Yuba County General Plan update on 60-day hold

The Yuba County Planning Commission put a 60-day hold on pushing ahead a General Plan update Wednesday night after several residents said they had too many questions and too many comments to let the process continue.

Near the end of a two-hour meeting where nearly half was taken up by audience comments, the commission voted 4-1 for the stay, also asking county staff to investigate portions of the update that drew the most criticism.

"Please don't wait 59 days and then bring a whole bunch of stuff for us to read," said commission Chairman Jon Messick after the vote to those attending the meeting. "Get those comments into us."

The update, meant to be the county's guiding document for planning and growth for the next two decades, is still in draft form and will need scrutiny and approval from the Board of Supervisors, with additional chances for input, before adoption.

County Planner Dan Cucchi, in a lengthy presentation of the draft, said adoption wouldn't come until February at the soonest. The county is also in the final stages of creating an environmental impact report for the update, a document also subject to comments and scrutiny.

Cucchi's presentation also noted the update was created through a four-year process with several public meetings.

But several speakers said few, if any, of those meetings allowed true public input. And the draft, which was released last month, also had several new elements many speakers said residents hadn't had time to digest.

"What I tend to see here is a document that didn't come from the bottom up, but the top down," said Plumas Lake resident Don Rae, who said he thought too much of the plan came from a consulting group the county hired for assistance rather than community input.

Other speakers, many of them from the foothills, said they not only objected to the planned schedule for adoption, but questioned a four-fifths vote requirement by county supervisors to later amend the plan.

There was also input from Browns Valley Irrigation District officials, who saw potential problems with water policy, and representatives of two proposed developments who wanted stronger consideration of their projects' benefits for economic development.

And former Supervisor Don Schrader, who began his comments to commissioners with, "You all have my sympathy," said the update should carefully consider how Highway 70 might be configured in the future in and north of Marysville.

In making a motion for the 60-day hold, Commissioner Virgil Zimmerman asked staff to consider the highway issue and four-fifths vote requirement.

The dissenting commissioner, Jim Rippey, said later in the meeting he voted no because he would've also asked for more workshops with public input, as many speakers suggested.

But county Planning Director Wendy Hartman said because of budget considerations, approval for such workshops would have to come from supervisors.

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com.