State: Extending Sonoma Developmental Center process could violate law - Sonoma Index-Tribune
While local councils and community groups asked to provide input on the future of Sonoma Developmental Center have urged the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to ask the state for more time to come up with an suitable plan, the department that operates SDC said any such extension could violate state law.
“The funding contemplated a three-year specific planning process, concurrent with three years of funding to maintain the campus,” Department of General Services spokesperson Jennifer Iida wrote in an email. “We believe that extending the planning period violates what is required by the law.”
Because the three-year funding provided for DGS to maintain SDC’s campus was passed in the state’s budget, there is no flexibility to extend deadlines or request more money from the state, she said.
The Sonoma Developmental Center is already about a year behind the original schedule for its specific plan, due to the pandemic and wildfires, State Assemblymember Marc Levine said. However, he emphasized there is still time to adjust the plans to make them compatible with the surrounding community before the end of this year.
“The state was able to negotiate about $3.5 million in planning grants to the county to help figure out what the county’s desire would be to do with the property,” Levine said. “I don’t believe that the county must rush into anything.”
But if the county proposes a plan that does not meet the guidelines set by the states — including key issues like affordable housing, conservation and economic feasibility — the state has the right to reject a specific plan and walk away from the project, according to Bradley Dunn, the project manager for SDC with Permit Sonoma.
“This is not a standard development process. We don’t own the property and we’re not developing the property. And so that’s very different from what a lot of people are used to,” Dunn said. “If the state doesn’t find that our plan meets their requirements... the state can program the land use itself.”
When the Board of Supervisors meets on Tuesday, Jan. 25, they will determine the next steps in the years-long redevelopment project. That will be an important move forward for Permit Sonoma, Dunn said, which will use the supervisors’ preferred plan as a template when applying for additional project funding in the coming months.
“Having a project framework and having a specific plan allows us to seek affordable housing funding and financing because we have a framework that we can take to funders and say, ‘This is what we’re going to build,’” Dunn said. “Any additional funding would be used to raise affordability percentages beyond the minimum set out in the specific plan.”
Iida said the state is not interested in plans that do not address those key issues outlined in the original planning documents. That hasn’t stopped advisory groups from writing letters to the board of supervisors and Permit Sonoma to seek an extension to the planning process or ask that the state provide funding for the “dilapidated infrastructure and environmental cleanup liabilities” at SDC’s campus, according to the North Sonoma Valley Municipal Advisory Council.
“The needs at the campus are not just a matter of upkeep. The buildings were designed for a specific mission and are not easily adaptable for reuse,” Iida wrote. “Just bringing them up to current code would be quite expensive.”
“As a result, there will be significant costs to repurpose the campus, regardless of the condition the buildings are in. That means the county’s rezoning of the property needs to account for uses that generate enough economic activity to cover the costs to repurpose the site,” she wrote.
SDC is not a typical redevelopment project, as the goal involves selling the property to one or multiple developers. As for the question of whether more money can be allocated toward the site for continued maintenance or redevelopment, Iida wrote: “We do not have a budget for the redevelopment of sites that the state is planning to sell.”
Levine said that while the project has passed certain deadlines, that the board of supervisors choice is not the end of the discussion about the redevelopment of the nearly 1,000-acre property.
“It’s important for the community to share and voice these concerns, it’s normal and healthy, and I encourage more of it so the county can be informed,” the legislator said.
Levine, Dunn and DGS are confident a project alternative will be chosen that will provide much needed housing and middle-income jobs for Sonoma Valley.
“The goal is to establish an allowable use of the campus that is economically viable, addresses local needs like housing and job creation, and preserves open space,” Iida wrote. “We are hopeful that a specific plan can be finalized on the timetable set by the authorizing legislation that does exactly that.”
In a group statement from Sen. Bill Dodd, Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire and Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, “We have all agreed the typical state surplus process would never work for this truly special piece of land. Neighbors and the community deserved to be front and center on the local planning process."
source: https://www.sonomanews.com/article/news/state-extending-sonoma-developmental-center-process-could-violate-law/
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