MyValleySprings.com Presentation for Calaveras County Board of Supervisors Study Session, 1/23/06

My name is Seana Hogan, and I’m here on behalf of MyValleySprings.com, which is a group of people in Valley Springs who have become interested in what is happening in Valley Springs.

When we started we didn’t really know much about Community Plans, and zoning, but we have been educating ourselves on how the process works, and how ordinary citizens like us can have a say in what happens in our own community. We started our website with that goal in mind: creating a place where people can learn about the process and be informed on how to respond as citizens of this county to voice their opinion about the place they call home.

Since we started 2 months ago, we’ve received expressions of support from over a hundred fifty people in Valley Springs. In telephone calls, emails, and in conversation, people are agreeing that we need to come together as a community, and as a County, to start to talk honestly about the direction we’re going, and to try to hang on to what brought us here, or keeps us here.

We’re not anti-growth. We’re not anti-developer. What we are is, we are for Valley Springs, and for Calaveras County, and for working together to try and keep Valley Springs and Calaveras County the kind of place we want to come home to.

The only Community Plan Valley Springs has ever had was adopted in 1974. At the time, the population of the entire county was 12,500 and real estate agents showed clients plans for a Valley Springs by-pass. Plilers Market was a General Store. There was no hardware store, no drug store, no shopping center, no Jenny Lind School, no La Contenta, and no Foothill Fire Protection District. The original part of Valley Springs was charming, with wonderful old homes, and the people of Valley Springs had established the Valley Springs Public Utility District many years earlier to service the 12 block area of town.

Now, 32 years later, the same Community Plan has 17 amendments. The Valley Springs area is being inundated with housing and commercial projects. Traffic has overloaded the old paved wagon roads of the community, traffic circulation is a disaster, and a Valley Springs by-pass is still being talked about. Homes have been permitted to be built in a flood plain and some of those homes have been flooded multiple times in the last 10 years. The Valley Springs Public Utility District has no capacity left for sewer hook-ups, and their wells are failing or contaminated.

During drought years there was water rationing because CCWD does not control the water in Hogan Reservoir, the last drought was over 10 years ago and lasted for seven years. There were fewer people. What will happen in the next drought after the population has doubled?

Both Valley Springs Elementary School and the newer Jenny Lind Elementary are no longer adequate for the population here.

Open Space has never been addressed to preserve ridgelines and visual backdrops for Valley Springs. Cumulative impacts to the area have not been studied or mitigated. Unplanned growth has overburdened infrastructure, and caused dangerous and congested road conditions through out the community. A lack of Oak Woodland protection and effective grading ordinances has led to wholesale removal of oak trees, leveling of hillsides, and drainage and storm water management problems.

The Valley Springs area will continue to grow, but we need to grow with a balanced economy. We need to grow while maintaining our quality of life, and we need to grow while keeping the public interest in mind.

Residents of the Valley Springs area request that NO community plan amendments, General Plan amendments, or zoning changes for our area be allowed until the Valley Springs Community Plan is redone within the framework of a comprehensive Calaveras County General Plan update. This General Plan update, mandated by State law to begin in 2006, would include specific language to address both the needs of the County as a whole and the needs of the Valley Springs area. It would not be in the best interests of our community to push through a rewrite of the old community plan that builds on a weak, outdated General Plan.

We recognize that our concerns and issues are shared by many other areas of Calaveras County. For the General Plan and any Community Plan revisions we suggest that a cooperative effort to coordinate and solve problems countywide would be more effective than separate community efforts, and would save the county money. This would be beneficial to all county residents, and could help avoid legal attacks due to conflicts between plans.

Through this important transition we encourage you, our Supervisors elected by the people, as the governing body of the county, to be effective managers in land use planning through well-informed and balanced decisions, and by implementing current state and local planning laws. Utilizing important planning tools such as the California Environmental Quality Act will reflect your recognition and responsibility in protecting our area and our quality of life amongst these changes in our landscape.

Public participation is vital. Residents of Valley Springs are committed to participate actively in addressing the needs of their community area, with fair and equitable representation from community members and groups. We look to our Supervisors for help and for leadership . We know you want to do the right thing for your constituents.

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