Our View: Beekman’s removal a victory for pettiness
They sure showed Matt Beekman. Mayors from five of Stanislaus County’s six smallest cities voted to remove the Hughson mayor from his position on the Local Area Formation Commission, a little-known agency that rules on annexation requests from cities and other government entities.
Never mind that Beekman was highly qualified to be on the commission. Never mind that his views on growth appear to reflect those of the majority of Stanislaus County residents. Never mind that he did nothing improper, immoral or even incorrect.
They kicked him off because he refused to vote the way the building industry wanted him to when it came to setting a little-used fee for farmland mitigation.
This appears to be an act of petulance. It was unworthy of their offices.
Mayors Pat Paul (Oakdale), Richard O’Brien (Riverbank), Ed Katen (Newman), Luis Molina (Patterson) and Mike Van Winkle (Waterford) acted out of misplaced loyalty. They claimed to be either protecting the prerogatives of cities to set growth policies or their own prerogatives to dictate LAFCO votes. Regardless, the result of their vote also could protect the profits of builders.
The reason they removed Beekman was his vote on how much developers must pay when converting farmland outside of cities into residential neighborhoods after annexation.
Developers have three ways to mitigate farmland loss. They can build within established urban limits; they can purchase development rights on an equivalent amount of land that will continue to be farmed; or they can pay a per-acre fee that is turned over to a nonprofit organization that buys development rights on other land. The formula for that per-acre fee is decided by LAFCO.
And there’s the rub.
In March, Beekman joined county Supervisors Terry Withrow and Jim DeMartini in voting to charge 40 percent of the sale price of comparable land. Based on recent sales, that is roughly $7,100 per acre.
Builders prefer a flat, per-acre fee determined by cities where they have greater influence. Patterson’s city manager, for instance, recommended $2,000 per acre – a fee endorsed by the Building Industry Association and even lower than flat fees in Manteca and Tracy.
Such low fees encourage the destruction of farmland, which LAFCO is legally obligated to protect.
The firm Churchwell White works under contract for Patterson, Riverbank, Oakdale, Newman and Ceres; the firm disputes LAFCO’s ability to even set fees. It’s an interesting point, but if the cities feel LAFCO has overstepped its bounds, they should contest the issue in court – not send out their mayors to bully one of their peers.
The mayors of the county’s largest cities – Garrad Marsh of Modesto, Gary Soiseth of Turlock and Chris Vierra of Ceres – all voted to keep Beekman on LAFCO. Every person who spoke Wednesday defended the mayor of the county’s smallest city. At a previous meeting, nearly 100 showed up on his behalf.
It didn’t sway O’Brien, Molina, Katen, Paul and Van Winkle. Their votes were a victory for vindictive, petty politics.
This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Our View: Beekman’s removal a victory for pettiness."