SDCP - Steering Committee
Four Points Sheraton
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Meeting Notes
Participants: See attached sign-in sheet David Steele, Maeveen Behan and SIMG staff.
Documents made available to the Steering Committee members at the meeting:
* Agendas
* "Not In My Back Yard" Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing-Executive Summary The State of Housing in Arizona-2000: Alan Lurie
* Conservation Community Preferred Alternative-Outline for Implementation of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan: Carolyn Campbell
Meeting Commenced at 6:00pm
Meeting commenced with 30 Steering Committee members and 12 members of the general public. David Steele opened the meeting by introducing himself, reviewing the ground rules and reviewing the agenda. By 7:15 pm there were 43 Steering Committee members present and 16 members of the general public.
Logistics for the next Study Session:
Saturday, November 16, 2002
8:30 am to 11:30 am
Pima County Public Works Building
Conference Room 'C'
201 N. Stone
Logistics for the next Ad-Hoc Subcommittee meeting:
Friday, November 8, 2002
9:30 am to 11:30 am
Arizona Builders' Alliance
1661 N. Swan Road
Suite 144
Old Business:
Approval of meeting notes:
· September 4 meeting Approved with Lucy Vitale's corrections.
* October 5 meeting Approved.
Updated Operating Guidelines:
* Lucy Vitale wants the flowchart that she presented to the Steering Committee to be included as part of the Operating Guidelines.* Michael Zimet made this request a motion and it passed.
Quarterly Report:
David did a brief quarterly report in response to a Board of Supervisors directive. It consists of two pages that present an overview of the meetings to which are attached the attendance sheets and the meeting notes. The meetings that are covered by this are the April 6th, the May 1, May 18th meetings.
Motion: Forward the report to the Board of Supervisors with the aforementioned attachments.
Motion passed.
Economics Consultant Proposal Review Committee Participation:
At the September meeting, Chuck Huckleberry presented an update on the status of the RFP. He said that they were going to put together an Advisory Committee RFP review committee, to look over the various RFP's and provide some advice to the Countyon the economics consultant. He asked for representatives from three Stakeholder Groups ranching, neighborhoods and environmentalists and the business/real estate development community.
The Ad-Hoc Subcommittee decided to recommend these actions:
* Have the Stakeholder Groups identify the individual that they would like to have represent them on the Steering Committee.
* Have the Steering Committee identify that person.
* Lucy Vitale wanted to have an at-large member from the Steering Committee as well.
The Stakeholder groups identified the Steering Committee member they wanted to have represent their group.
The environmental neighborhood and conservation community: Jenny Neely
The business/real estate development community: Jonathan DuHamel
The ranching community had chosen someone but the name of the person was not available.
The Steering Committee at large would be represented by Lucy Vitale.
Call to the public: None.
Affordable Housing in the Context of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan: Alan Lurie,
Alan: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I thought for a long time about whether to give this presentation or not and I think there is some facts that have come forward in the last several months that move me to talk about affordable housing. The motive is strictly to make sure that we do not get myopic on the thought of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan to the exclusion of the people in Pima County. That is something I have not been asked to do by my association. It is just something that I think needs to be done. I have some source documents and I think really what I am trying to do here is to educate. To get people honestly apprised of the problems that some of the people in Pima County are having on finding safe and affordable housing. I have as source documents, and two of these have been handed out, something that says Not in My Back Yard. That was a large undertaking by President George Bush, Sr. at the time when Secretary Kemp was the head of Housing and Urban Development. I will talk about that first. There is another document that you only have a short cut on and that is The State of Housing in Arizona, Arizona Housing Commission. You have an executive summary inside of the handouts. There is a complimentary piece by the City of Tucson which is an executive summary for research findings, the state of affordable housing in Tucson. That will be available if you would like it. And then there is another document that I have not made copies of because it is that (using fingers) thick and it is called Arizona Affordable Housing Profile. It is a document that is being done by Elliott Pollack and Company. I called Elliott at David's request and he was gone Monday, couldn't change schedules. We also couldn't change schedules at the late date that we called them so we decided not to get together. I'm sure, in his wanderings, he will come back and make presentations in the name of the Governor. Let's start with the Not in My Back Yard presentation. It is kind of funny when I have a young fellow working in the home shows that put together the Power Point presentation. When he showed it to me, he had my last name spelled incorrectly. I told him that was at least a two grade lowering and he was not sure whether I was kidding or not. Two year project, lots of people from every industry got together and worked for the President and the HUD Chairman. They found out that most of the things that were wrong in affordable housing started and stopped with government. The Federal Government was not exempt. The state government did not get the right directions from the Federal and then did not pass it on to the communities, so there were thirty one recommendations devised at the end of this particular meeting. They get in to this thing pretty quickly and I have read a lot of reports, most of them just go back and forth for a little while.
