The TPZ disconnect
J Warren Hockaday Executive Director, Eureka Chamber of Commerce
Years ago at a bargaining table far away, a negotiator on the other side was caught in a lie. It was a whopper. It was no matter of interpretation or poor recollection. It was documented. There was no way around it. It was a plain, unvarnished lie. It only takes one such dented piece of integrity to irreparably compromise personal and organizational credibility.
In the feeble attempt to salvage an unsalvageable situation, he squared himself up and proclaimed, “But, I lied in good faith.”
Once the laughter subsided, his side called a caucus. When the talks resumed, our good faith liar was not among those who returned.
In disputes, discussions and negotiations it is hardly ever that clear cut. In the effort to resolve a disagreement or argue a case, it only takes only the perception of dishonesty or creative truth-telling, to irrevocably hobble credibility. That's when the dialogue ends and the debate usually devolves to motives and personalities.
And that is where we find ourselves today. The recent, cantankerous debate over residential development in Timberland Production Zones or the now infamous TPZ has taken on a life of its own. It has grown to become a political and ideological chasm of monumental proportions. In a move to prove a point, County Supervisors imposed a short-lived moratorium stopping building permits on privately owned timberlands.
The response became a firestorm of angst. Property and home owners, business people, generational landholders, developers, builders, realtors, farmers, ranchers, back-country entrepreneurs, off the grid individualists and cash crop agriculturalists, rose up against this assault on private property rights. As a result, the moratorium was rescinded. But the damage had been done.
The TPZ debacle was and still is a natural extension of a gathering disconnect between business interests of all kinds and policy-makers, in a sometimes real and sometimes perceived class conflict. But, the point is that the Rubicon has been crossed. There really is no going back from here. The upshot is that a whole lot of people have become engaged in land use, zoning, planning and the overarching conundrum of growth, smart growth, or no growth policies. TPZ became the boulder that broke the camel's back. It is the tipping point that exposed a longstanding culture of distrust.
The fundamental question has become 'Just who works for whom?
In ordinary times, a hearing on planning issues is hardly more interesting than watching paint dry. The government-speak of allowable densities, infrastructure enhancements, deliberative dialogues, stakeholder input, tax increment financing, negative declarations and inclusionary zoning was once incomprehensible to all but the initiated few. No more. Today's discussions on such arcane elements have far-reaching implications for the future prosperity of our community. That notion is no longer lost on the rank and file of property owners and businesses. The people who have paid the price, taken the risks and have assumed ever more burdensome regulatory loads, have been awakened. They are paying close attention now and the Disconnect is plain to see.
This crisis of confidence puts any pathway to resolution on a certain collision course in a divisive conflict between private property rights and public policy-making. The opportunity for balance is diminished and in the end, becomes a contest.
What this business comes down to is a fundamental conflict of will, vision and ideology. In a culture of distrust, it becomes a profound Disconnect between the community and those whom we trust to manage the affairs that we cannot or choose not to manage for ourselves.
Blame will be assigned to someone or the someones. Some are spinning the truth, some are pushing an agenda and some are struggling with trying to do the right thing. But the paradigm has shifted over this TPZ, land use action and reaction. It was a defining moment. In the end somebody will have to be right and somebody will have to be wrong. To repair the Disconnect and restore trust will require uncommon leadership. It will necessarily involve difficult and painful decisions.
Something important here has failed. When we see ourselves as victims of a process and that the Disconnect is a product of failure, it just does not matter anymore who is right and who is wrong or which side 'wins'.
The solution, if there is a solution, begins with the reality that even if the failure comes in good faith, it is a failure nonetheless.
Times-Standard
Article Launched: 03/30/2008 01:37:48 AM PDT
Showing posts with label TPZ Battle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TPZ Battle. Show all posts
4.01.2008
12.17.2007
ER - Timberland use ordinance forced back to square one
Timberland use ordinance forced back to square oneTimberland use ordinance forced back to square one
by Wendy Butler, 12/16/2007
A county land-use ordinance that could have been in place 30 days after its passage is now, in effect, in pieces and back to the drawing — and planning — board.
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday voted 4-1 to discontinue timberland production zone ordinance discussions and to put the proposed TPZ revisions back into various county committee and commission deliberations about the Humboldt County General Plan Update.
The Forestry Review Committee had been tackling some of the same issues, such as discretionary permitting, second residences and TPZ rollout, before the supervisors passed an emergency moratorium in October on issuing residential construction permits on TPZ land, Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard said during a Thursday interview.
The FRC has been discussing timberland development and zoning since 2002, he said.
