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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08/19/2003, COMMUNICATION 1 - COMMUNICATION ITEM RECEIVED ���������IIIIIIIillllllll� ��lllll aus 1 9 200.3 COunC1L MCMORAnbuff, SLOCITY CLERK laty of san Luis oms o. aaminlstRAtion be arnment DATE: August 19, 2003 TO: City Council FROM: Ken Hampian, CAO SUBJECT: Communication Item The Mayor intends to brief the Council under the Communication Section of the August 19, 2003 meeting agenda on the outcome of a County Planning Commission meeting held last week regarding two projects on the outskirts of the City. The Mayor, City Attorney, and Deputy Public Works Director attended this meeting to advocate for adequate mitigation for project impacts on the City, and were successful in making the case to the Commission. The Mayor is providing Council Members with his opening statement to the Commission and map showing project locations (attached). A description of the mitigations will be provided during the communication. COUNCIL CDD DIR ,aCAO Q FIN DIR RED FILE MACAO rc FIRE CHIEF ,ETATTORNEY PW DIR - MEETING AGENDA ZCLERK/ORI(3 POLICE CHF DAITEM # cfxl I D�- _T�EADS ZREC DIR �i®LZ HR.JJTIL0IR l� �'HR D �lIR Communication on County PC Statement to County Planning Commission Regarding County Projects on Highway 227 August 14, 2003 Chairperson, members of the Planning Commission, I am Dave Romero, Mayor of the City of San Luis Obispo. Thank you very much for allowing me to address the commission this morning. . I have brought with me our City Attorney, Jonathan Lowell, and Deputy Public Works Director, Tim Bochum. Before I turn the microphone over to Tim and Jonathan for more detailed comments, I wish to provide you with this brief opening statement. As you may know, in December of 1996, the City Council of San Luis Obispo strongly objected to the conversion of this property from an agricultural designation to an industrial designation. This is because the land had always been considered more appropriately agricultural in nature in both City and County general plans. We lost this argument in a 3-2 Board of Supervisors vote. But even if one believes the properties could work well for industrial purposes, as the board majority obviously did, such urban uses should not be developed by the County on the door-step of a city. In fact, such practices are frowned upon in our respective policy documents and nationwide in terms of what constitutes good basic planning principles. However, all of this is somewhat "water under the bridge" at this point, because the County has long ago redesignated the land and a project is now on the brink of approval. Therefore, we fall back to a second argument - one made by staff when the project was originally referred to us for comment - which is: If an urban-like project is going to be built adjacent to our City, then the impacts of such a project need to be properly mitigated. In this case, we feel that the mitigation of impacts on the City of SLO are insufficient. To explain this further, I am calling upon Tim Bochum, our Deputy Public Works Director, who will be followed by our City Attorney.