Jim Wilson | Dec 7, 2014

Hi All,

We'd like to have a good turnout and show support as Mr. Morrison's proposes important CEQA procedure changes for Napa.

It's an 1100 agenda item at next week's BOS MEETING TUESDAY 12/9/14. (The agenda won't be uploaded until Friday.)

DESCRIPTION: Director of Planning, Building and Environmental Services requests the Commission recommend to the Board adoption of a County-sponsored resolution. The proposed resolution will: 1) amend the County's local procedures for implementing CEQA to eliminate the option of allowing applicants to contract directly with environmental consultants for preparation of CEQA documents including Environmental Impact Reports; 2) expand the radius of public notice provided regarding CEQA documents from 300 feet to 1,000 feet from the project parcel; and 3) other non-substantive clerical corrections.

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Gary Margadant wrote:

Hi Jim

I just looked at the BOS Agenda for 12/9 and the CEQA changes for that date are only the noticing (see Agenda Letter 9F): "Direction was given to expand noticing from 300 ft. to 1,000 ft. from project sites, and to provide a courtesy notice within a short period after an application is submitted to the County". The huge part of this change is the last bit, notification when the applications are submitted, so if you are on the distribution list, forewarning is in the works.

Note the noticing requirements on page 4. This will not change, so the notification upon application is huge. 10, 20 and 30 days notice is in favor of the applicant and county as it limits time to gather research, resources and effectively comment.

NOTE: CEQA changes as to the Planning Dept having more say over the hiring and direction of consultants has been rescheduled back to the Planning Commission on Dec 17 with a BOS review and action in January 2015. This is the major change in the County Code for processing EIR's.

I will be there to comment on these changes. With only 3 minutes to comment, I need to have others share the comment subjects. Normally, we only try to coordinate within our group, but we are open to suggestions.

Policy Manual Resolution: The attached resolution would add a new policy to the Planning Division's administrative procedures obligating staff to send out a courtesy notice to all property owners within the 1,000 ft. radius and along a shared private drive shortly after a new project is submitted to the department for review. This notice would generally occur within two weeks of project submittal and be distributed concurrent with the request for comments sent to referral agencies and departments. This "notice of pending project" would be in addition to the formal legal notice required by State Law. The intent behind this early notice is to inform interested property owners as close as possible to the commencement of the County's review of the request.

After reading the Agenda Letter for Item 9F and supporting document A , proposed ordinance Redline, I NOTE a huge problem, On this document, see See Section 1, 2.88.010 Definitions, Items F 1&2 (pages 2 & 3). Then note Section 2, items B 1 a&b (page 4).

The county is retaining a 300 ft notification radius for some projects, so the 1000 ft is not applicable to all projects. Erosion Control Plan Notification will be retained @ 300 ft. THIS is HUGE and should not be allowed, since ECPs affect a much larger area of the valley than the 300 ft.

Now I know why the Correspondence Letter from the NC Farm Bureau, NV Vintners, GrapeGrowers and WineGrowers are all in favor of these changes.

We have to do a coordinated opposition to this failure to include all projects within the 1000 ft radius of notification.

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