We want to offer some background on two recent items in the local news:
UCSC's decision to appeal the City Planning Commission's approval of the
Westside Safeway; and the groundbreaking for the area's test desalination
plant.
First, let me say that the campus has not taken a position in opposition to
a new Safeway and the other improvements planned for the shopping center at
Mission Street and Almar Avenue. To the contrary, many members of the UCSC
community, myself included, welcome the store's expansion.
What we have taken a position on is the necessity for consistent
application of law and regulations by the City regarding planning and
environmental impacts of projects. Unfortunately, the Initial Study
prepared for the Safeway expansion project contained contradictory
statements and insufficient analysis in several categories of the
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), particularly with regard to
traffic and water use.
On July 3, prior to the Planning Commission's consideration of the project,
UCSC provided the City with six pages of detailed comments, describing why
we believed the Initial Study to be insufficient (see:
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/safeway/comment.pdf). The campus routinely
comments on environmental documents prepared to meet CEQA requirements for
projects in the City. A fundamental premise of CEQA is that providing the
public and its elected officials -- in this case the City Council of Santa
Cruz -- with appropriate feedback leads to an open planning process, and
ultimately to fair and consistent planning decisions.
When the Planning Commission -- without addressing the issues raised by us
-- approved the proposed project at its July 5 meeting, the University felt
compelled to appeal the Commission's decision (see:
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/safeway/appeal.pdf) in an effort to ensure
that our comments were heard. This was the first appeal ever filed by the
campus. Our appeal does not constitute a legal challenge: the appeals
process is a safeguard provided by CEQA and the City's Municipal Code to
present all perspectives on land-use matters to the City's ultimate
decision-makers, its City Council.
UCSC holds itself to high standards when planning projects on campus. The
City holds us to high standards, too. State law requires both UCSC and the
City to meet the same guidelines. We would expect the City to acknowledge
and base its decision-making on the fact that it has a responsibility to
consider local impacts such as traffic and water use in a process that is
fair to all projects. Preparing thorough and accurate CEQA documents is an
important step toward finding comprehensive solutions to the impacts that
accompany vital economic and social benefits in an ever-changing community.
As mentioned earlier, I would also like to briefly report on another,
recently publicized story: the groundbreaking this past week for the
community's pilot water desalination plant. UCSC is providing crucial
support to the City of Santa Cruz and Soquel Creek Water District in our
shared interests of supplementing the area's water supply. In this
cooperative venture, UCSC staff members have been working closely with city
staff on plans for the pilot plant for more than a year and a half. The
campus is providing the site at Long Marine Laboratory for no charge, and
most importantly, access to UCSC's existing seawater system.