The acceleration, he said, of focus on TPZ came as a result of Pacific Lumber Co.’s bankruptcy reorganization plan.
As previously reported, PALCO introduced a concept for a high-end residential development, “Redwood Ranch,” to be located on nearly 22,000 acres of its second-growth, commercial TPZ land.
The concept is what necessitated the temporary moratorium, Supervisor Jill Geist said before the Tuesday vote and again on Friday.
She took county planners to task at the Tuesday meeting for not, in her opinion, following several of the supervisors’ directives.
Those included providing information about how the county’s TPZ code measures up to state law; information and discussion on state forestry policies; and the California Forest Practice Act and state permitting for certain types of conversion projects, including conversion of parcels smaller than 3-acres, which can qualify for state exemption from a Timber Harvest Plan and the California Environmental Quality Act.
“Our perspective is we only have a role to play in what is our jurisdiction,” Girard said. “We control land use, and what rules do we have under our jurisdiction that may or may not regulate (that use)?”
Girard had advised how residential construction on TPZ land was not subject to discretionary review, including for a project such as PALCO’s.
But, he said, it was obvious at the public hearings before and following the passage of the moratorium that “there were going to be at least 20 or 30 agencies involved in this decision. There was no question about it.”
Geist said she spoke with state forestry board staff about conversion permitting, and per that conversation and her knowledge that PALCO had planned infrastructure development prior to the sale of any parcel, it was clear to her that would trigger “a major timberland permit.”
Geist said she didn’t know this before she and Supervisor Bonnie Neely introduced the moratorium motion, and said she wished staff had informed her of the state rules concerning this type of TPZ construction.
“The issue was originally about PALCO; it was not about the TPZ land,” Geist said.
The supervisors had wanted to make sure Redwood Ranch had “adequate environmental review,” she said.
“That’s what drove it for me,” Geist said.
Knowing the state will provide regulatory review, she said, made it reasonable to put TPZ discussions back into the general plan update process.
How much has the TPZ ordinance preparation over the past two months delayed concentration on the general plan update?
“It effectively put us two months behind,” Girard said.
He said staff rescheduled for later hearings general plan chapter discussions that had been scheduled to go before the Planning Commission.
Geist’s criticism was not the only one expressed this past week. During Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights’ Tuesday rally, some participants displayed signs that bore red lines through Girard’s name.
“I think if people understood the purpose of the authority that the federal and state constitution gives local government, it’s one of the few areas in the separation of powers between state, federal and local government that local government enjoys,” Girard said. “The exercise of that authority requires the county in any jurisdiction at the local level to evaluate how land use affects general well-being, and it necessarily sets up a conflict between public interest and private interest as part of the design of our constitution.
“Our jobs are to reach that optimum balance between the public interest and private interest, and an issue like how should timberlands be used raises a whole host of questions of what is in public interest versus what is in private interest.”
“It’s not going to be orderly and nice all the time,” he added. “It’s going to be chaotic; it’s going to be controversial; it’s going to get highly personal.”
Planning on TPZ
By Wendy Butler, the eureka reporter
County timberland policies are found in the Humboldt County General Plan’s forestry element.
“But there could be other topics associated with the subject in the land-use element and the open-space element,” Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard said.
As a result of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ vote to put timberland production zone revisions into ongoing general plan update discussions, individual elements (some of them new) in planning staff’s TPZ ordinance revisions could end up in a variety of places, Girard said.
The “ministerial” provision of staff’s proposed four-category TPZ permitting process contains the following condition: “Finding of necessity for the management of timberland and that the residence will not significantly detract or inhibit is presumed based on evidence in the NTMP (non-industrial timber management plan) and three-acre conversion permit.”
In regard to its place in the general plan, a policy on whether houses do or don’t detract goes in the forest resources element, Girard said.
“If the decision was houses in TPZ do not require regulatory review, that would go in the land-use element,” he said.
The ordinance included a four-part permitting dynamic, as well as suggested creating the zones “TPZ exclusive” and “TPZ.”
TPZ exclusive “would apply to large contiguous holdings with little or no improvements where large-scale timber production dominates,” a staff report stated.
In TPZ exclusive, a conditional-use permit would be required and a house should be “necessary for person(s) fully employed on the premises,” a permit graph stated.
The ordinance did contain some new language, such as TPZ exclusive, Girard said, but the concept is not new.
The Forestry Review Committee this week will cover TPZ during its continued discussion of the general plan’s forest resources policies, Senior Planner Michael Richardson said.
The meeting will be Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Agricultural Center, 5630 South Broadway, Eureka.
