Calaveras officials struggling with General Plan

By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

April 25, 2007 6:00 AM

SAN ANDREAS - Five months into Calaveras County's effort to overhaul its General Plan for land use and housing development, county officials admit they are struggling to do the job without enough staff and conflicting marching orders from top elected officials.

The county has yet to hire the General Plan coordinator who was supposed to keep the several-years-long process on schedule. And it became clear Tuesday during a joint meeting of the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission that elected leaders do not agree on whether to focus on completing the General Plan or whether to try completing long-awaited community plans for Valley Springs, Copperopolis and West Point at the same time.

The Board of Supervisors has given conflicting orders on whether to throw staff time at the community plans, Community Development Agency Director Stephanie Moreno said.

"I would love some clear direction on this issue," Moreno told the board Tuesday afternoon in front of an audience of about 100 people in San Andreas Town Hall.

The board has told Moreno and her staff at various times to work on community plans for Copperopolis, Valley Springs, and the communities of West Point, Wilseyville and Glencoe/Rail Road Flat. But, she explained, the board has not given her money or staff to do those jobs.

Each community's situation is different. The Copperopolis plan has been in the works for eight years and got as far as a draft presented to the Board of Supervisors when progress halted. The board voted in October to work on plans for the towns in the West Point area simply because they have been in a planning limbo of sorts for decades.

And Valley Springs, the county's archetypal real estate boomtown, has a community plan so out of date that it refers to a railroad that has not run for decades. Developers there offered to pay the cost to revise the Valley Springs plan, but the deal fell through because public watchdogs distrusted the proposal even if county staffers or independent consultants were hired to do the work.

"The funding did not come through because of some concerns about conflicts that might occur," Moreno said.

Supervisor Tom Tryon, who represents to the Angels Camp area, said it does not make sense to have county staff distracted by community plans while they try to complete the General Plan.

He proposed making the General Plan the priority and halting community-plan work until the General Plan is done in several years.

That prompted a protest from Russ Thomas, the supervisor representing Copperopolis, who led the panel that drafted the Copperopolis plan before he was elected to the Board of Supervisors last year.

"I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water," Thomas said, noting that more than $50,000 in private money helped get that draft plan written. "We have quite an investment."

But Tryon, Moreno and others noted that Moreno's staff is so overwhelmed that it already has failed to complete a number of other tasks that have been promised for a year or more, including a grading ordinance, an oak-woodland conservation ordinance, and even basic calculations of how much ranchland and forest the county has lost to development.

Tryon urged his colleagues to focus on the General Plan, which can include all such issues and which is required by state law.

"I would like to get something done in my lifetime," said Tryon, who is in his 23rd year on the board.

The supervisors gave informal approval to Supervisor Steve Wilensky's suggestion that they schedule a study session to hash out a unified approach to the community plans.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 754-9534 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog