minutes

South Bay Irrigation District

March 15, 2004

The Board of Directors of South Bay Irrigation District held a regular meeting on Monday, March 15, 2004, at the Sweetwater Authority Administrative Office, 505 Garrett Avenue, Chula Vista, California. President Welsh called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m.

· ROLL CALL

Directors Present: Alkire, Doud, Pocklington, Reynolds, and Welsh.

Directors Absent: None.

Others Present: General Manager Bostad, Legal Counsel Dan Stevenson (arrived at 3:45 p.m.) and Rita Schoonderwoerd for Board Secretary Marisa Farpón-Friedman. Sweetwater Authority staff: Kevin Kasner, Hector Martinez and Paula Roberts.

· PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
Director Doud conducted the pledge of allegiance to the flag.

· OPPORTUNITY FOR PUBLIC COMMENT (Government Code Section (54954.3)
There was no comment from the public.

· PRESIDENT'S PRESENTATION

ACTION AGENDA

1. PRESENTATION BY SHELBY TUCKER, ASSISTANT REGIONAL PLANNER, AND MARNEY COX, CHIEF ECONOMIST, FROM SAN DIEGO ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS (SANDAG)
Draft Regional Comprehensive Plan (RCP) for the San Diego Region

Ms. Tucker began by thanking the board for the opportunity to present the Regional Comprehensive Plan (RCP) that SANDAG has prepared and which is currently out for distribution. During the past 18 months they have been working with members of the different jurisdictions to prepare the Regional Comprehensive Plan and the draft is out for public review. They have been visiting several different groups and organizations to present the plan. The regional plan brings together the plans of the 18 cities in the county government in the San Diego region. It is comprehensive because it addresses a variety of topics ranging from land use and transportation, to infrastructure, financing, and border issues.
She stated that our region is facing great challenges, more land consumption, more traffic congestion and continuing housing crisis, an inability to finance our regional infrastructure needs, and continuing social inequity to name a few. The RCP provides a framework to change the course and it is a viable alternative. It is unique for five key reasons: many people have been involved in its preparation; it directs future growth into urban areas and reduces land consumption by promoting Smart Growth and redevelopment near our transportation corridors; it uses transportation funding as a major incentive for achieving Smart Growth Development in our region; it calls for other service providers such as water, wastewater, and energy to focus their infrastructure investments where land use and transportation investments are made, maximizing the effectiveness of our region's limited infrastructure dollars; and it recognizes the connections among San Diego, Riverside, the Tijuana Mexican border, Imperial County, and the tribal governments in our region and calls for increased coordination and collaboration across these borders.

As part of the public participation outreach, the RCP has combined all of these interests and come up with a shared vision for the future. In order to be proactive for our future, we need to clearly identify a vision of where we want to go and what we want our region to be in 30 years. The vision is founded on the ideas of thousands of residents that have come together to prepare the draft RCP. It focuses primarily on our culturally diverse communities, our unique and varied topography, our international setting, and most importantly our outstanding quality of life.

Ms. Tucker presented some slides that showed the changes that have taken place in our region over the last 20 years. One reflected the results of development between 1982 and 2000 in the South County, and she noted that over the past decade, our growth has been along transportation corridors. Other slides showed the central region, highlighting growth along the I-805 and I-15 corridors, as well as in Carmel Mountain, Rancho Penasquitos, Mira Mesa, and Scripps. The North County shows dramatic growth along SR 78 between Escondido, Poway, Rancho Bernardo and Carmel Mountain Ranch. As for Southwestern Riverside County, dramatic growth has occurred in Temecula, Murietta, and Hemet, and a new reservoir has been built in the Diamond Valley area.

Acknowledging the growth patterns of the past, SANDAG considered where we are headed in the current plan and policies. Over the next 30 years, they are expecting that our regional population will increase by another million people, which is a growth rate of slightly less than the national average. Unless the existing local general plans of our 18 cities in the county of San Diego change, collectively we will see an even greater housing crisis, more traffic congestion, and less open space.

The focus of the RCP is to break away from our current path and take the road less traveled. In a nutshell, the RCP proposes three main concepts that will lead our future down a different path. The first concept is improving the connections between land use and transportation; the second, using land use and transportation plans to guide other plans; and the third, making it happen through incentives and collaboration. It also provides SANDAG with an essential planning framework to connect transportation and land use plans at both the local and regional level. This framework is based on principles of smart growth and sustainability, and smart growth focuses most future growth away from rural areas to existing and planned job centers, transportation networks, and public facilities.