For its general plan assessment, the committee has been looking at a four-option forest resources policies matrix for several months, and that includes rezoning of land out of TPZ and also second residences therein.
At its Nov. 27 meeting, the FRC took a vote on second residences.
It voted, “Second units should be taken out of the list of permitted uses on TPZ parcels less than 160 acres, and should be allowed only in the 3 acres converted already, or intended to be converted.”
The committee might take up planning staff’s proposed TPZ ordinance, whose latest revisions the FRC hasn’t discussed, or might choose to “pick up where they left off with the general plan update and not take up those TPZ zone changes,” Richardson said.
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.
by Wendy Butler, 12/16/2007
A county land-use ordinance that could have been in place 30 days after its passage is now, in effect, in pieces and back to the drawing — and planning — board.
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday voted 4-1 to discontinue timberland production zone ordinance discussions and to put the proposed TPZ revisions back into various county committee and commission deliberations about the Humboldt County General Plan Update.
The Forestry Review Committee had been tackling some of the same issues, such as discretionary permitting, second residences and TPZ rollout, before the supervisors passed an emergency moratorium in October on issuing residential construction permits on TPZ land, Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard said during a Thursday interview.
The FRC has been discussing timberland development and zoning since 2002, he said.
The acceleration, he said, of focus on TPZ came as a result of Pacific Lumber Co.’s bankruptcy reorganization plan.
As previously reported, PALCO introduced a concept for a high-end residential development, “Redwood Ranch,” to be located on nearly 22,000 acres of its second-growth, commercial TPZ land.
The concept is what necessitated the temporary moratorium, Supervisor Jill Geist said before the Tuesday vote and again on Friday.
She took county planners to task at the Tuesday meeting for not, in her opinion, following several of the supervisors’ directives.
Those included providing information about how the county’s TPZ code measures up to state law; information and discussion on state forestry policies; and the California Forest Practice Act and state permitting for certain types of conversion projects, including conversion of parcels smaller than 3-acres, which can qualify for state exemption from a Timber Harvest Plan and the California Environmental Quality Act.
“Our perspective is we only have a role to play in what is our jurisdiction,” Girard said. “We control land use, and what rules do we have under our jurisdiction that may or may not regulate (that use)?”
Girard had advised how residential construction on TPZ land was not subject to discretionary review, including for a project such as PALCO’s.
But, he said, it was obvious at the public hearings before and following the passage of the moratorium that “there were going to be at least 20 or 30 agencies involved in this decision. There was no question about it.”
Geist said she spoke with state forestry board staff about conversion permitting, and per that conversation and her knowledge that PALCO had planned infrastructure development prior to the sale of any parcel, it was clear to her that would trigger “a major timberland permit.”
Geist said she didn’t know this before she and Supervisor Bonnie Neely introduced the moratorium motion, and said she wished staff had informed her of the state rules concerning this type of TPZ construction.
“The issue was originally about PALCO; it was not about the TPZ land,” Geist said.
The supervisors had wanted to make sure Redwood Ranch had “adequate environmental review,” she said.
“That’s what drove it for me,” Geist said.
Knowing the state will provide regulatory review, she said, made it reasonable to put TPZ discussions back into the general plan update process.
How much has the TPZ ordinance preparation over the past two months delayed concentration on the general plan update?
“It effectively put us two months behind,” Girard said.
He said staff rescheduled for later hearings general plan chapter discussions that had been scheduled to go before the Planning Commission.
Geist’s criticism was not the only one expressed this past week. During Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights’ Tuesday rally, some participants displayed signs that bore red lines through Girard’s name.
“I think if people understood the purpose of the authority that the federal and state constitution gives local government, it’s one of the few areas in the separation of powers between state, federal and local government that local government enjoys,” Girard said. “The exercise of that authority requires the county in any jurisdiction at the local level to evaluate how land use affects general well-being, and it necessarily sets up a conflict between public interest and private interest as part of the design of our constitution.
“Our jobs are to reach that optimum balance between the public interest and private interest, and an issue like how should timberlands be used raises a whole host of questions of what is in public interest versus what is in private interest.”
“It’s not going to be orderly and nice all the time,” he added. “It’s going to be chaotic; it’s going to be controversial; it’s going to get highly personal.”
Planning on TPZ
By Wendy Butler, the eureka reporter
County timberland policies are found in the Humboldt County General Plan’s forestry element.
“But there could be other topics associated with the subject in the land-use element and the open-space element,” Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard said.
As a result of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ vote to put timberland production zone revisions into ongoing general plan update discussions, individual elements (some of them new) in planning staff’s TPZ ordinance revisions could end up in a variety of places, Girard said.
