SDCP - Steering Committee
Sheraton Tucson
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Wednesday, September 4, 2002
Meeting Notes
 
Participants:  See attached sign-in sheet, Chuck Huckleberry, Maeveen Behan, Dr. Harold Barnett, Susan Shobe, David Steele and SIMG staff.
 
 Documents made available to the Steering Committee members at the meeting:
* Pima County Board of Supervisors Minutes from April 19, 2002
* Land-Use, Mitigation Cost and the Economics of Conservation Design,; Dr. Harold Barnett, PhD
* Ad-Hoc August 5th Meeting Notes
* Potential Plan Funding Mechanisms,; Susan Shobe
* All related documents to the Economic Impact Analysis
* CD Sets of all reports with Index from Pima County
* Agendas

 
 
Meeting Commenced at 6:00 pm
Meeting commenced with 38 Steering Committee members and 19 members of the general public. David Steele opened the meeting by introducing himself, reviewing the ground rules and reviewing the agenda. By 6:30 there were 50 Steering Committee members present.
 
Logistics for the next meeting:
Saturday, September 14, 2002
8:30 am to 11:30 am
Marriott UofA Park Hotel
 
Old Business:
Approval of meeting notes from May 1st meeting:
Steering Committee member, Cindy Coping wanted the meeting notes amended to have a summary of her presentation replace what was in the meeting notes.
Discussion:
* Some members of the Steering Committee suggested attaching a verbatim transcript of the presentation to the back of the meeting notes.
* Other members suggested that the Steering Committee member presenting should provide a summary of their presentation.
* Some members felt that if the Presenter gave a handout of their presentation then the meeting notes should suffice.
* Future Steering Committee members making a presentation will be asked to voluntarily provide a copy of their presentation to be attached to the Meeting Notes.
* Meeting notes were approved on the condition that Cindy Coping agree to have her summary added as an attachment.

