Next meeting reminder:  Harry Norris and Rachel Michelin, 7 p.m. on February 20th

Our series of Conversations With Candidates meetings continues with Board of Supervisors candidates Harry Norris (District 1) and Rachel Michelin (District 2).

Let's look again at EDH incorporation

We're hearing expressions of increasing support for incorporating El Dorado Hills as a city from many sources, and we're hearing of even more from other sources. Within the past week Village Life published an article reporting that District 1 County Supervisor Rusty Dupray now openly supports incorporation for the urbanizing communities of El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park: Together, these two account for a population of about 60,000 -- roughly a third of the entire population of El Dorado County. Many people, including some of the former opponents of incorporation, are beginning to see it as a necessity to adequately support our needs.

The Citizens Alliance's has been unable to find ways to adequately resolve two of the most important Active Issues as an unincorporated area.

• The best news for traffic safety is that EDH now has two full time CHP officers and an allocation for overtime duty by others -- a huge improvement from having had no locally dedicated patrol. However, if we had incorporated in 2005 we would have had about 30 police officers with full authority for traffic patrol. In sampling internal allocation of patrol staffing in a few existing northern California police forces it appears that a reasonable expectation for EDH would be to have about 10 of those 30 specially trained as traffic officers.
   
• There's no sign of improvement in County funding for road maintenance. One measure is that the County is still on track to need about 120 years to do a pavement overlay on every mile of its roads. If we had incorporated our Road Fund would have received a major boost from the portion of fuel sales tax revenue allocated only to incorporated cities, and that revenue would have increased annually at least as fast as the rate of retail gasoline prices. That rate currently is about 60% higher than it was in the FY 2004 data used in the 2005 incorporation fiscal analysis.

After hearing new support for incorporation recently the Citizens Alliance ran a computer analysis to update and extend the basic projections of the 2005 Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis (CFA). The result was to show that the city would have been fiscally viable for all growth forecasts, including zero growth.

The update was limited to two factors: Use of the CFA tables representing historic Vehicle License Fee in-lieu funding and allowance for increased Road Fund revenue based on actual inflation of retail gas prices. The CFA did not anticipate more than 25% reduced growth, but its tables provided adequate data to extrapolate to lower growth levels. Results will be posted soon on www.edhca.net for the CFA's originally forecasted growth rate, 25% reduced growth, then 50%, 75%, and 100% reduced growth.


County matters: Especially oaks

Coming soon on the County schedule is a workshop scheduled as a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and the Agricultural Commission: Tuesday, February 19, in Placerville. (Follow this link to see the agenda.) Discussion relates mainly to agricultural land use but parts of the discussion may be of interest to El Dorado Hills residents (in the EDH Community Region) who live at or near the interface with rural lands. Some of these items are:

• Discussion of proposed amendment to Policy 8.1.3.1 to exempt lands within Community Regions and Rural Centers from minimum parcel size requirements.
• Minimum parcel sizes to meet agricultural setback standards; this involves setback requirements for land uses incompatible with agriculture.
• Different application of buffering requirements within Community Regions and Rural Centers.
• A General Plan amendment to allow an Administrative Relief process with certain findings to allow a reduction in the 10 acre buffering requirements within Community Regions and Rural Centers.

On March 13th the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing  for adoption of a Negative Declaration for the final draft of the Oak Woodland Management Plan. Written comments can be submitted at any time up to March 10th. The best links to information are collected on the County's web site on a page titled Oak Woodlands Planning/Oak Woodlands Ordinance. One link of immediate interest is for the Notice of Public Hearing .

The oak woodlands ordinance is a detailed interpretation of General Plan Policy 7.4.4.4, which identifies standards for preserving oak woodland areas and for mitigating development impacts to the native oak canopy. This also is of most interest near the edges of El Dorado Hills that still have neighboring stands of native oaks.

The County has indicated that after adoption of the Oak Woodlands Ordinance it will move on to discuss policies related to General Plan Objective 7.4.5, to "protect and maintain native trees including oaks and landmark and heritage trees".  This would be more applicable throughout EDH, where native oaks mix with homes and commercial development.

The Citizens Alliance's main concern is in Policy 7.4.5.2, which begins by stating a policy to preserve native oaks wherever feasible and requiring development of an Oak Tree Preservation Ordinance. That ordinance is to include an Oak Tree Removal Permit Process, but Policy 7.4.5.2 then defines four "special exemptions" that effectively eliminate all oak tree protection. The Alliance's position is that General Plan Policy 7.4.5.2 must be amended to either eliminate or very substantially rewrite those exemptions. Their effect is to give developers ability to cut native oaks at will in almost all cases.