County Counsel‘s Impartial Analysis of the Citizen‘s Right to Vote on Expansion of Residential Areas Initiative
Presently, land use designations can be changed by public officials, usually after public input. No vote of the electorate is required. Under the new law as proposed, if the Board of Supervisors approved creating or expanding a residential area in what is now farmland, that decision would need to be confirmed by County voters. This new public vote requirement would extend to cases where land was designated as agricultural or open space on the effective date of the Initiative, but was later changed to another designation such as commercial or industrial, and then later proposed for further redesignation as residential.
If the Board of Supervisors made any change to the County’s General Plan at any time while the Initiative was pending or after it became law, such changes would have to be consistent with the Initiative. Otherwise, they would be void.
The Initiative would require that farmland conversions would always be treated as a ”project” under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”). Under CEQA, an environmental analysis of the conversion would be required before the Board of Supervisors could place the action before the voters, unless the conversion fell within one of CEQA’s exemptions.
Under the Initiative, zones allowing less than ten acres per home would be considered residential. If more than ten acres per home were required, the land would be considered agricultural. Caretaker and farm worker housing would not count as dwellings. Any “rezoning or redesignation” by the Board of Supervisors, if it would shift land from the agricultural category to the residential category, would be subject to a county-wide vote.
There would be an exemption from the public vote requirement if the law required a residential designation to meet the County’s “fair share housing” obligation, and no other land was available to meet that requirement. If more than ten acres per year were exempted for fair share housing, the excess would be required to remain permanently affordable to moderate, low, and very low income families. Also exempted would be any land with a “vested right” to redesignation, under state law, as of the date of the amendment, and any development involving only farm worker housing.
