is sick in the City of Santa Clarita. They (Boydston more than Gauny) have alleged, along with many others, that the City’s Staff and its Manager (Ken Pulskamp, or as Bruce McFarland calls him, “The Don”) have too much power and influence over City affairs, over development and such. They allege that, contrary to the natural structure of a Council-Manager form of local government, it is Ken Pulskamp who is calling the shots and directing the Council to do things.

Oh sure, it’s probably more subtle than that, this group would say. It’s not like Ken Pulskamp calls up the City Council and tells them how to vote. It’s more like KP and the professional City Staff exercise an inordinate amount of influence by determining what rises to the Council’s attention, and they, as a result, get what they want.

Which isn’t always what the people of Santa Clarita want, at least according to TimBen Boydston and David Gauny.

So what about this theory? Well, consider this from the City staff’s point of view. These people are professionals, having trained for years in their respective disciplines. They went through what by all accounts is a pretty rigorous hiring process. They obtained certifications, credentials and advanced degrees specific to their disciplines and to local government and, what’s more, many of them live here as well. They win awards. Magazines write about them. They’re justifiably proud of their accomplishments.

The City Council, in contrast, only works part time and has a few weeks off during the summer. Some of them are pretty adept at the technical odds and ends of city planning, finance, and perhaps traffic and transportation. Few are probably adept at engineering or interfacing with other technocrats in other segments of government. The bottom line is they are part time citizen representatives, and they depend on the staff for professional and informed advice because, let’s be honest here, they’re largely clueless when it comes to running a city. But they love showing up at ribbon cutting ceremonies.

The staff, meanwhile, is interested in furthering their local government careers. They read the planning and transportation journals, they attend society meetings and conferences, they educate themselves further. In general, they know their stuff, they want to do a good job and put some cool projects on their CVs.

And -this is key- no professional planner thinks generic, low-density suburban projects have a real future in our community or elsewhere.

And so, as technocrats are wont to do, they think big and dream up big plans. Like One Valley, One Vision. Like the Non-Motorized Transportation Plan. Or the North Newhall Specific Plan. And a dozen other large-scale, multi-year planning efforts that, in their considered opinion, rationally address the economic and infrastructure challenges facing Santa Clarita in the years and decades ahead.

And Ken Pulskamp is their voice to the City Council. I repeat that: Pulskamp is not just in charge of the staff, he is the public face of the staff.

Which is why the Gaunyites and Boydston camps hate him so much. Because they look at these big plans and think, “Holy shit! The City staff is remaking us brick by brick into the San Fernando Valley! They are planning to bring another 250,000 people* here! What about we the people?”

To some extent, I see their point. Is it right for a City Manager to not just implement policy, but to formulate policy as well?  After all, Ken Pulskamp is not elected by the people, but Bob Kellar is. Shouldn’t policy making be left up to the elected officials?

In our case, I’d argue that the City staff and Pulskamp can and should attempt to formulate policy for the reasons I cited above. The City staff is professional, educated, and knowledgeable. We should consider their plans, opinions, and knowledge.

Why? Other cities do it. In a 1997 survey of City managers, the International City/County Managers Association reported that 80% of City Managers think they should be involved themselves in policy formulation. What’s more, a 2001 survey of City Councilmembers in Council-Manager cities revealed that a majority of elected council members considered the City Manager to be a very important part of the policy formulation process.

On the Council side of things, a National League of Cities study in 2001 reported that Council Members of cities with populations between 75,000 and 200,000 spent only about 25 hours per week working “on council related matters.” My bet is that number would be even lower in Santa Clarita. Does anyone honestly think the five of them spend 25 hours a week working on policy matters related to Santa Clarita?

I can send you the sources I cited by email if you like (they are not linkable), but the point is this: many cities depend on their staff and management to formulate policies. The elected leadership, in contrast, has neither the time nor the chops to really create successful policy in all circumstances. This is the reality, and it’s not just in Santa Clarita.

And so there you have it. The vocal and boisterous discontent  we saw at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting is a direct result of the City of Santa Clarita’s Council-Manager form of government. It is a form of government that relies heavily on a full-time, professional staff to not just manage city affairs but also to create responsible policy for the entire city.

And the discontent is also a direct result of having part time Councilmembers who lean, in a big way, on the City staff for ideas to solve problems.

