When Permit Sonoma, the County’s planning agency, recommended that the Board of Supervisors decertify the Environmental Impact Statement, and the Specific Plan for a massive housing project on the campus of the closed Sonoma Developmental Center, many observers in Sonoma Valley feared the County would simply step away from the whole painful process. Doing so would have allowed a developer to essentially have his way with the iconic property.
But in a Board meeting on Tuesday, December 2, that didn’t happen.
Contrary to expectations, Sonoma County Supervisors did not provide an automatic pathway for approval of the controversial, 990-home subdivision in Glen Ellen. By unanimous vote, they chose to decertify the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) which had been ruled woefully inadequate in an April court decision, but kept alive the option of revising the Specific Plan the court also rejected. Permit Sonoma, the County’s planning agency, had recommended Supervisors abandon the discredited Specific Plan and let the development process proceed.
The County had earlier adopted the Specific Plan and accompanying Environmental Impact Report for redevelopment of the property, with plans for 750 homes. Napa developer Keith Rogal was subsequently chosen by the California Department of General Services (DGS) to implement the plan. Rogal then submitted a development plan to the County that expanded the number of housing units to 990, along with a luxury hotel. That plan, submitted hours before a looming deadline would have foreclosed it, utilized a state loophole called the “Builder’s Remedy,” adopted by the State Legislature to spur construction of urgently needed affordable housing. That “Remedy” gives builders freedom to ignore zoning restrictions in counties that fail to adopt approved General Plan Housing Elements by a specific deadline.
Using the commonly accepted multiplier of 2.4 persons per household, the Rogal plan would result in 2,376 people living on the site, serviced by two-lane Arnold Drive. The most recent population count for all of Glen Ellen is 998, and local opposition has grown stiffer to the influx of so many people to a quiet, historic, rural village.
The April ruling in Sonoma County Superior Court by Judge Bradford DeMeo roundly rejected both the Specific Plan and the EIR prepared by Permit Sonoma and approved by the Board of Supervisors. DeMeo’s scathing decision followed a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of the EIR, filed by a collaboration of Valley advocacy groups calling themselves SCALE. The December 3 public hearing was scheduled to meet a decertification deadline set by the court following DeMeo’s ruling. But because the hearing had an unexpectedly brief public notice, Sonoma Valley opponents of the Rogal plan feared the Supervisors were preparing to rush to judgment and would simply follow Permit Sonoma’s recommendation to surrender control of the entire planning process. That didn’t happen.
First District Supervisor Susan Gorin, who represents Sonoma Valley, expressed her frustration that there has been so little outreach to Valley residents from Permit Sonoma, the State Department of General Services which controls the property, or even the area’s state elected officials, implying Healdsburg State Senator Pro Tem Mike McGuire, District 3 State Senator Bill Dodd and District 4 State Assemblymember Cecilia Aguilar-Curry. All three have been notably absent in the ongoing struggle to arrive at an acceptable plan. Gorin extended the criticism to Rogal himself.
“We’ve had extensive community engagement in developing a Specific Plan,” Gorin told her colleagues, “we’ve gotten hundreds and thousands of emails and letters. (But) there has been no community engagement on the part of the development team. I met with Keith Rogal once, briefly, and he assured me he would have community engagement. It hasn’t happened. And there’s been absolutely no community engagement by the State regarding this entire process. I include our state legislators. We had their presence early on, then nothing. It’s been totally opaque…No community engagement from Permit Sonoma, nothing from the developer, nothing from the State.”
At the same time, said Gorin, “I’ve been on the receiving end of a full-court press from the legislators, from the State, to get a plan approved by July first. It just flies in the face of the community’s concerns about the process.”
Gorin, who is retiring from office in a matter of weeks, added, “I can say we have a horrendous plan coming forward,” referring to Rogal’s proposed 990 living units on the SDC site.
Fourth District Supervisor James Gore, meanwhile, raised an issue that immediately alarmed the Board. “We haven’t talked enough about the State,” Gore said, explaining he had been told DGS will demand a refund of $2.3 million if the Specific Plan is scrapped.
As part of its plan to divest itself of SDC, the State Legislature provided the County $3 million to develop its now-discredited Specific Plan. According to Permit Sonoma Director Tennis Wick, about $700,000 remains unspent. But Board members did not appear to know if the refund threat was real.
Gorin said, “This is the first I’ve heard about a threat from the State to give us a letter demanding a refund of $2.3 million … Is that true?”
Wick did not directly confirm that claim but explained, “Disposition of the property is the State’s primary goal. Understandably.”
Understandable or not, the Supervisors weren’t happy with the prospect of losing state funding and being on the hook for potentially millions more in project development costs. Second District Supervisor David Rabbitt, who is an architect, suggested that as the contentious project moves forward there is likely to be more litigation. “Undoubtedly,” he said, “someone’s going to sue somebody.” And, he predicted, “There won’t be a shovel in the ground for another three, four or maybe five years.”
Supervisors were unanimous in agreeing that they should not merely decertify the EIR and the Specific Plan that Judge DeMeo had rejected, and then let Rogal proceed with his own plan, absent further County guidance. Instead, they voted to “set aside” the Specific Plan for ongoing revision in hopes that some further County direction could help guide the final outcome.
Meanwhile, the litigants behind the SCALE lawsuit, have informed the County that they don’t believe the Builders Remedy can be legally applied to the SDC project, in part because the land is still owned by the State, and partly because an environmental impact exemption in the enabling legislation should protect it. There are indications that the Builders Remedy application may be challenged in court.
Twelve members of the public addressed the board, all vigorously opposed to the Rogal plan. And Gorin, who leaves office in January, concluded, “I look forward to being on the sidelines.”
By David Bolling
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