Blueprint Summit to address long-range planning issues

Event:

The San Joaquin Valley Blueprint is holding a Blueprint Summit on January 26, 2009 (http://www.valleyblueprint.org/summit.html) to discuss the progress of the valleywide planning process in Fresno. The Blueprint is a joint planning effort of the Great Valley Center and the eight valley county Council of Governments. The Blueprint is setting land-use goals and preferred valley-wide growth scenarios that will accomodate a rapidly growing population. The Summit will be a culmination of years of planning work and allow the public to comment and select a preferred growth scenario.

While the process is essential to a coordinated land-use and transportation plan for the valley, there is also great potential for establishing meaningful growth strategies that protect the San Joaquin River, local agriculture, valuable resource lands, and other important land-uses that enrich our economy and quality of life.

Revive the San Joaquin Perspective and Recommendations:

I have been engaged in the process and sit on the Regional Advisory Committee. While I wholheartedly support the process, I feel several areas need immediate attention if the Blueprint is to be successful.

The availability of water for new developments and growing communities can, and most likely will, be a major growth constraint impacting future growth scenarios. Revive the San Joaquin has submitted a proposal for a surface and groundwater modeling effort that would show overall water demands for new growth in the County and analyze impacts of growth patterns on demand and supply. This type of modelling could also be invaluable to County and City planners looking to analyze adequate and sustainable water supplies as mandated by general plans. The current Blueprint skirts the issue of water.

While the scenarios being considered at the summit will have mapped scenarios showing growth patterns, they are not intended to represent actual growth trends but rather the estimated scope of expansion and spatial trends from a "30,000ft level". With this in mind, the current mapping still neglects to acknowledge the modeling impacts of 'new town' growth in areas such as SE Madera County, Mountain communities in the Sierras, and Millerton Lake. The unassessed spatial impacts of cross county transportation corridors, population shifts between counties, water availability, and other "new town" impacts are significant and weaken elements of the planning processes that are to be utilized by planners.

The Blueprint is supposed to be a regional planning effort. The Fresno County Blueprint Roundtable recently rejected the regional plan in favor of the locally preferred alternative. If all counties follw suit, the effort will fall short of a regional effort and represent more of an "eight county unified planning effort" than a truly regional planning effort. Regional planning should set goals that benefit the whole valley and not just the special interests of each county. This debate is amplified by the great differences in locally preferred densities ranging from 2 dwelling units per acre (Madera) to 9 dwelling units per acre (Merced). UC Davis modelers suggested that 10 dwelling units per acre may be a necessary density target to meet the upcoming requirements of SB375, AB32, and other State growth regulations. These targets were turned down by Fresno County. We must be open to setting ambitious goals if the Blueprint is to guide us to the communities we want and the goals we have set for the process.

Chris Acree
Executive Director
Revive the San Joaquin