This feels undemocratic to some. It feels particularly undemocratic when 100 people show up in the Council Chambers and are ignored.

But guess what? This structure works for most of us, at this time. Life is pretty good here. I think we under-represent some segments of the population and I’m tempted by the idea of Districts, but by and large, I see the City staff making good-faith efforts to plan for the future of the SCV, to grow it economically in an era of rising gas prices and increasing environmental awareness. Whereas Gauny and Boydston see Mayo as a canary in the coalmine, I look at a revitalized Old Town Newhall with a Metrolink station, a community center and a new library and see smart planning paying off. Whereas Bruce McFarland claims The Don is ignoring the will of the people, I see a survey that says most people are happy and want more local jobs, businesses, and things to do (I also see a lot of silly people claiming traffic is a problem and the City, as a whole, cowering in the face of that absurdity).

So in the end, Boydston and Gauny camps are right. The City manager & staff do push policy**, but it is, by and large, good policy that most of the community probably supports.

* The Signal headline that has made more NAFF videos than any other is the one that says SCV will someday have 400,000 people. NAFF and his pals think that’s what the City staff are doing: trying to build out the SCV so that an additional 150,000 people move here. The reality is the staff is responsibly thinking about a future in which 400,000 people, of their own volition in a free market, might want to call the SCV home. And they are planning for that in a rational and logical way.

** And yes, I suppose you could say the staff have an interest in having the people they like on the City Council, because the councilmembers have shown themselves to be amenable to the staff’s good policy

The Business section of today’s LA Times contains a damning column by Michael Hiltzik on our perennial state budget deficit:

I believe we can all agree on the root cause of the state’s $20-billion budget gap.

It’s welfare: all those millions of taxpayer dollars going to recipients who line up for their government handouts instead of competing in the marketplace on a level playing field like the rest of us, who don’t pay their fair share of taxes and who get protected by a politically powerful lobby.

Yes, I’m talking about the business community.

He then gets into specifics, starting with the recent film subsidy program:

The state budget is rife with industry goodies. For example, there’s the Hollywood subsidy, currently pegged at $100 million a year in tax credits.

The rationale for this welfare program is to keep productions from fleeing to other states, taking California jobs with them. But you could go blind looking for an independent study, as opposed to studies funded by the state film commissions handing out the dough, showing that such programs produce more in overall benefits than they cost.

Quite the contrary — according to Governing magazine, New Mexico, which had aggressively courted producers with $40 million in tax rebates, concluded in 2008 that for every dollar it spent, it received 14.4 cents in return.

Ouch.  Our “Film Santa Clarita” incentive program was enacted on the premise that we would get more than we give.  Do we?

Hiltzik then commits white collar blasphemy and attacks the third rail of corporate welfare: the Enterprise Zone:

The biggest state incentives are attached to enterprise zones, which cost as much as $500 million a year in forgone taxes. Businesses locating within any of 42 designated zones across the state can apply for tax credits and other bounties for hiring unemployed or low-income workers.

But there’s a vigorous debate over whether the program increases employment. A study published last year by the Public Policy Institute of California found “no statistically significant effect on employment” from the program.

Double-ouch.  This blog has debated the benefits of E-Z credits at least three times this year alone.

And if that wasn’t enough, Hiltzik says there’s still plenty of taxing left to do on CA businesses:

Despite this state’s reputation for being tough on business, other states rely far more on business taxes than we do. According to a survey by the accounting firm Ernst & Young, California ranked 35th in terms of business’ share of state and local taxes in 2007. (That is, in 33 other states and the District of Columbia, business carried a higher burden relative to individual taxpayers than in California.) Measured by business taxes as a percentage of gross state product, California ranked 32nd.

Hiltzik doesn’t reconcile his statements with the avalanche of companies that have fled California.  But I appreciate the article for raising questions about our budgetary priorities at the City and State level beyond education, pensions and illegal immigrants.

Side note: where is the Tea Party on this conversation?  I wasn’t able to find a single reference on the SCV Tea Party website commenting on local, state or federal tax credits for business, but plenty deriding HCR, financial reform and the rest.  Maybe I just missed it.

But if the reaction to that store (now nearing completion) could be termed snobbish, their reaction to what’s going into the old Circuit City space may be off-the-charts hysterical.

Ross.

Yes, that’s right, Ross Dress for Less, the home of budget-conscious shabby dressers like me and a magnet for poor-mannered customers nationwide, is opening a store in Stevenson Ranch.

