Local Control of Land Use Policy

By Matt Grocott

With the passage of the One Bay Area Plan, the threat to local control of land use planning and policies has become real. Historically, they have been left to local jurisdictions to deliberate. If we want it to remain that way, we will have to fight to gain back and maintain local control.

Today, I know that much of the pressure to build the Transit Village and Wheeler Plaza projects is coming from law makers in Sacramento and regional bodies like MTC and ABAG. This past July, for example, MTC and ABAG met in Oakland at the Marriott Hotel. They were scheduled to vote on the One Bay Area Plan. Near midnight, after hours of mostly unfavorable public testimony, the board approved the plan by voice vote. In other words, no record was taken of who voted for or against.

With One Bay Area Plan in place, San Carlos now has to produce a given number of housing units near public transit in trade for state funding for road maintainance and/or infrastructure improvements. It used to be that cities only had to plan for these numbers; now we will have to produce them if we want the funding. The pressure to take the trade leads to projects like the Transit Village being considered, regardless of traffic impacts to Holly Street, noise and visual impacts to nearby neighborhoods, or the poor site location for housing, sandwiched as it is between a state highway and a railroad.

Historically, land use has always been left to local jurisdictions to plan and deliberate. With OBAP, a strong state and regional influence has been inserted into the process. Council members from around the Bay Area see a danger of losing local control. I am one of them.