2020-05-20 City Council Item No 11.4 Public Comment - Goolsby Attachment Regular MEETING - Additional Meeting Materials 17901 Von Karman Ave, Suite 600
Irvine, CA 92614
(949) 556-8714
www.better-neighborhoods.com/
May 20, 2020
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring, City Clerk
City of Menifee
29844 Haun Rd.
Menifee, CA 92586
Email: publiccomments@cityofmenifee.us
smanwaring@cityofmenifee.us
rfowler@cityofmenifee.us
Re: Agenda Item 11.4 - Rockport Ranch
City Council Members,
Thank-you for the opportunity to offer comments regarding Rockport Ranch Specific Plan (the
“Project”).
Better Neighborhoods Inc. is an organization established to help people have a voice in local
development decisions as prominent as that of planners and developers. Our aim is to encourage
smart growth consistent with the community’s needs while protecting the natural environment,
including farmland, and places of historic and aesthetic significance, supporting California’s need
for affordable housing and balancing the desire for growth with the need for features that
make our cities livable.
For the following reasons, the City should deny the Project.
Alternative 3: Reduced Project Intensity Alternative (RPIA) and Environmentally Superior
Alternatives
The City cannot make the following finding:
“Finding: The City Council rejects Alternative 3: Reduced Project Intensity Alternative
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring
Re: Agenda Item 4 – Rockport Ranch
May 20, 2020
Page 2
(RPIA), on the following grounds, each of which individually provides sufficient
justification for rejection of this alternative: (1) the alternative fails to avoid the project’s
significant and unavoidable impacts relating to air quality; (2) the alternative would only
marginally fulfill the project objectives.”
Staff’s reasoning is flawed and defies common sense. CEQA requires the city to approve
Alternative 3 because Alternative 3 has a lesser impact of all environmental impacts from the
Project. For Alternative 3 to be superior under CEQA, it is not required that it avoid significant
unavoidable air quality impacts, as staff wrongly asserts. Alternative 3 is a smaller project – 160
units vs the 305 units in the proposed Project. Alternative 3 will surely have less air quality impacts
than the larger project, and less of every other kind of environmental impacts, than the larger
Project.
The City is obligated under CEQA to select the environmentally superior alternative because it
accomplishes the basic project objectives and is feasible. If the City does not agree that both of
these conditions are met, the City is required to support its decision with substantial evidence as to
why the Alternative 3 RPIA does not meet the project objectives and why it is not feasible.
Mere assertions like “however, this alternative’s potential infeasibility due to inability to afford all
of the required infrastructure improvements and mitigation measures may eliminate it from actual
consideration by the project proponent,’ are unsupported by any evidence and are completely
inadequate. At a minimum, City should require a financial analysis regarding infrastructure and
mitigation measures in order to be able to make such a finding. Until it does so, the City simply has
no basis for, and simply cannot make, such a finding.
Farmland Conversion
In addition to federal and state laws regarding farmland conservation, the Menifee General Plan sets
out the following goals:
LU-1.1: Concentrate growth in strategic locations to help preserve rural areas (emphasis
added), create place and identity, provide infrastructure efficiently, and foster the use of
transit options.
LU-1.4: Preserve, protect, and enhance established rural (emphasis added), estate, and
residential neighborhoods by providing sensitive and well-designed transitions (building
design, landscape, etc.) between these neighborhoods and adjoining areas.
In view of such worthy goals, what support has the City offered toward retaining the 79 acres of
good farmland at issue?
The City’s commitment to farmland preservation appears weak, to say the least.
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring
Re: Agenda Item 4 – Rockport Ranch
May 20, 2020
Page 3
One would be hard-pressed to find a more hostile view of farming and the City’s legal obligation to
preserve farmland!
The Report delivers a blow not only to farmland conservation laws and policy, it also tells anyone
still in the business of agriculture that they can expect no support from local government if/when
they are pressured to sell.
This negativity is most evident in the death knell summary of the Land Evaluation and Site
Assessment (LESA) analysis:
The result of the LESA analysis for this site in Menifee was an overall LESA score of
40.357. According to the LESA Model scoring thresholds, agricultural resource impacts
associated with a LESA score of 40.357, which is not considered to be a significant impact,
because the Land Evaluation Score and the Site Assessment scores are not both greater than
20. The conversion of the project site to residential use is, therefore, not considered a
significant adverse impact to agricultural resources. (Appendix B, Agricultural Land
Evaluation and Site Analysis, p. 2).
However, as the same study indicates a little further on, “Not considered in the rating are
availability of water for irrigation, local climate, size and accessibility of mapped areas, distance to
markets and other factors that might determine the desirability of growing certain plants in a given
locality. Therefore, the index should not be used as the only indicator of land value.”
As we learn later in the Report, the Project site enjoys two highly productive water wells, near
perfect growing weather and proximity one of America’s most important ports, Los Angeles. How
would the LESA value change if these crucial features were considered?
Artificially lowering the Project site LESA score meant that conservation easements were not
considered.
The California Farmland Conservancy Program (CFCP) is a statewide grant program that
supports local efforts to establish agricultural conservation easements and planning projects
for the purpose of preserving important agricultural land resources. (emphasis added).