The first paragraph, which you have, where it says: millions of Americans are being priced out of buying or renting the kind of housing they otherwise could afford were it not for a web of government regulations for them America, the land of opportunity, has become the land of frustrating and often unrewarded search for affordable housing. And, it gets worse. And they call a spade a spade and there is plenty of room for corrections, there is plenty of room for improvement but the problem, as in many cases in government, it is very, very slow in coming. There is we always get down to the bottom line which is, do we have enough money available to do what we need to do and can we hire the staff to keep pressing things along and from what I see from a report that was done in probably the 1990 to 1993 time frame, they have not come very far and that is too bad. What they have done is to compliment the report is to put these boxes in and each of them really has a message in itself and I think we are not in sync. The definition that HUD comes up with for someone who is in trouble as far as how much money they are spending for housing is thirty percent. If you spend more than thirty percent of your income, then you are not doing well by their definitional base. Again, the final conclusion of this report, as we go through it, is that government is probably the only single source to correct many of the problems that are associated with affordable housing. The next item is that government is probably the major source in creating the problems in the first place. I looked at this particular graphic and said really what we are doing here is we are mandating still which is really counterproductive. As we go through the rest of the reports, you will be able to see the single worst element of our community as far as having affordable housing are the Native Americans and it is so low and so bad that it is really kind of scary and yet as the slide says, as bad as it is, we conveniently stay away from meaningful solutions. Now we go to this book, How Bad Is It. In the second paragraph you see that rents are rising twice as fast as incomes. You will also see that they get to a rather emotional word when they talk about affordable housing is at a crisis state in the State of Arizona. Crisis is not a nice word as you know.
There was a survey undertaken by the State of Arizona where they contacted a group of people and asked them:
1. What do you consider to be the primary barriers to affordable housing in your city/town?
2. Can you suggest possible strategies to correct each respective barrier?
3. What actions, if any, had been taken to eliminate or lessen these barriers by local authorities or private groups?
The respondents, and you see there are 419 of them responded with 1,059 responses. When I was in the Air Force, we used to say that you ask 9 navigators the answer to something and you get 32 different answers. I think probably it is the same thing here. We ask 419 people and we got 1,059 answers. Across the state the barriers with the highest response were high land costs, limited land availability, second one lack of infrastructure and I put that up here because all of the research that I have done says the same thing. At least the first answer lack of land and the cost of land. I hope for those of you who cannot see that very clearly, you can see it on your handout. This is kind of incredible. In Tucson, since 1988, the average sales price of a single family home has increased nearly 51% from $89,500 to $134,900. I'm going to have a little lesson here. There is a lot of things that you can get in trouble with when you read things about housing costs and so forth. Median means that there are as many prices above as there are below. The middle point the median. The average is as you would imagine, you have 6,000 permits, you add the cost of all those permits and divide by 6,000.
Question: Is that adjusted for inflation?
Alan: That's a great question, but I am sorry I cannot answer that question.
Question: How recent are those numbers?