There goes the neighborhood.

Oh SR, how far you’ve fallen. It was only 10-15 years ago that you thought yourself on par with Valencia. Oh sure, Wal Mart is bad for any community’s rep, but it was pretty nice back then, and while you had no paseos like Valencia had, you had one thing going for you the people across the 5 didn’t: shiny newness! That plus all those wonderful big box retailers- cha-ching! You were the new hotness in the SCV. Showtime even made a TV show based off your community!

Alas SR, I think your days atop the SCV’s planned communities  are coming to an end. You’re all built out now, aging, and all the new development is going to the east and north sides of town. And let’s face it, if people wanted to live near a Ross AND a Good Will, they’d just move to Saugus.

Yes. As unpleasant as that sounds Stevenson Ranch, you are now a newer version of Saugus.

We here in Newhall understand your pain. We, like you, wanted a Trader Joe’s to move into an old vacant space. Instead, without even asking us, “the invisible hand of the market” (whatever the hell that is) determined that we needed a Vallarta. I don’t know what a “Vallarta” is, but I do know that the people who would shop at a Vallarta are better off on their own side of town! I know you feel the same about Ross and Goodwill shoppers.

Maybe you SR folks should take a second look at that barrier wall Dave Bossert was thinking of building.

Love him or hate him, Frank Ferry has got people talking and thinking with the comments he made above.

For starters, it’s reprehensible for a City Council member to call constituents in this community -our neighbors- “terrorists.” That loaded word isn’t something to be abused, it’s not a term that should ever enter our lexicon unless someone is using violence for political ends. It’s way off base and he should apologize for that.

That said, it’s about time we had this conversation.

There is a tendency among the anti-density folks in this community to extrapolate their hyper-local issues to the rest of this valley, as if a single medical building on McBean is proof that the City is rotten, that the sky is falling, and that the SCV’s best days are behind it, even as things are relatively good elsewhere (and indeed, getting much better in my neighborhood).

They tend to look at a given project and see tall buildings, torn down trees, lots of people, and traffic while others see new job opportunities, fewer trips over the hill,  shorter commutes to services and businesses and more local commerce.

They, good Republicans & free marketers (and even Tea Partiers in the case of Bob Kellar) when it comes to state & national issues, want an activist and interventionist local government when it comes to determining what a property owner does with his commercial property.

They act as if they represent a majority of the SCV, when in reality they are but one constituency of many, as proven by the last two City Council elections.

And some of them, not all, but some viciously attack the professional staff at City Hall (they justify this by saying that it is the staff that is in charge of the City Council, not vice-versa).

Lest I be accused of just picking on the anti-density folks, there’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around. Frank Ferry mocks the press even as he implores them to expose Boydston and Gauny and the neighborhood groups, but it was Frank Ferry just a few years ago who wanted the Signal to stop reporting crime statistics. It didn’t reflect well on the SCV to report such things in the paper, he said. Hey Mr. Ferry, either we have solid, responsible and exhaustive journalism or we don’t. You don’t get to tell The Signal they’re asleep on the job in one breath, then say they’re reporting too extensively in another.

To Ferry’s specific point: that development projects are being filibustered & slandered out of existence by these groups before they’ve had a fair shot before the Planning Commission or the City Council, I think he’s right.

He seems to think it’s unfair. I don’t.

Raise your hand if you think developers in Santa Clarita are unfairly put-upon by citizens? Anyone?  Didn’t think so.

It’s called democracy Mr. Ferry, and it’s often times messy. And yes, interested participants in democracy may have agendas. I recall you did too before you were elected to the Council, you said no one on the council was representing people like you, you said there weren’t enough parks and things for kids to do (don’t make me dig out the quotes from that food article I posted about last year!)

If the developers are finding it hard to compete with Facebook groups that -overnight- have hundreds of members, they need to step up their game. Like, I don’t know, maybe meet with neighbors earlier in the process.  Maybe address their concerns before it makes the front page of the Signal. Maybe the developers need to bribe the neighborhoods they want to develop in, like the oil company bribed the Placerita homeowners decades ago.

Whatever the case, the developers and Ferry shouldn’t feign shock and surprise when neighbors get aroused and angered by a 60 foot tall building they just learned about in the Planning Commission agenda.

