Coastal Commission action is no action on Watsonville MOU. Whaat?

by Peter Nichols
pnichols@tellingthetruth.com

LONG BEACH _ The Coastal Commission, meeting at the Queen Mary Hotel on Monday, was scheduled to finalize details regarding Watsonville's Local Coastal Program Amendments but voted to continue the matter when questions were raised concerning a memo from school superintendent John Casey to school board trustees. The widely circulated memo, dated March 31, 2000 was part of a larger weekly update sent to Pajaro Valley Unified School District trustees and made available to the public upon request.

According to Coastal Commission District Director Tami Grove, one question raised by the memo centered around a condition, made part of the LCP amendments, that the school district request an evaluation of the proposed school site for airport safety concerns by the Department of Transportation.

The Casey memo described a strategy on the part of the district and the Department of Education to move forward with existing aeronautical approval. Grove said, ``The commission questioned whether the district would in fact conduct an aeronautical review as required in the modifications.''

She said questions were also raised regarding the district's requirement that a 50 acre site was needed for DOE approval while the memo indicated the current plan to develop only 30 acres would be approved. And some commissioners questioned why a high school could not be built on the Landmark property _ as the district had claimed _ while the memo made reference to plans to construct an elementary school there.

On the agenda for the commission hearing was the city's memorandum of understanding. That document, designed to eliminate growth inducing impact concerns related to the development of the high school within the coastal zone, prevents the city from developing lands west of Highway 1. It makes ``super majority'' provisions for alteration of the agreement on the part of the city or the county and makes the Coastal Commission a party to the agreement.

According to Grove, the local staff had initially recommended that the commissioners approve the MOU but at the last minute recommended continuance due to the questions raised by the district's memo. The commission received about a dozen letters from representatives of various Watsonville area groups requesting that the matter be continued. The commissioners voted unanimously to continue the matter until their May meeting in Santa Rosa and instructed staff to report then on those concerns.

The Casey memo brought to life an issue that most had considered a dead one _ namely the availability of alternative sites. The district had gone to great lengths to convince the commissioners there were none, and the commission staff struck its original finding that ``the Landmark (Franceschi) option appears feasible'', from their final report.

That property, currently in escrow, is being sold as a 66 acre parcel. At the commission hearings, the city provided a graphic representation of the site indicating that only 28 acres were developable for a school.

Commissioner Christina Desser, from Sausalito, raised the issue of the district accommodating a smaller site then, to which Casey indicated he preferred to proceed with the site the commission was approving.

According to Doughty, Ohlone Parkway is scheduled to pass through that property and will separate about eight acres from the larger portion. He said that the same ESHA requirements and 200 foot agriculture buffers applied to the Harkins Slough Rd. site were applied to the remainder of the Landmark property which reduced the total developable acres there to between 28 and 35 acres.

If the ag buffers were cut by three-fourths as they were at the Harkins Slough Rd. site, an additional 10 to 15 acres could be added, making a site between 38 and 50 acres.

According to Grove, the district's willingness to proceed with a smaller site _ that part of their original 70 acres that doesn't encroach on Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas _ caused commissioners to question the district's stated requirement to develop 50 acres.

Nearly lost in the process was the city's MOU. Sierra Club attorney Mark Massara argued against approval by the commission and several commissioners questioned the super majority vote provisions designed to prevent the city or county from making changes in the agreement.