Dozens of speakers begged supervisors to use the General Plan update to do everything from preserving the open spaces of the county's fields and forests to bringing jobs to guaranteeing enough sheriff?s deputies to enforce the law.

'It's not just population growth that drives crime, it is density of population as well,? said Calaveras County Undersheriff Mike Walker, who was first to address the board. Walker urged supervisors to restore language deleted from the General Plan a decade ago that requires adequate law enforcement staffing for a given population.

In the end, supervisors told interim Planning Director Robert Sellman that they will support him in hiring a consultant to review the existing General Plan, determine which sections no longer comply with state law and come up with a plan for revising the document, which guides land-use decisions.

Supervisors also gave Sellman the go-ahead to try to free staff to clear a backlog of land-use and zoning applications by limiting the public's access to planners during some work hours, streamlining some application processes and terminating inactive applications.
Supervisors gave no direction on several major issues. They didn't say whether they favor an all-at-once update desired by some conservation advocates, and they postponed discussion on a proposal to levy a fee of just under 25 cents a square foot on building permits to raise the approximately $1 million needed to overhaul the General Plan.

Under a proposal offered by Sellman, the builder of a 1,500-square-foot home would pay a $368 fee.

At the suggestion of County Administrative Officer Tom Mitchell, supervisors postponed discussion of the fee until a meeting in about six weeks at which developer fees of all kinds are on the agenda.

But the issue touches a nerve with both those worried about the county's rapid housing growth and those who make their living from it.

'Calaveras County needs developers to completely pay their way,'
said Carol Barzee of Valley Springs, an advocate for preserving the area's natural beauty.

Some builders, especially those with large developments in the west county's booming lowlands, support such a fee.

'I think in general I would be happy to support that fee,' said Ryan Voorhees, whose company CRV Enterprises expects to build 75 homes in Calaveras County this year, many in the Gold Creek subdivision in Valley Springs.

Voorhees said he is well aware that existing county planning staff is inadequate to process routine applications and do the work necessary for a General Plan update. 'The cost of not getting your projects processed ends up being greater than what you pay in these fees.'

Others oppose a fee they say falls unfairly on builders when the land-use decisions regulated by the General Plan actually are made by property owners who chose to subdivide and convert ranchland to home lots.

'The General Plan has nothing to do with construction. The General Plan has to do with the long-range planning,' said John Ellis, a builder in the Avery area.

Many of those at Monday's meeting debated something that wasn't on the agenda whether there should be a moratorium on zoning and General Plan amendments (such as converting farmland to residential lots) while the General Plan is being revised.

A number of representatives of the building industry as well as Kathi Bachelor, president of the Calaveras Association of Realtors, said even the talk of a moratorium on land-use amendments was scaring away investors.

John Buckley, director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said predictions of economic harm from a moratorium are overblown, because the county has thousands of not yet built but already approved home lots available and because the moratorium would not affect most projects where the land already has the proper zoning.

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