Speaking of The Signal, they share some blame too. Occasionally they are brilliant (as they were in today’s piece on Ferry’s comments). But much of the time they’re mediocre. I’d happily trade the occasional brilliant articles away for more consistent, solid journalism that answers who, what, when, where, why and how and talks to as many stakeholders as possible.

It may not be fair to make The Signal arbiter of this old development & growth debate, but they’re all we got since the Daily News and the Times left town. On that point, I agree with Ferry.

Yes, dear SCVTalk readers – while we were loading up on home equity, trading in Excursions for Hummers and squabbling about traffic on the Newhall Pass, little Merced bagged the UC system’s tenth campus.

A few months ago, SCVTalk drew out comparisons between SCV and Irvine, CA.  Chief among the differences, we argued, is Irvine’s enviable 3:1 jobs:housing ratio – driven mainly by the presence of UCI, a gift from the City and developers to the Regents five years before the town sprouted up.

Before you pack up for that spread in Turlock… of course, having a research institution in one’s own backyard isn’t an instant job creator.  The planted seed needs time to germinate. Universities continuously enrich a community with new, smart blood guided under the tutelage of seasoned research leaders.   Their innovations hasten entrepreneurialism, which flows benefit back to the school, and the virtuous cycle continues.  Jobs are the sweet nectar of the investment, which will take leadership, wrangling, back room deals, private money, cheap or free dirt, and a hell of a lot of patience.

But oh, the result.

I’d argue that we’ve gotten great mileage out of City’s pro-business stance – perhaps as much as the initiative can give, Disney’s nascent presence notwithstanding.  But gains from here will for the most part be incremental.  To jump the 1:1 jobs:housing hurdle in this Valley, we need something beyond Cash for Cell phones.  This isn’t a novel concept for our valley, but it’s a curious omission from the draft General Plan guiding OVOV.

With our educated populous, an immediate pipeline of gifted students (backed up by some of the best primary, secondary and vocational education systems in the region), a notable base of leading edge companies (Advanced Bionics, Specialty Labs, Boston Scientific, Woodward HRT all come to mind), ideal geography (equidistant to UCSB and UCLA), SCV has a platform and environment that would make a fine campus for a research institution.

Sure, California’s university systems are a complete shambles.  That will get sorted out – this is a long term play for both of us.  And who said it has to be a branded UC?  We can be a research-focused extension of the UCLA campus, go totally private – Scripps-style, or even a hybrid of sorts.  There are startup costs, but what about diverting some of the taxpayer’s business boondoggle money for seed funds, perhaps matching local dollars?  The Regents also committed over $1B in capital improvements over the next 10 years.  We’d only need a slice of that to get something going.

Where can we put it?  That’s the easy part.  We have dirt. We have gobs of empty office space.  We can start small, perhaps in some of the University Center’s sweet digs. We can even call it UCDVH if necessary.  As I think about it, in true SCV fashion, the hardest part will be picking a mascot.

Thank God “Anteater” and “Banana Slug” are already taken.

The 2010 Santa Clarita City Council election is an important one.  Our city has grown over the past decade and we have an important choice to make about who will be Santa Clarita’s next City Council members.  I want to tell you why I’m supporting David Gauny.

David has been an active champion of homeowner and business concerns during the past five years.  He has fought for neighborhoods facing ruin by overbuilt projects and he has served on two subcommittees on our city’s Economic Development Corporation.  In short, he understands the needs of residents and business interests and has some very specific ideas for growing our tax revenues without the urban sprawl that has ruined much of greater Los Angeles.

If there’s one thing the inchoate tea party movement stands for, it’s small government and laissez-faire economics. These are people who believe in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of the marketplace. They dislike government regulations, intrusions into the private sector, and they think Keynesian is a slur with which you can tag Democrats. They will, to a person, tout the rationality of the “free market” scarcely two years after under-regulated Wall Street drove our economy off a cliff.

Yet when it comes to the local level, it seems conservatives can’t get enough government. They want our city government to block developers from building on land privately owned, projects like the Casden project near Placerita Canyon or the Avenues Project in Wiley Canyon. They want City Council members who will essentially limit the freedoms of private, for-profit corporations like Newhall Land, Palmer, and Pardee Homes to do what they want on land they own.

Indeed, they think our current City Council is too laissez-faire when it comes to local development. That’s why they want the incumbents out of office.