Ms. Tucker said that the Urban Forum and Transportation chapters play a key role in reinforcing land use transportation connections. They call for completing the mobility network in 20/30 Regional Transportation Plan using transportation innovations such as managed lanes that support bus rapid transit, carpools, and other high quality transit services, identifying Smart Growth opportunity areas, and providing incentives for their development not only in urban but also in suburban areas. Within these Smart Growth areas, the focus is implementing urban design principles that promote walkability, accessibility, mixed use, access to transit, and improvements to the overall design of our communities. Although the precise locations for the Smart Growth opportunities have not been finalized, many of them should be focused around our existing transit corridors. This helps limit land consumption, maximize investments in our transit system, and provide more transportation choices.

The second key aspect of the RCP is utilizing land use and transportation plans to guide other infrastructure plans. It calls for service providers such as energy, water, wastewater, and solid wastes to prioritize investments in areas where they want to encourage Smart Growth. The RCP takes a unique approach to implementation and focuses on incentives and collaboration. It uses a carrot rather than a stick approach and identifies SANDAG's $42 billion Regional Transportation Plan as the most significant regional scale Smart Growth carrot. The RCP proposes subregional collaboration in several key areas: transportation corridor and network studies, job and housing analysis, refinement of Smart Growth plans, and implementation of financing strategies. The RCP also takes a look at the housing crisis. Where and how we build our future housing are two of the most important decisions to shape our region's future and maximize our infrastructure investments. The RCP calls for increasing our housing supply and locating more homes in urban communities close to jobs and transit to help conserve open space in rural areas - also reinvigorating our existing neighborhoods and reducing longer interregional communities such as the ones between Murrieta, Temecula, and downtown San Diego. Some of the innovative actions included in the healthy environment chapter of the RCP are to link our habitat corridors in San Diego County with surrounding communities such as Riverside and Baja California to create preserve systems that span our borders; protecting the beaches and bays by securing a reliable funding source to insure storm water plans and programs; and also implementing programs that support energy efficiency and improved air quality.

The Economic chapter of the RCP includes actions that retain and expand local businesses, create more well paying jobs, and better prepare our residents to fill these jobs. The primary objective is to increase personal income and thus raise our residents' standard of living. Another key is state and local fiscal reform providing financial assistance to local jurisdictions to increase the supply of housing to achieve the Smart Growth goals of the RCP. Additionally, modernizing our transportation infrastructure is essential in recognizing our economic potential with Mexico. Public facilities actually include expanding and diversifying our water resources, upgrading and diversifying our energy infrastructure, reducing solid waste and dealing with dwindling landfill space, as well as insuring adequate local facilities and services.

Another innovative component of the RCP is our borders chapter. SANDAG has been working very hard to create collaborative relationships with Baja California and Mexico as well as Riverside County. Actions in the borders chapter focus on jobs and housing, transportation systems and trade routes, energy and water supply, environmental needs, economic development, and homeland security.

A unique component of the RCP is the chapter on social equity and environmental justice. Social equity means insuring that all communities are treated fairly and given equal opportunities to participate in the planning and decision making process, and environmental justice is defined as insuring that our environmental plans, policies, and actions do not disproportionately affect low income or minority groups. The RCP includes an evaluation of these important concepts and includes recommendations for insuring that social equity and environmental justice are considered and the plan is implemented.

The RCP also includes the Integrated Regional Infrastructure Strategy (IRIS). This is a forward-looking investment strategy that will help the region meet its collective infrastructure needs. Last year, the regional infrastructure providers spent more than $3 billion on capital expenditures and more than $8 billion on operation and maintenance. Better linking these investments with land use and transportation decisions that prioritize Smart Growth could yield significant results. Additionally, SANDAG analysis shows that very few service providers coordinate their short-term capital expenditures with long-term land use plans. IRIS recommends coordination across all major infrastructure areas for storm water, wastewater, energy, etc., as well as actions to help align the region's infrastructure plans and investments with the RCP. As the region continues to change, they must regularly assess the ability of our infrastructure to keep pace in maintaining our quality of life.

