Potter: Supes, LandWatch should try to get along

Carmel Pinecone
Posted June 8, 2007

By KELLY NIX

WHILE THE Monterey County Board of Supervisors next week will try to sort out the ramifications of Tuesday’s confusing general plan election, supervisor Dave Potter is calling for cooperation between supervisors and the groups opposing them.

On Tuesday, voters shot down Measure A, the LandWatch Monterey County-backed initiative, which competed with supervisors’ own general plan as the county’s development outline. But voters also defeated Measure C, which would have adopted the supervisors’ own general plan — dubbed GPU4 — while also voting against Measure B, to repeal GPU4. Supervisors approved the plan in January.

“It appears the board’s approval of GPU4 stands,” Potter said Wednesday. “But I’ve heard conflicting reports on that. It’s totally dependent on which side you speak to. I said months ago this is subject to a variety of interpretations.”

An attorney with the county counsel’s office said that because voters in Measure B chose not to repeal GPU4, it will take effect and trump Measure C, which voters rejected.

But LandWatch board of directors president Michael DeLapa said he interprets the across-the-board No votes to mean none of the measures prevailed. He rejected the notion by county counsel that the results of Measure B trump the outcome of Measure C.

“All this now leads us back to the 1982 general plan,” DeLapa said Wednesday. “The county may try to suggest that Measure B has some standing. But Measure C, which was a legal referendum, clearly, overwhelmingly was defeated.”

The LandWatch board of directors is weighing all of its options, including legal action, he said. And the No votes should send a message to supervisors, DeLapa said.

“I would hope they would look at this,” he said, “and realize the great division in our county.”

DeLapa said he supports coming up “with a plan in collaboration with [supervisors] that is reasonable and incorporates the planning principles that a majority of this community wants.”

While the supervisors’ closed session next week could help clear up confusion over the results of the election, Potter said he also hopes opposing sides of the county’s land use issues will take a lesson from the election that they should learn to work together.

“I hope we can reverse this polarization that has occurred,” Potter said. “And drop the level of animosity, and see if we can be more civil in discourse around land use. Compromise is the art of good governance.”

Potter, the only supervisor to support the initiative over GPU4, said he wasn’t surprised voters opted to vote No on everything. Voters by a large margin also rejected Measure D, the Rancho San Juan Butterfly Village development near Salinas.

“I think when there are confusing issues before people, they opt to just say ‘No,’” Potter said. “And that’s pretty much what you saw. Rancho San Juan was just a reaffirmation of a previous vote, in my mind.”

The supervisors spent seven years and $7 million on four different versions of the general plan, finally approving the final draft of GPU4 in January to replace the plan drawn up in 1982.

Whatever plan is finally enacted will be the county’s blueprint for development during the next 25 years.
The LandWatch initiative was considered a slow-growth plan which sought to limit development in the county’s unincorporated areas, while GPU4 is less restrictive and provides for more affordable housing.