With two new policies, Merced County supervisors reached out to local educators
and farmers Tuesday night during a public hearing about the proposed community
to accommodate the University of California, Merced.
Supervisors were scheduled to vote on whether to approve the University Community
Plan, a general plan amendment that would make room for 11,600 homes on a
3,043-acre project site. In doing so, they would also certify the community's final
environmental impact report.
Instead, the board delayed voting until Dec. 21, giving school and farm officials
a chance to read through the two new policies.
"We cannot do a project of this kind without agriculture mitigation of some kind
and working with the schools," Supervisor Gloria Cortez Keene said.
The policies would allow developers a step-by-step approach to mitigate the
community's impacts on schools and ag land.
To make up for more than 2,000 acres of ag land the community would destroy,
developers would have to buy conservation land elsewhere or pay in-lieu fees
to the county. But developers would only have to mitigate for land they plan
to build on immediately, instead of paying for all the acreage up front.
Same goes with the school policy -- developers would be required to work with
county and school district officials to show there's enough room in existing
schools to handle what they're about to build. They also must work with county
and school officials to provide funding for schools, either by endorsing tax
and bond measures or by levying impact fees on future community residents.
County school officials praised the new policies.
"We believe it's a very positive approach," said Merced County Superintendent
of Schools Lee Andersen, who didn't learn of the new policy until the
evening board meeting.
The community will be built south of the campus. In addition to housing, it
will include 2 million square feet of business and office space and a town
center on roughly 2,133 acres. Merced city and county officials are still
discussing whether the community would remain an unincorporated area or be
annexed into Merced's city limits.
The community is planned between Lake Road and the Le Grand and Fairfield
canals. In future decades, it is expected to house about 30,000 people drawn
to the area by UC Merced.
Several audience members again voiced concern about the EIR and community
plan, echoing comments made at the Dec. 1 Planning Commission meeting.
Among the concerns were whether the development will strain Merced's water
supply, and whether the public was given enough time to respond to the project
documents, which were released just before Thanksgiving.
"The response (in the EIR) of water availability is based on assumptions,"
said Jana Nairn of the Merced Chapter of California Women for
Agriculture, who said she needed more time to review the new agricultural
policy.
Like the Merced County Farm Bureau, Nairn said her organization supported
the campus but not the community plan because of the loss of ag land.
However, several audience members spoke in favor of the development and
its location.
Lee Boese, chairman of the Merced County High Speed Rail Commission,
said extending the community south of the campus is better than building
it around Bellevue Road, as farm officials have asked.
"Imagine everyone going to class, and then when they're finished, hopping
in their cars or riding their bikes across an already busy Bellevue Road,"
Boese said.
"This is land that never would have been utilized without the university."
Sharon Hunt Dicker, a representative of Hunt Farms, one of the project
site's landowners, wanted supervisors to approve the project during the meeting.
"There is no place else where this exists, so much contiguous land in which
you don't have to compete with existing development," she said.
In the end, though, supervisors decided to wait before giving the final
approval, only adding the mitigation measures.
Said Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Deidre Kelsey: "We certainly
don't want to give up what we have here in our county which is good, sound
and productive for something else."
