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The San Benito County Planning Commission unanimously voted to recommend to the Board of Supervisors that it delete the New Community Study Areas from the 2035 General Plan, which serves as the county’s blueprint for development.
At the commission’s Dec. 13 meeting, San Benito County Senior Planner Michael Kelly said the four New Community Study Areas (NCSA) designated in the General Plan are “identified as potentially appropriate for more intense development,” in part because of their proximity to existing job centers, fewer impacts on high-value agricultural land and opportunities to reduce traffic congestion.
He added the study areas were intended to create higher standards for any potential community planned within those areas. Kelly recommended to the commission that they simply remove those areas from consideration for future developments and ask the Board of Supervisors to amend the General Plan to delete all references to the NCSAs, including the maps.
The four NCSAs are:
- Bolsa, the area west of Highway 25 between Hollister and the Santa Clara County line
- Union, the area west of Union Road and south of Highway 156
- San Juan, the area west of San Juan Bautista that stretches down Highway 156 to Highway 101
- Fairview, the area east of Fairview Road that stretches to Highway 156.
Kelly used part of his presentation to recount the circumstances surrounding the reconsideration of the NCSAs. It began when then-Supervisor Bob Tiffany in August 2022 suggested eliminating them during a supervisors’ discussion which funding a $50,000 campaign to rebut brochures and social media posts which falsely claimed that housing was included in the proposed Strada Verde Innovation Park project located along the Pajaro River near the San Benito and Santa Clara county line.
The plans for the project included part of the Bolsa NCSA, and Tiffany suggested removing that area and the other three NCSAs from the General Plan “so there can be no further claims that houses and a city are planned for that area.”
At its Sept 13, 2022 meeting, the supervisors agreed to initiate a process to remove the NCSAs, which, according to Kelly, would result in an embargo on residential development in those areas to only what was currently allowed in agricultural zones, which the General Plan limits to no more than one dwelling unit per 40 acres.
On April 19, 2023, planning commissioners discussed the physical constraints on building in those areas. According to Kelly, these included unsuitable terrain for construction, unsustainable increases in traffic, damage to agricultural areas and “intensive and possibly environmentally problematic earthmoving.”
Kelly then detailed the concerns for each area and noted that deleting the NCSAs was in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act.
There were no public comments at the end of the presentation. Commissioner Richard Way asked if removing the Bolsa Area from the NCSAs would impact the proposed Strada Verde development. The Strada Verde project application to the county is currently incomplete and on hold.
“It’s not an impediment per se to something like Strada Verde,” Kelly said. “It’s not a land use designation like you see with agriculture. It sets criteria and, really, these new communities could happen anywhere outside these bubbles.”
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