Alan: These numbers the ones that have graphs in front of them are 2002 data from Elliott, Pollecks. If it has just the State of Arizona Housing Commission, then that is year 2000 data.
Alan: I have 3 or 4 additional slides more complete than this that will give you an answer hopefully. This starts to let you know how bad the situation is. 317 total homes built in Pima County below $90,500 in year 2000. In the City of Tucson, instead of the 6.6%, they only built 5.6% with virtually no affordable housing in Oro Valley or in Marana. Again, median, remember what we talked about median. I have had talks with John Strobeck. He says he anticipates this going a little higher in 2002 and then anticipates that very quickly we'll be at a median sale of $200,000 for a new home. Here's another trick in this and this is not said to demean anyone or to turn anyone off, the multiple listing service (MLS) is something very important to the realtors. The MLS has almost no new sales and they have, I'll say none but that may be not true by one no custom homes. So, if we look at an average and cut out a $5 million dollar home or a set of $1 million or $500,000 homes, then we are really bastardizing the data. MLS is talking about resale product. I was a little frightened about putting all these numbers up because it is a great way to turn an audience off, but I thought if you had it in front of you, and you could use it as a reference as you like, it might be acceptable. I think this is very telling in the slide. What we have seen in other parts of the country, if housing becomes very expensive and the tax becomes very expensive, people have to give up their homes. Often times it's sell their home, get some good money and hope to buy a little bit less of a house nearby and find out that they have to go a long way out before they can find acceptable housing. Or, worse, move in with 3 other families in a small apartment and try to live like that. Again, this is a 3 group part of barriers, the first one again lack and high cost of private land. You can read those at your convenience. Those are in your handouts. There is something in the housing market that I don't know if you know about or have thought about. I brought this ungainly thing around for one specific reason. This should be 2001 and that should be 2002. So what we are looking at, we are looking at a new average price in 2000 - $159,800, in 2001 - $181,500. That shows an increase of 13.54% or 5.54% more than the average across the United States for increases. The resale home value and you can see the numbers - that didn't match the appreciation by 5.75% across the country. New median, higher by 13.72%, resale median minus 2.19%. Alright, now when we get to 2001 and 2002, what you can see is the new home market leveling off and the resale market doing what we would call an
unearned creep and what it will do is it will gain toward what the new home sale market is and the new home sale market will flatten. I thought this was an interesting thing, it came inin early October. There's another thing that is a little confusing in that where people consider affordable housing to be subsidized housing. That's not what I am considering affordable housing, that's not what I am talking about. Professor Glazer of Harvard and Mr. I guess Professor Yarko (?) of the Worten (?) school said "America is not facing a nationwide affordable housing crisis, instead in particular places the prices are higher than they are in other places and those prices are higher because of the lack of availability and high prices of land." Again, another way to restate the premise that was made in those questionnaires. O.K. and this was reported by Walter E. Meyer, Professor of Property and Urban Law, Yale Law School. This is said a different way by Thomas Sole (?). This is one that you are going to positively have to look at What does all of this mean to us in the way of how many people are we losing by virtue of having increased prices? This is from the National Association of Home Builders, Housing Economics Department. What it says is for $100,000 home, we have this many people, 193,000 people can afford it. If we go to $101,000 at a 7% so it is off certainly after the 50 basis point reduction today, I'd be calling every 10 minutes to try to figure out what was going so I used 7%, or they used 7%, the difference of $1,000, the difference in cost, the difference in tax, the difference in income needed, the number of people who can now afford it and the difference of $1,000 is 1480 potential buyers, homeowners, cannot qualify for a home. If we go to $2,000, the difference is almost 3,000 homeowners. It goes up pretty fast. I can't quantify, I can't skip around because the numbers are totally independent. If we went to $90,000 home that was shown during the presentation, the numbers would be even higher.
Question: Early on you said that the rule of thumb for your report was 30% of income, was that gross income or net income or that is say take home pay or theoretical gross pay?