So while it’s okay to have a do-nothing, small government nationally, they want an activist and interventionist government locally. Does that seem a little inconsistent to you? Shouldn’t we “let the market decide” everywhere?

Afterall, in Adam Smith’s world, developers will stop tearing up ridgelines and building dense housing projects when the market stops buying that kind of development.

And finally, while the local Tea Party screamed and shouted about bailouts to “Government Motors,” they were utterly silent when Santa Clarita handed over $200,000 of our dollars to private interests to duplicate the business outreach efforts of the City, the Chamber, and COC with the SCV Economic Development Corporation.

Indeed, as you can see from SCV Tea Party, handing over taxpayer cash to private interests in Santa Clarita is given as a reason to support a candidate, not fight against his election.

A fully built-out SCV according to the OVOV Draft documents

If anything, today’s good Signal report on the reaction of the California Attorney General’s office to the joint City/County One Valley One Vision plan understated just how badly the AG’s office views the draft environmental impact review for OVOV.

Indeed, the letter from the AG savages the OVOV DEIR, saying it fails even as an informational document for “decision makers” and the public:

Our review to date indicates that the DEIR fails as an informational document, in that it

fails to apprise the decision makers and the public of the full range and intensity of the adverse

effects on the environment that may reasonably be expected if the Plan is adopted and carried

out.

As The Signal mentioned, the letter also alleges that the OVOV DEIR glosses over the impact of increased traffic, pollution and greenhouse gases. Here’s a relevant section from the OVOV Draft Circulation Element on the County’s website (note this isn’t from the actual EIR document):

Pursuant to AB 32, standards and regulations for measuring and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions were still being developed during the time this General Plan was prepared.  However, because of the importance of this issue and in response to the State’s mandate that local agencies consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in local planning decisions, the City and County have incorporated policies in the General Plan to reduce vehicle trips and thereby reduce carbon emissions through a variety of planning strategies.  These strategies include establishing an urban limit line on the land use map, encouraging infill development through increased densities allowed in the urban core, encouraging mixed use in specified land use designations, promoting transit oriented development around Metrolink stations and the bus transfer station, expanding bikeways and walkways, and using transportation demand management measures.

And here’s the damning response from the AG’s office:

The failure to evaluate the impacts of the proposed Plan as measured against existing conditions, not hypothetical future conditions, results in the DEIR finding the proposed Plan would have no significant impact on climate change (despite adding almost four million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere), on air quality (despite doubling existing pollutant emissions into an air basin that already is the most polluted in the nation), on transportation (despite increasing average daily trips by about 120%), and other areas. We believe that these findings are not supported by substantial evidence, and that they render the DEIR legally inadequate.

The letter also says that attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the plan “tend to be voluntary and unenforceable, merely requiring that the mitigation be ‘encouraged’ or ‘promoted’ and not required.”

That’s probably right and it gets to the heart of the matter. You can’t require that homeowners and commuters use other, greener forms of transportation. To a large extent, a planner’s hands are tied, especially if he’s building low density developments that aren’t transit friendly.

The letter also argues that the premise behind OVOV may be flawed simply because it doesn’t recognize the impacts growth in the Antelope Valley will have on Santa Clarita and the North County region:

Further, the cumulative impacts of the proposed OVOV Plan, taken together with the impacts that will result from development and growth in the remainder of the North County subregion, particularly the Antelope Valley, are barely explored at all.

The letter says this “contravenes CEQA’s requirements and is at odds with one of the central rationales for cumulative impact analysis.”

Local critics of the OVOV plan often say that it encourages too much high density development and doesn’t adequately plan for traffic (TimBen Boydston explains in this video). They probably like the AG’s letter (enemy of my enemy is a friend etc) but would disagree with what would limit greenhouse gas emissions: higher density development that discourages private automobile use.

And as well know, high density is a non-starter in Santa Clarita.

One final note: a footnote on the letter says that these comments are submitted “pursuant to his independent power and duty to protect the environment and natural resources of the State from pollution, impairment, or destruction and in furtherance of the public interest.” It adds that the letter should not be “construed as an exhaustive discussion” of OVOV’s compliance with CEQA.

That to me makes it sound more like a political document rather than a document judging the legal merits of the DEIR. For what it’s worth, Jerry Brown is running for governor.

