Funding for Buildout Reduction Plan in Cambria

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On August 21, 2008,  the  CCSD Board  approved the Final Program Environmental Impact Report of the Water Master Plan and then the Master Plan itself. In a nutshell, it describes the potential impacts adequate, reliable water may have on our community. The Master Plan includes a diversified collection of solutions to the water shortage – with the desalination in the starring role. For more than a dozen years, the CCSD has been working toward making this drought-proof source of water a reality. But acceptance of the Water Master Plan is hardly the end. No, now the really difficult decisions must be considered and action will require our elected officials to really be leaders.

But with the appearance of reliable water, Cambria will lose authority over the pace of growth. For eight years, under the California Water Code 350, the CCSD has administered a moratorium on new water connections. The practical result of this has been a building moratorium, because the County requires proof that the CCSD will provide services for a project before they will issue a permit to build.  When a new reliable water source is available, the CCSD will presumably begin to issue letters of intent to serve to those on the water wait list. If nothing changes with the County plan, the County will issue about 30-35 permits per year until the wait list is exhausted – in 2034.

The issue of growth for Cambria is a hot-button for many who’ve moved here since the 1980′s. The trouble seems to be, once there is enough water for everyone, keeping Cambria a small village will be next to impossible. It is difficult to justify an expensive desalination plant when the gap between available water and the water demand is 50-60 AF (less than Cambria currently use in one month.) It’s also difficult to justify limiting the number of households the CCSD will serve if a desalination plant is humming away, making drinking water enough for a town almost twice as big.

Just from a strict fairness standpoint, refusing to provide water to a property while the one right next door has a virtually unlimited supply to waste feels wrong.  Once the infrastructure is in place, expansion of a desal plant is mind-bogglingly easy. While the CCSD wants to make sure everyone who already lives here has sufficient water, they are also intent on ensuring Cambria remains a small town. It’s an balancing act requiring nimble and principled leaders and no small amount of strategy.  Private property rights must be balanced with the community’s desire to maintain the village atmosphere. They must consider the capacity of the resources and manage them appropriately. And let’s face it, managing an absolute known quantity is much easier than planning for an unknown number of homes using however much water they want from aquifers of  unknown capacity.

Cambria’s Water Master Plan defines the number of connections and a specific amount of water that will be available to those connections. It also describes a program that meant to keep Cambria from “Carmelizing” when water is no longer a limited resource. It’s called the Buildout Reduction Program.  In a nutshell, the program says, we like our town small and forested and it should stay that way, so we’ll just buy up the undeveloped properties and preserve them as open space. This plan would seem ludicrous or unworkable in many places, but not in Cambria. About 10 years ago, Cambrians organized and raised the support and money to purchase the Fiscalini Ranch (Called the East-West Ranch at the time) to prevent development on it.  Since then, Greenspace, the Cambria Land Trust, and others have worked to buy and retire vacant lots as they went up for sale with the intention they would always be open space. I’m sure it was this momentum, coupled with individual landowners recording conservation easements in many places, that CCSD intended to capitalize on and carry through into the envisioned Buildout Reduction Program (or Plan).

Unfortunately, no amount of momentum or determination on the part of Cambrians can force property owners to sell or voluntarily give up their property. In fact, a few of those property owners are who think they have a right to build on their residentially zoned property have filed an appeal in the Second Appellate District, Division 6. They are asking the appellate court to remand this matter to the Trial Court for consideration of the merits of Appellants’ claims for inverse condemnation by way of a land-use analysis, to stay the proceedings to allow Appellants an opportunity to submit a government claim, to amend the pleadings to petition for a writ of mandamus, and to proceed forward to litigate this matter on the merits thereof. The questions presented in that appeal are:

1. Whether a complaining landowner states a valid cause of action for inverse condemnation sufficient to survive demurrer when the fundamental issue raised in his complaint involves land-use principles?
2. Whether principles of res judicata apply to a complaining landowner when his present lawsuit arises out of and is based on a land-use permit application that was filed by the complaining landowner, and denied by governmental agencies, after the last time the complaining landowner and the governmental agencies had engaged in litigation and when the issue of the denial of the land-use permit had not been previously litigated?
3. Whether a party to an action’s due process rights are violated by imposing principles of res judicata to that party by an extension of
   principles of privity when that party has never filed any previous action and when the primary relationship between the complaining
   parties is limited to their status as plaintiffs in the same lawsuit?
4. Whether a four year statute of limitations is applicable in an as applied challenge to a statute when the statute was enacted more than four years prior to the date of filing of the complaint, but less than four years after it was applied to the circumstance of the specific plaintiffs?

What all that legeleze means is that the appellant thinks the trial court judge didn’t base his decision on the right laws. After reading the appellant’s brief, I think he might have a point. It will be interesting to see what the appellate judge decides.

What this means for Cambria: we are getting closer to the day when a judge will decide the future of our community. To my mind, there are two alternatives: lift the moratorium allow property owners to build at 1% per year up to the wastewater treatment plant capacity of 5,250. (It will be 2040 at that point.) Or face the reality of paying for all those properties that the CCSD will not serve – with a price tag of at least $39,000,000, probably much, much more

More homes and more Cambrians means more money for services and facilities (like fire protection and parks). It also means more demand for those services and facilities. The property taxes on those new homes is likely to be much more than taxes on homes that haven’t been re-assessed for over a decade or two. And connection fees will help underwrite some of the urgent infrastructure improvements we apparently need. More people would mean more wear and tear on the roads and other facilities. There are always trade-offs for communities as they try to map their future.

Our community is protected from becoming a community of McMansions by the standards of the North Coast Area Plan and the Cambria Design Plan as well as the County ordinances that implement those policies.The County is making an effort to set policy that is in line with what the community wants. Its time to give that responsibility back to the County.

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