Alan: It's gross pay. This is not my definition. This is Housing and Urban Development's definition
Question: In relative to nationally, when you say we lose people, I am wondering if we've got so much affordable housing where they are going?
Alan: You know the day after and the day after that, there are people saying, 'you know, woe is me we're driving more and more people out of being able to get into a home.' So you are going to, I don't think it changes that much. I think the motive behind making some of those claims may be a little suspect
Question: Are you trying to tell these people here that if the Sonoran Desert Protection Plan passes, that there will be even less affordable housing?
Alan: I want people not to be myopic, I want people to look at the big picture and the big picture is we have to protect the environment, we have to protect our people, we need to come someplace where we can do both of them.
Question: About how much is the actual cost of materials and labor involved to build a 2,000 square foot house which would be a good sized house for a family. The cost of materials seems to go up Lumber alone has gone up over 30%.
Alan: And down again, and it fluctuates you are right, it, you know dry wall, lots of things have gone up and down. The amount of money, the bottom line amount of money that the builders are making and again depending upon what their nitch is has gone down. The cost of building the home, the end price, has gone up. The reason for that is the added imposition by government and lots of things but that's why and if we pass the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan without not taking into consideration people then I am afraid because we are taking that additional large amount of developable land out of the mix that we are going to in fact again escalate the cost of housing. I will try to get that information to you at the next meeting.
Question: Aren't these regulations are required for people that are so self interested that they dismiss these important externalities.
Alan: Well, you know, I think in the State of Arizona, in Pima County where we have 87% of the land not developable, I think what we have to ask ourselves is do we have 13% for the people?
Question: Because I am trying to get a sense of the extent to which wages are a factor here as opposed to land availability because the 13% figure doesn't include 60% of the County that's the Reservation and then the issue is not land availability but livable wage issues.
Alan: If Pima County were inhabited by millionaires there probably would be absolutely no problem in doing exactly what everyone wanted. And the answers to the questions that were sent out by the State, one of those were wage pay inequities and so forth, so I agree with you.
Question: . Isn't it likely that no matter what planning we do, we have to take into account the fact that there is only so much housing that can be added to our housing stock because of the limitations of water and isn't it necessary for us to focus on that issue?
Alan: I couldn't agree more. I have been on the Groundwater Users Advisory Council for the Tucson Active Management Area for the last 6 years and if they stay the course and mandate 100 year assured water supply before they allow anybody to build, I think we will be safe. That has to be a good measurement. It can't be something that we do with a very sharp pen but if we in fact do that we are going to have enough water.
Question: It would be helpful for the group to see that article regarding how much affordable housing is available in Tucson compared to the rest of the nation.
Alan: It seems to me that I remember that Maricopa County had a 10.6% affordability rate and that Pima County had a 9.9% affordability rate, not very much difference, but you know again, when I started this off, I said the reason I wanted to do this was because I was afraid if we got myopic on the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, there would be a large jump in the lack of affordability because we are taking developable or potentially developable land out of the mix. So, my motive is not selfish, hopefully I am not hurting anybody by telling you that I think that we got a real problem here in Pima County and that we have to look at the big picture with eyes wide open. That's the only point that I am trying to make.
Question: To what extent do you think we need to factor in opportunities for redevelopment in our planning process and assuming that you agree that we should, how do we go about doing it?
Alan: I go back to Portland, Oregon and I go to my second daughter is living in San Jose and what they have done there as people have been priced out of their homes, someone spends much to much for the land and home only to buy the land, tears down the home and builds a very expensive home. This is fair, this is free market, but the people who have been taken out of their home then have very little hope of getting something in the neighborhood around work, near their kids and so forth, and they are out you know along with that folk on the slide starting off at 4:00 in the morning and hoping to get through a pass by 6:00 so they can sleep until 7:30. So, it's you know, it's good and it's bad, it's legal, it's done. I hope we don't get in to that mode a whole lot.
Stakeholder Preferred Alternative Presentations:
Conservation Community Preferred Alternative-Outline for Implementation of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan: Carolyn Campbell, Nancy Laney, Rob Marshall, and Luther Propst.
