General Plan gets thorough exam
As Yuba County moves closer to finalizing its General Plan update, the process has gone from being emotional to technical.
At a lengthy board of supervisors hearing on the plan Monday night, supervisors used a mighty fine tooth comb to tweak language within the update, which will be revised again before final adoption.
"No page was left unturned, so to speak," said Kevin Mallen, the county's director of development and community services, at the beginning of his presentation of revisions to date. "It really has turned into refinement rather than wholesale change."
Section by section, Mallen and the four present supervisors studied previous tweaks made to reflect comments from the public, the board and others.
In many cases, supervisors suggested additional areas to tweak, particularly in the areas of promoting economic development, encouraging alternative transportation and complying with greenhouse gas mitigation law.
Supervisors Andy Vasquez and Roger Abe found particular fault with a suggested ordinance requiring businesses wanting to locate in Yuba County to provide their employees with methods to cut down on driving.
"To me, if I'm going to be in business, I wouldn't even want to come here with that," Vasquez said. Planners agreed the language should be revised to allow the county to give incentives to businesses who did so.
The board also agreed with language scaling back how stridently the county would follow Assembly Bill 32, 2006 state legislation requiring significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Supervisor John Nicoletti said the law might be necessary for parts of California plagued by pollution, but was already being followed in rural areas like Yuba.
"We've killed as many jobs as we can kill, so I think we should be happy with that," Nicoletti said with sarcasm, referring to logging and mining industries that have all but disappeared.
There was also some push for stronger language on towers and the potential hazard they represent for aircraft, and where groundwater supplies could be affected by new development.
As of the press time, the board was still meeting and preparing to take public comment on the revised plan. From there, another, presumably final revision would be crafted and released, and the public would be able to weigh in then and again when it came before the board for adoption.
In contrast to past general plan hearings, only about a dozen county residents attended Monday's meeting, many of them drifting out well before the three-hour mark.
One, Paul Myers of Olivehurst, said he liked seeing references to global warming and the United Nations deleted from the draft, but wished the revisions were shown within the document itself for attendees to follow along.
Once adopted by the board, the plan will go to state officials for examination.
CONTACT reporter Ben van der Meer at 749-4786.