 
Update from Pima County Administrator, Chuck Huckelberry:
Chuck Huckelberry:  Early on you got a cost model analysis that we prepared because we had a lot of debate about what was appropriate or inappropriate in economic analysis and what was, in fact, going to be the fiscal cost of a Section 10 compliance with the E S A. And we produced this particular piece of work­it was mailed to everyone on the Steering Committee­and if you didn't get one, we're gonna tell you how you get one tonight, real easy. And it basically said that, and the reason it was done is because of all the hocus-pocus voodoo analysis that kept getting pushed our way over the Morrison Institute issue with regard to what economic analysis really was when you comply with Section 10 of the E S A. It is not solving the current crisis in the stock market, it is talking about what is the minimum economic impacts associated with Section 10 E S A compliance. And so we did that for the unincorporated area and the model is very easy to follow, very simple, and it should help dispel a myth that compliance with the Conservation Plan, at least from a Section 10 E S A compliance, is not gonna cost a half a billion or a billion dollars; the cost range anywhere from a low end of 40 million up to about 220 million, depending on what alternative you want to select.
We have also, and the Board has directed, a kind of second-pronged planning process that staff is undertaking right now. It's actually the companion kind of planning process to the Conservation Plan, and it's one that has been outlined in a report, and we'll have this for you, too; and it talks about neighborhood conservation: the issues dealing with employment, housing, health care, affordability­all of the other issues that you hear debated in the community these days.
Finally, and a couple other things we've been doing, let me grab something here
Everybody has wanted to have every copy of every report, of every graph, of every word written on the Conservation Plan. We have for you tonight a set­disc­of twenty-three cassettes that you can take home with you and read to your heart's content. It has all of the printed material with regard to every report produced. We have an index for you that we'll hand out. It's also indexed on the disc. And it contains all of the technical information and written information regarding every report that's been written on the Conservation Plan. We're going to sign it out to you. You're gonna sign that you got it, because if you lose it and you want another set, it's gonna cost you $120. If you want to buy a set, anybody can buy a set in the public, 120 dollars. They're going in the libraries. If you don't like the whole set, you just want, you know, you want your favorite discussion about mountain park elements, you can buy one disc for five dollars $5. So everybody should be able to get anything and everything they want with regard to the information on the Conservation Plan.
The other thing that we've done this summer, and you've probably heard a little bit about it, the County entered into an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service and created the first Mitigation Bank in Arizona with and for the Pima Pineapple Cactus. And so we have, at this point in time, about 600 mitigation credits, that we're willing to entertain anyone who needs mitigation credits for the Pima Pineapple Cactus. You can come talk to us about purchasing them at fair market value. So that's a section of property the County purchased years and years ago for a sanitary landfill. It happened to have quite a few existing Pima Pineapple Cactus and suitable habitat for about 560 acres of the 680-acre, 640-acre acquisition. About the only thing else that we've been doing this summer is preparing for the Environmental Impact Statement documents that have to go with and parallel the final appropriate review of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a Section 10 permit. We've issued a series of E I S issue papers. Those also will be coming out in a disc very soon after we produce three more issue papers and we'll get you that disc also, so you should not have, you should also be able to have all of those. The, I think we also sent, hopefully, did people get a copy of this report in the mail? The Endangered Species Bulletin? Appropriate parts of it were excerpted and mailed to folks. This is a national publication. The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a lot of conservation planning efforts in the southwest were written up in it. It's also available. The index to the reports that are on the disc is this particular piece of paper right here. Just a list, all of the reports in single-space in an index is a four-page piece of paper. So if you don't want to shuffle through your disc, you can refer to a written index that's also available.
And we have received, basically, the approval of the Board of Supervisors to move forward with issuing an RFP for an economic analysis. That RFP should be finalized and going out in September. We also, in the process of issuing the RFP, have established that we will have a review panel. And in that review panel, it will be members who are technical experts in the specific subject area, but it will also include members­we hope­or representatives of groups from the Steering Committee. And really what we're looking at is, you know, no formal votes. Don't spend a lot of your time figuring out who you should ask to be on this particular panel to review the professional proposals. We're looking for a representative, hopefully, of this committee, from, I'll say, the business development - slash - private property interests, that's one group. We're also then looking for a representative from the environmental - slash - neighborhood interest, and also one from the ranching community, to sit with probably at least two, maybe three, other technical experts in economic analysis and the RFP evaluation process. So, you better think about your groups as to who you might want to put on that, or recommend for that particular committee.
One last item is that we're gonna probably start producing some clearer, better graphics, that things I kind of assembled behind me. A lot of our graphics to date, as we have talked, have been regional databases; regional in a sense that they're kind of blurry or fuzzy around the edges. An example of a database that we're going to start producing in great detail is something like what you see here. What you see is basically the conservation land system in green and everything that's not in the conservation land system in white. And we can tell you that what's in green is about 3,100 square miles and we've broken those square miles down previously with you, whether it's public land, whether it's private land, whether it's core, whether it's buffer, whether it's riparian, and we also have identified approximately 699 square miles in the white. We are now going through an analysis with technical GIS staff that will then classify all of the white into whether it's vacant land and vacant private or vacant State Trust land, or what you might call developable lands. And this is where you get into the issues of where you might have one house sitting on 20 or 30 or 40 acres and that, it will show up not as vacant in the assessor's records, but it will have a value on it, but it will not have, it will have a certain ratio between improvements versus land. And so we should be able to fairly well quantify for you all of the vacant land that is going to show up in this area both not only in the green but as well as the white. Because that has a lot to do with the entire cost model analysis, economic analysis associated with what we have left that can, in fact, be developed exclusive of, well, say, any biological or cultural resource value.
So, I think that's really about the end of my conversation and update, other than to just announce that we have reached an agreement with the Town of Marana and entered into a cooperative agreement with them. It was approved by the Board of Supervisors, I guess, a week or two ago.
And it sounds like, Mike, approved by the Council last night. We have sent cooperative agreements that reflect statutory language contained in an appropriation to the City of Tucson as well as the Town of Oro Valley and we'll be doing the same for the Town of Sahuarita very soon. Two of them are in the mail and the other one's being prepared for Sahuarita probably in the next day or two, as well as the town of, City of South Tucson.
So that's all the updates we have. Again, take your discs. Remember, if you lose your discs we're not gonna give you another free set. It's gonna cost you 120 bucks. Or if you want, you know, one that's very popular and you want to give it to your friends, five dollars a disc.
 
