2006 ORD O-02-06 Urgency - Laserfiche WebLink

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 5. City staff anticipates that more acreage within the City will be encumbered by such contracts and conservation easements. In fact, a recent Biological Opinion provided by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Department notes that "[[]in most cases, substantial additional land will need to be acquired to ensure long-term conservation of existing [Delhi -Sands Flower Loving Fly] populations." (Source: Slover Avenue Biological Opinion, pp. 11) Acquisition of these additional lands will severely impact the City's planning efforts at a time when data for determining appropriate land uses and land use intensity is being gathered and considered. As a result, City staff are recommending that a method be implemented to track land that becomes unavailable for development due to it being encumbered by conservation agreements and/or easements 6. While the City Council recognizes that preserving Habitat for the Delhi Fly is important and legally required pursuant to the federal Endangered Species Act, the City Council also desires to balance these conservation efforts by private individuals with its obligations under California Planning & Zoning Law to prepare and adopt a comprehensive, long-term general plan for the physical development of the City containing all of the mandatory elements required by law (California Government Code, Section 65300 et seq.). The City's General Plan is required to include, in part: "A land use element that designates the proposed general distribution and general location and extent of the uses of the land for housing, business, industry, open space, including agriculture, natural resources, recreation, and enjoyment of scenic beauty, education, public buildings and grounds, solid and liquid waste disposal facilities, and other categories of public and private uses of land. The land use element shall include a statement of the standards of population density and building intensity recommended for the various districts and other territory covered by the plan...." (California Government Code, Section 65302(a).) 7. The City Council is also concerned that if private property owners encumber their properties with open space conservation contracts and easements to the exclusion of the type of development allowed by the City's General Plan Land Use Element and Zoning Ordinance, the City's long-term planning efforts will be detrimentally impacted and of no relevance. Specifically, the City Council is concerned that not having a mechanism that identifies the level and extent of conservation occurring on property, the City's General Plan and the assumptions upon which General Plan decisions are made will be immediately obsolete and incorrect. 8. The City Council is also concerned that the short-term planning efforts of the City's Planning Staff and Consultants to study existing and proposed land uses for them will become out-of-date without a mechanism to analyze the projected long-term uses of property. 9. The City Council also wants to assure that persons who purchase conservation easements for the purpose of mitigating Delhi Fly Habitat impacts are purchasing land that qualifies as true Habitat area and that only Habitat area is set-aside. As a result, the City Council wishes to adopt this Urgency Ordinance as a means to provide purchasers of conservation contracts and easements some measure of consumer protection. 10. In addition, the City Council wants to assure that land purchased for conservation purposes is in fact the only use that such land can put to. In other words, the City wishes to assure that it is not deprived of economic revitalization efforts and the generation of sales tax and property tax revenue by unnecessarily encumbering land that can be used for other purposes. ORANGE\MMARTINEZ\23217.1 -2-