Modesto City Council votes to put urban growth boundary on ballot

The Modesto City Council has decided to put an urban growth boundary on the November 2015 ballot, but not before two council members expressed their disdain for the measure, which they claim will hamstring the city’s efforts at economic development.

Council members voted 7-0 Tuesday to accept that the Stamp Out Sprawl campaign had gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot and to have City Clerk Stephanie Lopez start the work to bring it before the voters. Legally, the council had only two choices: adopt the measure as an ordinance or put it on the ballot.

Councilmen Bill Zoslocki and John Gunderson voiced their displeasure. If voters pass the measure, it would require a citywide vote before residential, commercial and industrial development could take place beyond the boundary.

“I’m just wondering what’s in it for Modesto, how do Modesto residents benefit other than protecting – supposedly protecting – farmland,” Gunderson said Tuesday. “...It kind of restricts (the city’s) revenue ability.”

Zoslocki said the measure adds to the regulatory hurdles businesses have to clear to bring development and jobs to Modesto and puts the city at a disadvantage. “Modesto is the only community in Stanislaus County with this fatalistic view of job creation,” he said Tuesday.

Councilman Dave Lopez shared Zoslocki’s concerns but said the issue before the council was simple. SOS organizers had collected the nearly 10,000 signatures they needed to qualify their measure for the ballot.

“Patterson and Turlock are just whupping us,” Lopez said. “We are the only ones with our hands tied. But this is like the simplest thing in the world. ... Put this on the ballot and let the people decide for themselves if they want it.”

Stamp Out Sprawl organizers said Wednesday that the urban growth boundary would not cause the harm claimed by its critics and that it would protect prime farmland and critical groundwater recharge areas while providing the city with sufficient land for development.

Stamp Out Sprawl calls for drawing an urban growth line around most of Modesto. The line would roughly follow Morse Road on the west, Kiernan Avenue-Claribel Road on the north, and Whitmore Avenue and the Tuolumne River on the south. The line would be C-shaped and push growth to the east of Modesto along Claus Road, where the farmland is of lesser quality.

It also would carve out about 1,000 acres for nonresidential development in north Modesto in an area bounded by Pirrone Road to the north, Dale Road to the east, Pelandale Avenue to the south, and Sisk Road and Highway 99 to the west, said Denny Jackman, an SOS organizer and former councilman. He added that the boundary would leave Modesto about 10,000 acres for development.

In response to Gunderson, Jackman said an urban growth boundary would help Modesto because it would require the city to do a better job in forming its development plans. He added that it would give residents a voice in the city’s future.

Jackman challenged the claim that Modesto is losing business and jobs to surrounding cities. Some of the factors companies consider in deciding where to locate are outside a city’s control, he said. For instance, he said Patterson has succeeded in landing distribution centers because of its proximity to Interstate5.

Zoslocki said Modesto is not in a position to compete for big projects, such as the battery factory that electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors is building. One audience member scoffed at that. Tesla recently decided to build its huge factory in Nevada after the state offered it $1.3 billion in tax breaks.

The SOS campaign is in part a reaction to Modesto’s efforts to amend its general plan, which serves as a blueprint for how the city will grow and develop. A majority of council members voted in January to include Wood Colony – a more-than-century-old farming community west of Highway 99 – in the plan, to the dismay of a few hundred colony residents and their supporters who packed the meeting in opposition.

The council designated several hundred acres in the colony for big-box retailers and business parks. The general plan amendment is undergoing an environmental review, and it could come back to the council in mid-2016 for possible adoption. The colony is outside the proposed urban growth boundary.

Zoslocki said colony residents could protect their farmland by putting it in permanent agricultural conservation easements. Under the program, farmers sell the development rights to their land in exchange for not developing it. Future landowners cannot develop the land.

That struck some as another example of Modesto trying to tell colony residents what to do. Modesto officials have been accused of being heavy-handed and tone deaf in how they have dealt with colony residents.

And Zoslocki’s solution is not that simple, said Jake Wenger, a colony farmer, Modesto Irrigation District board member and SOS organizer.

Wenger said the American Farmland Trust has limited funding for agricultural conservation easements and targets its purchases to where it believes it will have the biggest impact in preserving farmland. Wenger said the trust is reluctant to purchase easements in areas near cities – such as Wood Colony – because of the fear that development eventually will surround the land it is trying to protect.

This story was originally published November 5, 2014 at 7:40 PM with the headline "Modesto City Council votes to put urban growth boundary on ballot."