CFCP provides grants to qualifying applicants, primarily land trusts, to purchase agricultural
conservation easements. Each easement project must meet standards for the State's
investment, including a willing seller, documented development pressure, local government
support, and match funding. Agricultural conservation easements involve extensive
negotiation and relationship-building between the participants. The use of agricultural
conservation easements represents a long-term commitment by landowners, local
governments, and land trusts to conserve and steward agricultural land resources. CFCP
also provides policy planning grants to develop and evaluate local and regional land
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring
Re: Agenda Item 4 – Rockport Ranch
May 20, 2020
Page 4
conservation strategies and potential conservation projects. (The California Department of
Conservation, see https://www.conservation.ca.gov/dlrp/grant-programs/cfcp, accessed Dec.
6/19).
The City must broaden its artificially narrow view of the Project site’s agricultural potential and
examine properly and fully whether and how the state conservancy program would apply.
Agricultural conservation easements (ACEs) may mitigate the direct loss of farmland, and a lead
agency errs by failing to consider ACEs as a potential mitigation measure for this direct loss.
Friends of Kings River v. County of Fresno, 232 Cal. App. 4th 105, 181 Cal. Rptr. 3d 250, 2014
Cal. App. LEXIS 1114 (Cal. App. 5th Dist. December 8, 2014).
There is simply no basis for the assertion in the EIR that the Project will have no significant
environmental impacts to loss of farmland in the community. Rather, there will be a domino effect
that will surely result in the loss of many other farms.
Because farmland conversion is a permanent transformation, the City must reconsider LESA with
the additional factors – water, climate, market access - set out above to make a fair and proper
determination regarding the applicability of conservation easements. This is particularly important
in view of the domino effect farmland conversion likely would have on all agricultural uses in the
City.
The land which is best for agriculture happens to be best for building too. But it is limited –
and once destroyed, it cannot be regained for centuries.
In the last few years, suburban growth has been spreading over all land, agricultural or not.
It eats up this limited resource and, worse still, destroys the possibility of farming close to
cities once and for all. But we know … that it is important to have open farmland near the
places where people live. Since the arable land which can be used for farming lies mainly in
the valleys, it is essential that the valley floors within our urban regions be left untouched
and kept for farming. …
Preserve all agricultural valleys as farmland and protect this land from any development
which would destroy or lock up the unique fertility of the soil. Even when valleys are not
cultivated now, protect them; keep them for farms and parks and wilds.
Keep town and city development along the hilltops and hillsides. And in the valleys, treat
the ownership of the land as a form of stewardship, embracing basic ecological
responsibilities. (Chapter 4, Agricultural Valleys, A Pattern Language, Towns, Buildings,
Construction, Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, pp. 27-28).
These are classic, time-tested planning principles the City seems to have forgotten.
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring
Re: Agenda Item 4 – Rockport Ranch
May 20, 2020
Page 5
Is Rockport Ranch but a portion of a much larger plan?
The City has never really refuted the following statement in the Report taken from a letter by
challenger Jan L. Westfall:
Project proponent owns additional contiguous properties which are not being used for
agriculture and may be used for development. The Project may not be segmented into
individual pieces for purposes of the review and thus avoid analysis of the totality of the
Project. (Report, p. 4.11-2, letter from Jan L. Westfall 10/4/17.
Merely saying that there are no current applications for development of contiguous properties “as of
the date of the DEIR” is hardly an answer.
Air Quality
Given that the proposed density of single-family residences was not anticipated under the existing
General Plan land use designation, the proposed land uses would wildly exceed population
projections in the City’s General Plan thus conflicting with and exceeding the assumptions used to
develop the AQMP. Incredibly, the Report asserts that “This inconsistency can only be corrected
when SCAQMD amends AQMP based on updated Southern California Association of
Governments (SCAG) growth projections after the Project has been approved.” (Report, p. 4.4-
11). Why is the author so certain that a project to convert valuable farmland would be approved?
“It should be noted that the Project impacts are within the SCAQMD standards with mitigation
incorporated.” (Report, p. 4.4-22). This is an incredible assertion unsupported by any evidence.
Geology and Soils
The Project site is in a seismically active region with hard, granite bedrock susceptible to landslides
that would menace structures downslope. Granite weathers into large boulders, creating a rockfall
hazard.
Although subsidence has not been reported in Menifee, this hazard has been documented
nearby in the San Jacinto Valley, from Hemet to Moreno Valley, and in Temecula and
Murrieta. In the San Jacinto Valley and Temecula, the subsidence and related ground
fissuring have been attributed to groundwater withdrawal. In Murrieta, rapid growth of the
area led to large-scale application of landscape water to arid alluvial soils. This caused a rise
in the water table and subsequent collapse of the soils, resulting in localized surface land
subsidence and ground fissures, which cost millions of dollars in property damage to homes,
schools, and infrastructure. (Report, p. 4.7-12).
City Council Members and
Sarah Manwaring
Re: Agenda Item 4 – Rockport Ranch
May 20, 2020
Page 6
How does this Project site differ from those of Murrieta? Certainly, the Project would also qualify
as sudden, rapid growth. Would the mitigation recommended for the Project have saved Murrieta?
What is the actual risk of subsidence and lateral spreading at the Project site?
None of these questions have ever been adequately answered, studied or mitigated by the City, and
they should be before approval of the Project. Intention to comply with legal requirements and
building codes is not an adequate answer.
The City appears to offer little or no protection to local farmers, who are hardly mentioned in the
2030 Vision statement. This Project would have multiple unavoidable significant adverse impacts.
Every farmland conversion threatens every remaining farmer in the City.
Perhaps most concerning is that if it’s this easy to obtain such a radical conversion it will likely
prompt others to try until zoning and General Plan restrictions apply only to some and not to all
equally.
Sincerely,
J. Michael Goolsby
President
Better Neighborhoods