Will our lifestyle suffer a SLO death?

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One of the most nefarious regulations to come out of Sacramento has to do with a requirement that each and every community in the State of California accommodate its share of growth: this despite the fact that not every community has adequate water, sewage, and transportation infrastructure to accommodate such growth.

 
 The so-called Regional Housing Needs Assessment in essence requires each and every jurisdiction to update zoning to facilitate a “fair and consistent” growth pattern throughout the state, to wear down the resolve of no-growth and slow-growth communities.

Two other pieces of legislation will come into play in determining the fate of the communities of San Luis Obispo County as it pertains to our ability to retain our small-town charm. SB 375 coupled with AB 32, in essence, seek to save the planet from global warming by limiting the effects of commuting attributable to urban sprawl.

What this means is our communities are going to get more crowded and dense. Building heights are going to rise, open spaces are going to disappear.  Slow-growth moratoriums will become moot. Community infrastructure and resources will be strained.

 
 Compounding these threats to our quality of life, the Board of Supervisors has adopted a policy framework referred to as “Smart Growth.” This framework, in essence, seeks to dump as much housing as possible into incorporated cities and the various unincorporated villages throughout the county. It also seeks to severely restrict the ability of farmers and ranchers to build any additional housing on their own property, even for their own family members!

 We are currently witnessing an example of these so-called Smart Growth goals in action. A particular development in Templeton was rejected by the Planning Commission because it was not dense enough!  County officials wanted the density of the project to exceed the water resources available to serve the project!  What is smart about that?  The community was rightly outraged.

 In the middle of a recession that has severely curtailed growth, it is hard to imagine the impacts of these disastrous local and state planning regulations.  Nonetheless, this battle is on right now!  All of our county supervisors have pledged to protect our quality of life.  Instead, the current board majority seems intent to compound the problems emanating from the State.

 Will all this mean the end to the SLO quality of life we all love? Let us consider why we still have a quality of life worth protecting, unlike much of the rest of our state.

 The simple answers to why the SLO life is such a good one could be boiled down to the fact that we have never had much job growth and that has certainly lessened resultant development pressures. Another factor is our lack of water to serve a growing population. A third factor would be the limitations of growth in place by our local governing bodies.  All of these factors have certainly contributed to the preservation of this place we love as our home and all of these factors could in fact be threatened by the current state and local legislative tendencies outlined above.

 
 However, I believe the single biggest factor that has served to protect our community from rampant growth is the fact that our historic farming and ranching families were committed to preserving this rural state of bliss we all enjoy by virtue of their ability to make a living off of the land.  Urbanites, planners and politicians must never forget that agriculture is not just a zoning designation, it is a business.

 In a nutshell, the Board of Supervisors is in the process of imposing a series of land use regulations that pose a threat to our agricultural economy. These have included the Smart Growth initiative, the Events Ordinance, viewshed protection measures, the elimination of the right to build a second home for family members, various resource protection measures, and the Grading Ordinance, to name just a few, as this list goes on and on and on!  Whereas, the Board majority of Gibson, Hill and Patterson would claim they are saving agriculture by these actions, I do not believe them. I am not alone.  No organization truly representing the agricultural community is in support of their actions.
 

My concern has to do with all that serves to threaten the ability of our farmers and ranchers to earn their living from agriculture.  I believe the single biggest threat to our quality of life would be anything that forces these families to sell their land so that it may be converted to other uses, including estate living. Unfortunately, much of this pressure of conversion is emanating from our own county government in the midst of this recession.

 We have a good thing going in SLO; we should not let our State and County governments ruin it.

J. Andrew Caldwell is the Executive Director of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business (COLAB) and a daily radio talk show host. Send comments via the editor at econnolly@newtimes.

This article appears in Feb 18-25, 2010.