Carolyn: First of all, you all see on your agenda that the coalition also had signed up for a presentation on affordable housing this evening and there is a couple of reasons that we would like to defer that until the study session. The first reason is that we used all the 40 minutes that we allotted to that for the first presentation which I thank Alan, it was I think a great presentation and the coalition has been doing research and I think we going to be adding to a lot of the points that Alan made so hopefully it will be a it's a very important issue to all of us I think affordable housing so we would like to ask that we give that at the next available time at a study session. So what I would like to do now is give a presentation "The Conservation Community Preferred Alternative" and I am very pleased to be here giving a presentation on behalf of all the groups that were part of this. A couple of options that we had in putting together our presentation. One was to just look at the issues that we've been concerned about through our work on the conservation plan regarding biological resources and kind of looking at just the biological resources and kind of looking at just the biological resources in a vacuum. In other words, just looking at what we could do the most we could do to protect the eco system and biological diversity here without taking into consideration some of the issues that we have heard about with property rights and financial constraints and things like that but instead, we decided to take a different approach. We've all been meeting here now for over 3 years and we've heard a lot from different stakeholders. We've been talking for 3 years about a lot of issues and so what we decided to do was try to incorporate into our presentation a lot of the issues that we've heard from other stakeholders in their presentations as well as meetings that we've had outside of the Steering Committee with many of you. And so, what we are trying to develop here is a preferred alternative that is balanced and addresses the concerns we've heard that will still gain us a Section 10 permit and protect the biodiversity here, the flora and the fauna in the Sonoran Desert within Pima County's borders. And so as such there are a lot of details that still need to be developed as you will see in our presentation, we have areas that need to be developed more fully between all of us here. We have two parts to our presentation, one is a conservation community preferred alternative as we see kind of a road map as to how to get there and the different pieces that need to be incorporated for a quality conservation oriented preferred alternative. And then in the second part of the presentation, we have tried to set out areas where we felt, because of the presentations that we have agreement on, and then part of that is also areas that we see need for further discussion through the Steering Committee. And so with that, I would like to move on.
These are the Groups that have been a part of this process and that have signed on to this preferred alternative Arizona SonoranDesert Museum, the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection and as you all know there are 41 conservation neighborhood groups in the Coalition and I believe we have about 25 members from those organizations that have seats at the Steering Committee table here. And what we would like to do after this presentation really is to propose that we sit down with each other outside of the Steering Committee or within the Steering Committee process and develop these details more fully and what we are presenting is not something we can give to the Fish and Wildlife Service tomorrow and call that the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. We want to put ours on the table and start meeting here soon. I think we really need to continue moving ahead. Then I want to thank everybody from all our organizations, there was a lot of discussion, a lot of input and a lot of work that went into this.
