Open letter to the Napa County Board of Supervisors:
On Tuesday, September 14, 2004, a very deceptive resolution (item 8A on the agenda) was presented to the Napa County Board of Supervisors (BOS) by Planning staff for first and final reading and possible adoption, and the Board would almost certainly have adopted it without further scrutiny if NVLSA had not intervened, because Supervisors generally rely too heavily upon staff reports.
The resolution was purportedly to adopt a simple, non-controversial update to Napa County’s CEQA Guidelines. However, the “update” included many new definitions, policies, and procedures, which were not explained, and the text of the “update” was not attached. Among other objectionable provisions, the proposed update included bold and arbitrarily inclusive new definitions of “streams”, “environmental resources of critical value”, “habitat of limited distribution”, “heritage tree”, “special status species”, “biologically critical area”, and others. Some of these would have allowed reinstating and potentially exceeding the restrictive provisions of Measure P, which was decisively rejected by the voters last March. Yet the executive summary prepared by your staff to explain to you the momentous impact of this complex 49-page “update” was just one sentence: “The proposed resolution will update the County's local procedures under CEQA”.
That was a woefully inadequate explanation of the many fundamental changes included in this “update”. It was negligently, or perhaps intentionally, deficient as a basis for any intelligent decision by you and for any meaningful review by the public. A resolution of such complexity and importance should certainly have been fully explained.
When NVLSA Board members intervened and explained to Steve Lederer our objections to the proposed “update”, Steve at first defended it by telling us that it merely brought County regulations into conformity with CEQA and Planning Department current practice, both of which have evolved over the 18 years since the current guidelines were approved by the BOS. However, the reality turned out to be a bit more complicated than that.
NVLSA’s analysis and persistence spurred Steve Lederer to re-examine his staff’s proposed new guidelines in light of actual CEQA requirements, and he concluded that many of the definitions, procedures, and requirements in his proposed update were not actually required by CEQA, in some instances actually conflicted with CEQA, and in most instances were beyond the limits of BOS previously approved policy. As a result, nearly all of the many definitions and requirements challenged by NVLSA have been deleted from the proposed update now appearing on your December 7 agenda.
Steve’s willingness to listen to our concerns and to modify the CEQA Guidelines Update to address them has been exemplary. This and the fact that he did not seem aware of the details of some of the passages we were questioning led us to believe that Steve Lederer did not write them and is not the primary culprit here. We sincerely appreciate the courteous and respectful manner with which Steve has handled our objections. We especially appreciate his statement that our input has resulted in an improved set of guidelines that will better serve everyone.
Everyone, that is, except perhaps the person or persons who wrote them. The objectionable definitions, procedures, and requirements seem to us too pervasive, too pointed, and too onerous to have been accidental. We suspect that whoever wrote those items into the guidelines did so to advance a personal desire to significantly augment arbitrary central planning authority over citizens and property owners. We suspect he saw an opportunity to slip momentous changes beneath the radar of the public and their elected Supervisors, and he took that opportunity. If NVLSA had not intervened, he would have been successful. All those changes would have been codified into Napa County’s land use regulations by an unknowing Board of Supervisors through its routine approval of a resolution to adopt an “update” of unspecified content, based on staff’s recommendation rather than on a thorough reading by each Supervisor.
This time there is a happy ending because NVLSA caught it in time. But how many times has this occurred in the past? How many of Napa County’s land use regulations, policies, procedures, and practices has Planning staff quietly codified and legitimized by having a rubber stamp Board of Supervisors approve them without reading and understanding all the details? Have overly zealous staff members saddled property owners with costly and unreasonable requirements unknowingly approved by the BOS? If Planning staff is able to maneuver the BOS into ratifying virtually anything, then to what extent are the Supervisors really in control of County land use policy? Is this the way our County should be run? Who is really driving this bus?
Our elected Supervisors should be driving it. In order to fulfill that responsibility, each Supervisor must personally read and thoroughly understand every ordinance and resolution he or she votes to pass. Reliance on staff reports is not sufficient.
George Bachich, president
Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance
NVLSA believes, and common sense dictates, that our elected officials have a fundamental responsibility to read and understand all the ordinances they pass, yet there is considerable evidence that they do not, and there is currently no law requiring them to do so. NVLSA proposes to correct that via ballot initiative. The current draft of the initiative is posted here.