Questions & Discussion:
Question: What do you project as a timetable for the hiring of the economic expert and for the production of the economic report?
Mr. Huckelberry: We hope to have a consultant selected based on the process by late October and then it's really up to them as to how quickly they prepare a report. My guess is a minimum of about 120 days, maybe longer, depending upon how complex they want to make the issue. What we've tried to do in the RFP is narrow it down; it is the economic analysis associated with the Section 10 permit required by the E S A. That should, in fact, greatly simplify the economic analysis, because all we're looking for is that that is necessary to support the Environmental Impact Statement.
Question: Did you price the mitigation credits yet?
Mr. Huckelberry: No, we haven't. What we've done is just basically sit on them at this point in time, but we know that there's at least one other act of bank mitigation trying to be constructed and approved over in the Altar Valley. It's probably very probable that the mitigation credits are going to reflect free market acquisition of land fairly closely to it; probably at least 80% of it.
 
Call to the public:
* Pete Tescione requested to make a presentation on the dilemma of the eight-species land base and the fifty-five species land base.

 
New Business:
Stakeholder Presentations
Land-Use, Mitigation Cost and the Economics of Conservation Design-- Dr. Harold Barnett, PhD.:  Dr. Barnett is Professor Emeritus from the University of Rhode Island. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. The Steering Committee was provided with a copy of Dr. Barnett's presentation. There were three main points to Dr. Barnett's presentation:
* To highlight the various costs that will be associated with the Conservation Plan alternative.

* To discuss the various factors that will determine the cost of mitigation. The goal not to suggest that numbers coming from the County are high or are low, but simply to point out what kind of policy and what kind of design is likely to affect mitigation and therefore allow some predictions as to what those costs will be.

* The use of information on costs, mitigation costs in particular, as it relates to the design of an alternative and the design of an implementation strategy. 
* Dr. Barnett pointed out that he saw two major issues before the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan Steering Committee.
a. The designation of land for purpose of development and conservation so as to secure a Section 10 Permit.
b. The issue of designing an implementation strategy.

 

 
Questions & Discussion:
* I have a question about the baseline assumption regarding rezoning and offsite versus onsite mitigation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that rezoning basically equals that the CLS guidelines will apply, and not rezoning equals that they will not apply, which also equals that there will be offsite mitigation because of it.

Dr. Barnett: My understanding is that the onsite mitigation requirements of the Conservation Land System are triggered by a request for rezoning or other legislative actions. The unknown, and if you develop land without requesting rezoning or some other legislative action­simply go ahead with your existing zoning­there is not a mitigation requirement within the Conservation Land System, at least as I understand it. And the question is, you know, if there are, I can't remember, say there are sixty, seventy thousand acres of land in the Conservation Land System which, and the owners want to develop it but they do not request rezoning, if a Section 10 proposal simply mirrors the Conservation Land System, then there's no mitigation requirements. But my understanding is that if you have land that's in the Conservation Land System and you develop it under existing zoning, you still have to deal with conservation issues via Fish & Wildlife. So the question is, will a proposal be put forth and acceptable to Fish & Wildlife if it says that land within the Conservation Land System can be developed without any mitigation requirements if a rezoning is not required? And I don't know the answer to that, but that's the issue.
* I believe that anybody who needs to mitigate is going to have the opportunity to do onsite mitigation. It seems like it's kind of a baseline assumption that skews all of your numbers because why would a developer choose a more expensive way to mitigation, which is obviously offsite mitigation, when they can just comply with the CLS guidelines, even if they're developing within existing zoning and not have to purchase land? That's going to drop your numbers down significantly. I don't understand why developers wouldn't do that because that is obviously the cheaper alternative. My understanding is that rezoning or not rezoning does not determine whether the CLS guidelines apply. The CLS guidelines apply because of where they're at. You can choose to follow them or not. And if you don't, you move offsite, and if you do, you have onsite. And most people are going to choose the onsite.