The “ministerial” provision of staff’s proposed four-category TPZ permitting process contains the following condition: “Finding of necessity for the management of timberland and that the residence will not significantly detract or inhibit is presumed based on evidence in the NTMP (non-industrial timber management plan) and three-acre conversion permit.”
In regard to its place in the general plan, a policy on whether houses do or don’t detract goes in the forest resources element, Girard said.
“If the decision was houses in TPZ do not require regulatory review, that would go in the land-use element,” he said.
The ordinance included a four-part permitting dynamic, as well as suggested creating the zones “TPZ exclusive” and “TPZ.”
TPZ exclusive “would apply to large contiguous holdings with little or no improvements where large-scale timber production dominates,” a staff report stated.
In TPZ exclusive, a conditional-use permit would be required and a house should be “necessary for person(s) fully employed on the premises,” a permit graph stated.
The ordinance did contain some new language, such as TPZ exclusive, Girard said, but the concept is not new.
The Forestry Review Committee this week will cover TPZ during its continued discussion of the general plan’s forest resources policies, Senior Planner Michael Richardson said.
The meeting will be Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Agricultural Center, 5630 South Broadway, Eureka.
For its general plan assessment, the committee has been looking at a four-option forest resources policies matrix for several months, and that includes rezoning of land out of TPZ and also second residences therein.
At its Nov. 27 meeting, the FRC took a vote on second residences.
It voted, “Second units should be taken out of the list of permitted uses on TPZ parcels less than 160 acres, and should be allowed only in the 3 acres converted already, or intended to be converted.”
The committee might take up planning staff’s proposed TPZ ordinance, whose latest revisions the FRC hasn’t discussed, or might choose to “pick up where they left off with the general plan update and not take up those TPZ zone changes,” Richardson said.
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.
11.03.2007
TS - Timber ordinance extension on tap
Timber ordinance extension on tap
Humboldt County supervisors will consider on Tuesday extending a controversial moratorium on issuing permits to build on land zoned for timber production.
The original emergency ordinance was spawned after the Pacific Lumber Co. submitted a plan to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Corpus Christi, Texas that called for building 136 high-end homes on 22,000 acres of timberland as part of reorganizing. But the decision to put the moratorium in place has caused a major backlash from many timberland owners, while supporters say it was necessary and remains so.
The staff report reads that since the board isn't meeting on Nov. 13 or Nov. 20, it has to consider the extension before the ordinance runs out on Nov. 24. The report recommends an extension for 90 more days, while the planning commission works to hammer out permanent rules for building in the timber production zone, or TPZ.
If it's not extended, county staff maintains, issuing building permits received during the gap between the new ordinance and the initial temporary ordinance could have substantial unintended consequences.
Attorney and landowner Bill Barnum said the county's initial reaction to Palco's plan was irrational and ill-advised. He said if there is a rush for building permits, it's the county which is to blame.
”You can't tinker and alter market conditions and then marvel when people respond,” Barnum said.
Staff has scheduled a Forest Review Committee hearing to discuss a slate of changes to the existing county policy on building in TPZ. That meeting, on Wednesday, will go over proposed changes to make it necessary to show that any home built in TPZ must be necessary for managing the forest; must have water storage sufficient to carry the residence through dry periods and prevent drawing down streams; and is compatible with adjacent landowners' habitat conservation plans, among others.
Those recommendations would be passed to the planning commission for a Nov. 15 meeting. The Board of Supervisors would hear the commission's recommendations on Dec. 11.
In the meantime, said the Humboldt Watershed Council's Mark Lovelace, there is a concern that people may take advantage of the gap to file permit applications that wouldn't meet the standards set by future ordinances.
”There's a concern that people will file anything to have their foot in the door,” Lovelace said.
Any extension would have to pass on a 4-1 vote.
There is little question that the emergency ordinance first adopted weighed heavily in the mind of bankruptcy Judge Richard Schmidt. The judge said he'd watched the proceedings and noted the county's concern over such a major development by Palco, and questioned whether the company's restructuring plan was feasible because of it. On Oct. 23, he directed Palco and its creditors to go into mediation and negotiate a plan.
But opponents of the ordinance have rallied against what they see as a subversion of the general plan process, and have planned protests, including one today at the courthouse. They claim that the emergency rule cheats landowners of their right to due process.
IF YOU GO:
What: TPZ proposed emergency ordinance extension
Where: Humboldt County Courthouse
When: Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.
IF YOU GO:
What: Board of Supervisor's regular meeting
Where: Humboldt County Courthouse
When: Tuesday, 9 a.m.