SANDAG is currently working with many of the same groups and individuals that helped prepare the vision and the plan itself to establish specific indicators to monitor the region's progress. These will be included in the final draft of the RCP.

The initial comment period on the draft RCP ended March 1, 2004. The draft EIR will be submitted for public review on March 19th and the review period ends April 13th. Following the release of the draft EIR, a series of workshops throughout the county will be held starting April 17th through April 26th. In June 2004, the SANDAG board will be asked to take action on the final EIR and RCP. Comments on the RCP should be submitted by April 26th.

In summary, the RCP provides a roadmap for maintaining broad public participation in regional planning, directing growth into our urban areas, conserving valuable open space, using transportation funding as an incentive for implementing Smart Growth, using our land use and transportation decisions to guide other infrastructure investments, and actively engaging our regional neighbors and tribal governments in planning issues. The regional approach backed by local commitment will make a significant difference in our region and our region's quality of life in the next twenty to thirty years.

Ms. Tucker said that anyone who is interested in making comments can obtain the document on SANDAG's website, or she would mail a copy to those interested. A session of questions and answers followed.

2. ITEMS TO BE ADDED, WITHDRAWN OR REORDERED TO THE AGENDA
(Government Code Section 54956.5)

There were none.

3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Director Pocklington made a motion, seconded by Director Doud, that the Board approve the minutes of the regular meeting of February 16, 2004. The motion carried.

4. APPROVAL OF DEMANDS AND WARRANTS

Director Doud made a motion, seconded by Director Alkire, that warrant numbers 10094 through 10104 be approved. The motion carried.

5. NEW BUSINESS

A. Upon a motion made by Director Pocklington, seconded by Director Doud, the Board approved Amendment to Policy 119 - Per Diem and Reimbursement, as presented by staff, and changing "Business Class airfare" to "Coach airfare." The motion carried.

B. Upon a motion made by Director Pocklington, seconded by Director Doud, the Board approved Amendment to Policy 120 - Training, Education and Conferences. The motion carried.

6. APPROVAL OF DIRECTORS' ATTENDANCE AT MEETINGS & FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS
There were no items.
7. REPORT OF TREASURER

Ms. Avery said that interest rates at the Local Agency Investment Fund (LAIF) were at 1.50 percent.

8. REPORT OF LAFCO SPECIAL DISTRICTS REGULAR MEMBER

Director Pocklington said that two main topics were discussed at the last commission meeting. One was the budget for the year 2004/2005, with a ten percent increase, about $70,000, over last year's. Most of these funds will be for the Fire Protection Agency. The commission spent much time discussing the fire agencies and compared agencies in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange County, Riverside, Santa Barbara, etc., and discussed the possibility of combining agencies in three stages, the Eastern area of the county, the northern area, and the cities. The increase in costs for Eastern agencies alone would be $18 million per year and the question is where that money is going to come from. He added that San Diego is the only large county that does not have a county fire department.

9. REPORT OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY REPRESENTATIVE

Director Pocklington referred to Debra Ortiz's SB 1272, which deals with central and local government, and he asked staff to check on its status. He reported that there is no CWA Board meeting until next month. He commented that the governor had recently stated that he fully supports building desalination projects along the California coastline. Director Pocklington said that Coastal Commission staff had made comments about not allowing private ownership to build desalination plants on the coastline. He also said that the governor appoints four of the twelve members of the Coastal Commission.

He reported that Rainbow Municipal Water District had lost the bid for their $40 million bond issue. They are starting from ground zero and are dividing it into three different local committees, Water Rates, Finance, and Infrastructure. Another item that he talked about was MWD approving a $30 million rate increase averaging 4.4 percent.

Regarding the Governance issue with the CWA and the City of San Diego, he reported that the City 10 met with its Rules Committee early in March, and the recommendation was to not vote for having San Diego plus 10 and to stick with the 55 percent. They did recommended going with the three two-year cycles with one chairmanship from the city and the other two from outside. He thinks that the Economic Study Group has already taken the issue to Sacramento and will fight it on a state level.

10. DIRECTORS' COMMENTS

Director Reynolds expressed his support of Director Pocklington for opposing what the CWA is trying to do regarding the Governance issue.

11. CLOSED SESSION

There was none.

12. ADJOURNMENT

With no further business before the Board, President Welsh adjourned the meeting at 4:28 p.m., to the hour of 3:30 p.m., on April 19, 2004.