Dr. Barnett:  The idea is not to inflate or deflate numbers. In fact, I don't know the answer to the question. What I suggest in the latter part of the paper is that, in fact, if you have offsite versus onsite requirements and they're associated with rezoning, then, in fact, you could turn that into a strategy to determine where development is going to be versus conservation. What would be acceptable for a permit, I don't know.
 
* It seems like what you're saying is that if the burden of rezoning becomes so high that people could use the existing zoning as an alternative, which will lower the land use density of our future build-out and increase the mitigation requirements, and as a result of the total available land for mitigation and development that's privately held, even throwing in 15% of new State land isn't enough to cover what we potentially will need to both develop and mitigate.

Dr. Barnett: Using the numbers I have, it certainly suggests that you could run up against the available supply. Again, what's emphasized at the end is that I think it's possible to design a system where you essentially have incentives and disincentives with respect to density and conservation and conceivably you can control costs under such a system.
 
* Have you had a chance to analyze whether it behooves the County to set up its mitigation banks largely and early, so that it can then provide the mitigation land when and, as it's needed, either at cost, which would be a low price, or at fair market value, which may end up even profiting the County?

 
Dr. Barnett: Well, yeah, as I point out in the paper, if you're simply dealing with a trend rate of land inflation, then clearly doing it early is better than doing it late. And, of course, to get what you want, it's better to do it early rather than to do it later. The question, of course, is how much land, in fact, is going to be sought by developers and for conservation and if that's significant relative to the supply, then the act of going out and acquiring land for mitigation is going to have the effect of increasing price. But again, and I would say, and this is discussed some at the end of the paper, if you start targeting land in terms of development and conservation, one consequence is that it makes selling land for mitigation relatively More attractive. And it also, of course, means that owners of that land can get a fair market value.
 
* I would like to address my questions to Maeveen. My basic question was that regardless of whether you seek a rezoning or not, if you follow the CLS guidelines, will you be required to do offsite mitigation? Or can you choose onsite mitigation?

Maeveen Behan: Let's see, I want to try to reframe what you said by putting it in the context of CLS guidelines haven't been accepted or even proposed as part of the Section 10 permit. So it's a local land use guideline. And it applies to rezoning and other discretionary decisions. Okay? So you're dealing with legislative actions, and you're dealing with them within the Conservation Land System. But what I heard during the presentation about a requirement for offsite mitigation, I'm not familiar with that. So. So I guess I've heard, I heard a mistake in an assumption in the presentation, and then I tried to clarify the assumptions that you have right there. But it's apples and oranges, because for the moment, the CLS guidelines are, it's a local issue. It's separate from the Section 10 permit.
 
Potential Plan Funding Mechanisms, Susan Shobe: Ms. Shobe is the Assistant Director for the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. Ms. Shobe presented the Environmental groups' report titled, Protecting the Sonoran Desert. See attached.
* Overview of some of the various ways that communities across the United States, and particularly in the West, have generated revenue to fund their open space and/or conservation goals.
* The financing group is made up of The Sonoran Institute, The Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, The Arizona Open Land Trust, The Nature Conservancy of Arizona and the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. 
* The purpose of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan; a comprehensive local planning initiative to conserve the county's most valued natural resources and cultural resources while accommodating the inevitable population growth and economic expansion of the community.
* Ms. Shobe went through a list of funding mechanism suggestions. See attached.

 
Questions & Discussion:
* Have you found that in some communities, various groups of stakeholders, including the tourism industry and including the landowners and including real estate developers, have worked together with government and with conservation groups to achieve successful programs and successful funding approaches?

Ms. Shobe: There are, since most of the research was done by contacting county representatives, there was not a whole lot of opportunity to go into that.  However, the area where that has been the most beneficial has been the one that I was mentioning where conservation groups, neighborhood groups, even development groups, have focused on mitigating, restoring, protecting specific ecosystems that make up a larger part of the preserve.  That has been incredibly successful.  Say, for example, I can't, I'm sorry that I'm blanking out right now, but that actually has been where it's been one of the most successful areas.  And again, going back to the land trust agencies, they have been very successful in promoting open space bonds, things like that, to be passed to help generate the revenue.  It definitely has, the most successful communities that have been able to generate this revenue, there's definitely been a collaboration among the stakeholders to identify the means, and again, to put all of the little pieces together that will help make up the plan, the open space conservation or habitat conservation plan.
 