We are introducing here a new concept that a lot of us have been thinking about as we consider the implementation of the conservation land system and this should provide the conservation land system should provide a contiguous, protected preserve which will be a subset of the conservation land system for ecosystem conservation while still providing for compatible development within the entire conservation land system and so when we talk about a preserve, we are talking about lands, like I said a subset of the conservation land system and remember the conservation land system is the map that was developed by the biologists on a science technical advisory team and that is the map that we are all familiar with and we feel that the conservation land systems were put in there for a reason, they are all biologically important but we don't have any illusions that we are going to be able to purchase everything in the conservation land system nor is it really needed or is it feasible. And so some of the COS land will be protected through acquisition or other means and much of it will be developed and so in our presentation we are separating how we are going to deal with the protected lands and how we are proposing to deal with the lands that will be developed and both of these are important elements. The conservation system the conservation community supports the process that went into developing the conservation land system. The scientific process is one of the best that we have seen in looking at other habitat conservation plan processes that have gone on around the country. And, of course, it identifies priority biological lands or environmentally significant lands for one reason or another. We have faith in that process and we feel that the Steering Committee and the County should adopt the conservation land system as part of the STCP process and the Section 10 permit. And we feel that way for the following reasons. That it comprehensively focuses on maintaining habitat to protect rare or declining species and the CLS is the alternative most likely to prevent future listings and also that a lot of land, more areas of high biological value are located further from the urban core and that will make assembly of a contiguous preserve easier and less costly. So, like I said before, we have broken down the implementation of a conservation land system into two parts one is assembly, managing and funding the preserve, again the preserve being the lands a subset of the CLS that will be permanently protected, and then how are we going to provide regulation of the conservation land system. We have provided this as kind of a clip notes, a table on assembling, managing and funding the preserve and I am going to be going into more detail on these issues as we move through the presentation but first in assembling the preserve acquisition, when we say acquisition, we are talking about more than just fee simple purchase of properties. We have talked before in the Steering Committee about acquisition of development rights, acquisition of water rights, other things that can be used to actually protect land and using all that to fall under the broader term of what we are calling "acquisition." Development regulations will also get us to mitigation lands or set asides and then those lands will also eventually become part of the what we are calling the preserve. And then we talk about conservation of the existing public lands, we would like to see that the goals of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan are reflected in the management of all the public lands that we currently have. Some may already be managed consistent with the STCP but we want to go through a process and make sure that that happens. And then managing the preserve, we want to make sure we have full information so we want to have site analysis for all the lands and, of course, we need to have management and monitoring plans which include adaptive management so that we can change, we have a process for changing management if what we are doing currently is not achieving the goals and protecting the species. Funding of course is an issue and we have broken it very simply into local, state and federal sources and within that and outside of those, we also feel that there are funds through private sources such as foundations that actually give money to acquire open space that we could be looking at as well. I am going to be repeating myself throughout this presentation a bit because we really want to emphasize and break this down into some pretty specific pieces. The methods again are three fold, (1) we want to purchase or other protect and I talked about some of the examples of how we can protect what has been identified as high priority private lands within the conservation land system and then (2) conservation of existing public lands to conform with the goals of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and then additionally (3) conservation through land use and development planning where we can add more lands through those processes through development, again mitigation set asides, add new lands in the preserve through land lease and development. What I want to do here, again I am going to be repeating some of this but the different players in this planning process all have things to contribute and we are asking the different players whether they be public agencies or private land owners to be a part of the solution and so the federal contributions again rededicate their existing lands toward the goal of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and then add new lands to their existing federal lands, add more lands to additional high priority conservation land system lands to the preserve. Similarly with the County, it's a County plan so we are asking for a lot more contributions from Pima County. One is adopt the conservation land system to guide STCP land acquisitions. Land use regulations, protective management and biological monitoring again. We have talked in this Steering Committee and I think we even got close to a vote on adopting the Conservation Land System that map to be part of our Section 10 permit in the Conservation Plan and I would really like to ask the Steering Committee that when we feel ready, I would like to see us or hopefully we will feel ready to actually adopt the conservation land system to recommend to the County. And then federal lands, I'm sorry, I just want to mention before about federal lands that we have the federal agencies have signed on very early to this process that they are cooperating with the County a whole slew of federal agencies and so I hope that we can keep their feet to the fire to be part of this process on the federal lands and that includes the Forest Service, the Park Service, BLM and US Fish and Wildlife Service at