Insofar as any City Council candidate has a plank, Gauny’s seems to be that:

1. Traffic is bad in SCV
2. The process at City Hall is broken
3. The City Council is weak
4. Small businesses and homeowners are getting screwed by the broken process
5. Illegal immigrants

There were a couple of things that interested me about this speech. First of all, Gauny, like so many candidates before him, says traffic sucks in the SCV. But he’s not promising to build more roads, he thinks the problem starts at City Hall:

We all sit in red light after red light and wonder how do we keep building here? And the answer is, we bury the numbers to our detriment. There is fuzzy math. I have spent a lot of time looking at how we are calculating traffic, and the numbers are skewed.

Let’s stipulate that traffic does indeed suck in the SCV (I don’t believe that but ok)- is he alleging dishonesty or incompetence on the part of the City’s traffic engineers and planners? That they are manipulating traffic counts or deliberately underestimating the amount of traffic that will be generated by development projects?

That’s a pretty serious charge.

Or is he just using the familiar traffic canard to browbeat the incumbents for letting development in the SCV grow too much?

He then goes on to say some smart things. The City Council, he says, should be focused on bringing high-quality, high paying jobs to the Santa Clarita Valley, not low-wage jobs.

70% of our economy are small business owners. We are three years into a down economy and not one of the incumbents has really stepped up with a plan to solve that problem. What we do have is we’ve got big box stores, we’ve got big companies coming here that are bringing low wage jobs that are benefiting from our tax incentive programs that we’re all paying.

In this, he seems to be questioning the effectiveness of some of the City’s business-friendly programs. Such programs are helping businesses, just not the businesses we need to make the local economy robust. He also says that many of the jobs in the SCV attract people from the SFV and Antelope Valley who increase traffic in our town then take their paychecks back home and spend there.

Perhaps he’s right about that but here’s the thing: how do you grow the SCV economy with high-quality jobs without building new business parks, office buildings and other developments that then result in more traffic?

Remember, this is the guy who lead the fight against Mayo Expansion because it wasn’t a true hospital expansion, rather it was just medical office space expansion. But couldn’t one argue that the Mayo Expansion project, as flawed as it was, will bring high-paying medical jobs to Valencia (recall Frank Ferry shouting “BRAINS!” while gesticulating wildly at an aerial view of HMNMH)?

Much better paying jobs than the Golden Valley shopping center or Bridgeport Marketplace at any rate?

Just wanted to be in touch following your post about the Santa Clarita Enterprise Zone.

Over 1,100 people have been hired since July 1, 2007 at over 160 local businesses through the Santa Clarita Enterprise Zone.

Increasing jobs in Santa Clarita is the primary objective of the Enterprise Zone, of the 21 point Business Plan for Progress and of the City of Santa Clarita’s long term economic development strategy. We know job creation is the foundation of a strong economy, and without the confidence of employment residents may not be able to do the necessities like putting food on their tables , pay their day-to-day bills and mortgage payments, much less go out and spend money on non-essentials which spurs the consumer retail and restaurant spending that drives so much of the economy.

The Enterprise Zone helps businesses of all size, and the majority of the businesses that have seen savings from the Santa Clarita Enterprise Zone are small businesses, many of which have utilized the savings to prevent layoffs and keep their doors open during this Great Recession.

The Enterprise Zone saves businesses money by incentivizing them to hire more employees, invest in new business tools and infrastructure. The business only receives the tax break if they have hired ‘qualified’ employees or made ‘qualified’ equipment purchases, which benefits Santa Clarita through company expansion and new job opportunities for residents.

The Enterprise Zone is a critical tool for retaining our existing businesses and attracting new business to relocate to Santa Clarita, which makes it vital to the overall health and well-being of our community.

The City is working to do everything it can to support Santa Clarita businesses and the people they employ to ensure the success of our community. It is within everyone’s best interest. We are already ahead of many other cities, and I am confident we will come out of the recession one of LA County’s strongest cities.

Considering that the raw amount of people unemployed in Santa Clarita per the BLS stands around 6,000-7,000 people, 1,100 new jobs is certainly a good accomplishment for the EZ Program.

Ideally, it’d be nice to see the City of Santa Clarita report figures like these yearly or even quarterly. It’d go along way toward reassuring nitpickers like me that all the outreach effort toward local business owners is paying off in the form of new jobs and a more robust economy.

Thank you for the note Jason.