* Can we expect the Coalition that you represent to be suggesting a specific constellation of mechanisms to finance the plan that the Coalition prefers?

Ms. Shobe: As far as I know, that recommendation has not been suggested.  I don't know that the Coalition is specifically, as far as I know; the Coalition is not specifically looking at it.  The financing group that came together to put this report together and to work on other issues, as far as I know, that's not in their timeline.  This basically was meant to begin the discussion amongst the Steering Committee members, among the stakeholder groups, to discuss things that are equitable, again, for you all to try and begin this discussion and come up with the answer to the question, how are we going to fund this plan.
 
Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan Issues Matrix:
This item was deferred to the October meeting as it is a follow-on to the stakeholder presentations that were also deferred to the October meeting.
 
Future Meeting Schedule:
David presented the meeting schedule to the Steering Committee.
Discussion;
* It was noted that the schedule should clearly define Meeting or Study Sessions as meetings are counted for the attendance policy and study sessions are not.

Action: The schedule for meetings beginning with September 14, 2002 and ending with Saturday, February 15, 2003 was approved.
 
Issues for future meeting agendas and new business:
Discussion:
·        The meeting schedule had been based upon the information that the Steering Committee had at its disposal in May that an economics consultant would have already been selected by this date, the fall period through December would be used to prepare proposed alternative recommendations for economic analysis; with the expectation that those would be to the economics consultant in late December, early January, and finally the Steering Committee would be prepared to make proposed alternative recommendations to the county by March 1st.
·        Some members felt that the self-imposed March deadline might be optimistic since learning that the Steering Committee would not see the economic report until sometime in February. The recommendation was made that the Steering Committee should plan for some additional meetings beyond February. The proposal was made that the Steering Committee strive to complete their work by March 1st. 
·        A discussion ensued regarding Mr. Huckelberry's comments on the 3 persons that the Steering Committee wanted to see on the RFP committee. While some members felt that Harold Barnett would be a non-partisan representative, others felt that they did not want a non-Steering Committee member to represent the Steering Committee.
·        The motion was made to have Harold Barnett represent the Steering Committee on the RFP Committee, however, the point was made that since the issue of voting on the representatives from the Steering Committee to be on the RFP Committee was not noted on the agenda that this would be an item for the November 6th agenda.
·        It was also noted that since the County was going to have economists on the RFP Committee, that perhaps the Steering Committee could recommend Harold Barnett as one of those economists. This would be a recommendation above and beyond the stakeholder groups. Maeveen Behan confirmed that the Steering Committee could recommend that Harold Barnett be appointed economist on the RFP Committee
·        The request was made to have an Executive Session on the November 6th agenda.
·        Some of the Steering Committee members felt that the underlying assumptions of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan should be examined and dealt with more broadly and the recommendations from the Steering Committee be shared with the Board of Supervisors as the representatives of the public concerning each of these assumptions, and that that should be scheduled for a future meeting.
·        The suggestion was made to put the discussion of the feasibility of an Open Space bond in 2003 for the purpose of funding Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan or partially funding of Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan on a future agenda.
·        A few members of the Steering Committee questioned why the Wildlife Service meeting noticed in the local newspaper regarding the pygmy owl habitat was closed to all but the recovery team and those invited by the regional director. Another Steering Committee member made the explanation that those meetings are closed to the public and that the recovery plan is supposed to be kept confidential.
·        The request to have Pima County fund the $595 fee for two Steering Committee members to attend a two-day seminar on the Endangered Species Act and Habitat Conservation Planning was made. The recommendation was made to place this on the October 5th agenda. The fact that a Steering Committee member had already spoken with the county and had been told that the county would not be funding this item was raised.
·        The suggestion was made and approved to move a few of the presentations by members of the public to the October 5th meeting.
 
Motion: 
·        Convert the September 14th Study Session into a meeting to address the issue of selecting participation on the review panel for the RFP for the economics consultant, and also for the executive session. Motion failed.
 
Call to the Public:
·        The closed meeting of the recovery plans regarding the pygmy owl habitat was questioned.
 
Meeting Adjourned 8:20 pm