John Driscoll The Times-Standard 11/03/2007
John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com.
Humboldt County supervisors will consider on Tuesday extending a controversial moratorium on issuing permits to build on land zoned for timber production.
The original emergency ordinance was spawned after the Pacific Lumber Co. submitted a plan to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Corpus Christi, Texas that called for building 136 high-end homes on 22,000 acres of timberland as part of reorganizing. But the decision to put the moratorium in place has caused a major backlash from many timberland owners, while supporters say it was necessary and remains so.
The staff report reads that since the board isn't meeting on Nov. 13 or Nov. 20, it has to consider the extension before the ordinance runs out on Nov. 24. The report recommends an extension for 90 more days, while the planning commission works to hammer out permanent rules for building in the timber production zone, or TPZ.
If it's not extended, county staff maintains, issuing building permits received during the gap between the new ordinance and the initial temporary ordinance could have substantial unintended consequences.
Attorney and landowner Bill Barnum said the county's initial reaction to Palco's plan was irrational and ill-advised. He said if there is a rush for building permits, it's the county which is to blame.
”You can't tinker and alter market conditions and then marvel when people respond,” Barnum said.
Staff has scheduled a Forest Review Committee hearing to discuss a slate of changes to the existing county policy on building in TPZ. That meeting, on Wednesday, will go over proposed changes to make it necessary to show that any home built in TPZ must be necessary for managing the forest; must have water storage sufficient to carry the residence through dry periods and prevent drawing down streams; and is compatible with adjacent landowners' habitat conservation plans, among others.
Those recommendations would be passed to the planning commission for a Nov. 15 meeting. The Board of Supervisors would hear the commission's recommendations on Dec. 11.
In the meantime, said the Humboldt Watershed Council's Mark Lovelace, there is a concern that people may take advantage of the gap to file permit applications that wouldn't meet the standards set by future ordinances.
”There's a concern that people will file anything to have their foot in the door,” Lovelace said.
Any extension would have to pass on a 4-1 vote.
There is little question that the emergency ordinance first adopted weighed heavily in the mind of bankruptcy Judge Richard Schmidt. The judge said he'd watched the proceedings and noted the county's concern over such a major development by Palco, and questioned whether the company's restructuring plan was feasible because of it. On Oct. 23, he directed Palco and its creditors to go into mediation and negotiate a plan.
But opponents of the ordinance have rallied against what they see as a subversion of the general plan process, and have planned protests, including one today at the courthouse. They claim that the emergency rule cheats landowners of their right to due process.
IF YOU GO:
What: TPZ proposed emergency ordinance extension
Where: Humboldt County Courthouse
When: Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.
IF YOU GO:
What: Board of Supervisor's regular meeting
Where: Humboldt County Courthouse
When: Tuesday, 9 a.m.
John Driscoll The Times-Standard 11/03/2007
John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com.
The Points in the HumCPR ad
Here's what the ad says -
By enacting an "Emergency Ordinance" that bans new home construction on TPZ lands in Humboldt County, you have abused your power and attacked our rural culture.
You claimed an "emergency" as a ruse to cheat us out of our constitutional right to due process, and you took over $1 Billion of property without justification or compensation.
You held two public hearings with little or no advance notice where you rushed to eliminate a long-standing right to build a home on private property.
You interfered with the dream of home ownership for many individuals who were in the process of achieving a piece of Humboldt County's rural culture. You are ignoring the county and state laws that for 30 years have allowed a residence on TPZ lands.
You have pre-determined the outcome of the ongoing General Plan Update process by dictating a policy that eliminates home building on TPZ lands.
You claimed the ordinance is in response to an "emergency." There is no emergency. Nobody can build a home on TPZ lands without your building permit oversight and regulation - and you know that to be true. You were already in control of the process.
By enacting an "Emergency Ordinance" that bans new home construction on TPZ lands in Humboldt County, you have abused your power and attacked our rural culture.
You claimed an "emergency" as a ruse to cheat us out of our constitutional right to due process, and you took over $1 Billion of property without justification or compensation.
You held two public hearings with little or no advance notice where you rushed to eliminate a long-standing right to build a home on private property.
You interfered with the dream of home ownership for many individuals who were in the process of achieving a piece of Humboldt County's rural culture. You are ignoring the county and state laws that for 30 years have allowed a residence on TPZ lands.
You have pre-determined the outcome of the ongoing General Plan Update process by dictating a policy that eliminates home building on TPZ lands.
You claimed the ordinance is in response to an "emergency." There is no emergency. Nobody can build a home on TPZ lands without your building permit oversight and regulation - and you know that to be true. You were already in control of the process.