Letters to the editor

The Salinas Californian
Posted on May 16, 2007

Vote no on Measure A

The saga of the legal meaning of LandWatch's Community General Plan Initiative continues. Poor wording brings up more questions about where this runaway train may take us.

The issue of what's left of commercial, industrial and residential zoning is not at all clear. Larry Hawkins, in his recent letter, tried to sweep it all under the rug by saying the two land-use maps, Appendix A (current designations) and B (Initiative classifications) do not replace each other but somehow coexist. If that were the case, the Initiative would allow all sorts of residential areas in the county, which it clearly does not. Previous versions of general plan updates have use tables (LU-1) to correctly correlate these two maps. The Initiative leaves that out and relies on the text. And the text states that outside Community Areas (97 percent of the county) land is only suitable for agricultural purposes (26.1.4).

In general plan law, the policies must be "internally consistent."

In this case the current maps depicting land use do not match the Initiative text policy. When that happens, legal precedent is that the text trumps any maps.

This bucket of bolts is headed down the track of years of uncertainty and legal expenses for us all.

Derail the train. Vote "no" on Measure A.

Jay Brown
Bradley