Santa Clara County is attempting to allow landowners to switch from Williamson Act contracts (tax breaks designed to protect agriculture) to Open Space Easements (tax breaks designed to protect open space). We and the state Department of Conservation are concerned that the switch will just become a loophole for development. CGF proposed the following changes...
Category: News
Post
Urban Coyotes
Seed magazine has an interesting article, “Wild Coyotes Move to the Windy City“, discussing a six-year study of urban coyotes in Chicago. Apparently the coyotes play a useful role controlling the rodent, geese, and deer populations, although they get into garbage and pet food, and presumably kill pet cats and dogs as well. The study...
Post
Coyote Valley news
San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales has resigned from the task force designing the Coyote Valley Specific Plan. This is likely to be good news, as Mayor Gonzales’ influence has been disappointing – always in the direction of more development, way too soon. Hopefully the City will slow down now and consider other options. On the...
Post
Joint position on Coyote Valley Farmland Conservation
We submitted the document below to San Jose today. -Brian (And Happy New Year, everyone!) ——- Principles Regarding Farmland Conservation in Coyote Valley January 4, 2006 The Friends of the Coyote Valley Greenbelt, The Sierra Club, Loma Prieta Chapter, Committee for Green Foothills, Greenbelt Alliance and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society are all organizations...
Post
Acknowledging both sides of the Stanford trails debate
Copied below is a letter that the Committee for Green Foothills sent to the Palo Alto Weekly. The link to the online Weekly letter is here, and this was sent in response to a letter from Stanford University printed here. -Brian ———- Examining evidence The community groups opposing the expansion of the Alpine Road sidewalk...
Post
Resolving some of the Stanford trail mysteries
Over the last week or two, we may have figured out some of the questions surrounding the extremely disappointing action by Santa Clara County in choosing an expanded the sidewalk along Alpine Road instead of a real trail in the Stanford foothills. So here are some questions: Why did Stanford fail to support Supervisor Liz...
Post
"Disappointing, bad policy, and illegal"
Those are the words that I would use to describe the actions by Santa Clara County yesterday that have the effect of approving a sidewalk along Alpine Road. The article by the Mercury News is a good summary of what happened. The County’s action is disappointing for all the reasons we specified in the letter...
Post
CGF position on Stanford Trails
The following is the letter we’re sending today about Stanford trails. -Brian ———- December 13, 2005 Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors County Government Center 70 W. Hedding Street, 10th Floor, East Wing San Jose, CA 95110 Re: Agenda Item #57 – Stanford GUP relating to trails Dear Members of the Board of Supervisors; The...
Post
Golf course violates permit in Morgan Hill
(guest posting by Chris Montague-Breakwell) The Institute Golf Course, built illegally without permits from the city of Morgan Hill, has destroyed endangered species’ habitat and threatens to pollute local groundwater with fertilizer and pesticide run-off. And still, the city has not taken the golf course’s owners to task for their violations. The Institute Golf Course...
Post
What’s "conservative"?
I had an interesting exchange yesterday over who was being “conservative” in approaching a problem. The City of San Jose is trying to figure out much it will require from Coyote Valley developers in terms of providing health-care facilities for the uninsured people who will be living in the proposed city. They said they estimated...