the very least. More County contributions just as we asked the Feds, we want to rededicate and manage existing County lands within the CLS, lands such as the Tucson Mountain Park, Colossal Cave, Tortilita Mountain Park and any other lands that might be added to that to current parks or to create new county parks and all of these again we want to manage toward the goals of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Landowner contributions through the development process and these for the most part, when I say through the development process, landowner contributions are going to be accomplished when landowners come in with a request for a rezoning or other legislative acts by the County and that is when they will be asked to contribute to the preserve. Again we are asking for a site analysis set asides avoiding impacts to the highest biological resources and then mitigating for the impacts that will result from their development and there can also be of course voluntary, the landowners can voluntarily offer conservation on their land but I think we are going to be in going towards the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan we need to have the private landowners be involved, all of us need to be involved particularly with this in developing the details that we would like to see so we can all come to a become a part of the consensus solution to how we are going to be dealing with this. I think sometimes that seems like a difficult one but we've had a lot of conversations and I think we might be getting close but we all need to sit down and talk about this. Managing the preserve I have talked about some of this before. We need to have managing and monitoring plans for preserve lands that includes an adaptive management plan and again all the folks, the County, State and Federal agencies, of course we all hope that the State Land Department will sign on and be a part of this process, and we can have cooperative monitoring with all of these agencies and then we need to have reporting annually on the successors of the conservation plan or lack of on the implementation. . In a report that all of our groups had put together jointly that I handed out to everybody, we had a whole lot of possible funding sources for the implementation of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. We had done kind of a national survey of how other communities fund open space and we had a particular emphasis on funding communities like ourselves in the Southwest, and also emphasis on how other folks have funded habitat conservation plans in particular. I really hope that everybody has a chance to read that report because it has a lot of good information and we made a lot of recommendations. This is a really short list of what we think is really achievable first steps. Some of the other recommendations that we have we are going to all need to get together and agree on them because a lot of things we need to go to the State legislature and ask for their help and we are not going to be able to do that unless we all go together and it's difficult but these are the things we can pursue that are very achievable and we can if we all went together to the State we could get very creative like many other communities have done and in our presentation on funding mechanisms, we mentioned that most successful communities have used a variety of funding sources and did not just rely on one and that is what we would like to see here. I'm not going to read these because you can all read them but those are some of the short list. We are talking again separating the different entities for their contributions for funding the preserve. The County needs to provide assured funding source for the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan for monitoring adaptive management, compensation to land owners. In our review of other conservation plans, we have seen that there are actually some visionary plans out there and the vision has not been achieved and the plans have not been fully implemented because their funding source fell through or funding sources. And so, a big problem with the plans is that they haven't been funded or they have been underfunded and so we need to make sure that the County realizes and finds assured funding source that will be able to implement this fully. Another issue that we've seen that is common in the failure of other conservation plans is this issue right here of a contingency fund. The County, the Feds, all of us on the Steering Committee can do the best job that we can to identify what's going to be needed to be assembled and funded in a conservation plan but there are always going to be issues and we've seen this over and over again and conservations plans and there are things that are unforeseen and things that have changed and so in addition to laying out a balance sheet of how we think we can achieve it, we also think the county needs to establish a contingency fund for these kind of changed circumstances. We are also asking that the County fund independent periodic review of program success. We need to keep looking getting milestones looking at what has been achieved and if we are not doing o.k., we need to do something about it. Hopefully it will be successful but we want to see reviews on an on-going basis. Federal contributions we are asking the Feds to be involved and to contribute toward that contingency fund that I brought up fund management of the preserve, the same issue with underfunding the Feds are going to be part of the solution with adding lands to the preserve but they need to have funding for that. We've seen that with the latest Ironwood Forest National Monument. We added 129,000 acres of BLM land to the monument system and there is no funding there so what have we gained. We need to make sure that the Feds step up and fund the management of the preserve and also contribute funding to the other issues that I mentioned in the review of the program. I'm sorry that there was a slide that was out of order there and it's actually really, really big it's a whole page. It's not because there was something I was pulling out and it's more or less important, although it is important, the large regulation of conservation lands and that actually gets inserted here and I'm sorry that's a little out of order and that it is so big. Regulation of the conservation lands systems we put this up here to develop an overall environmentally sensitive lands ordinance but I want to emphasize that that's kind of a conceptual term that we came up with to try to address regulation but all of these issues that we are going need to be addressing will not necessarily fall under an ESLO. There are also other issues that ultimately need to be addressed in different places if we are going to be getting a Section 10 permit and our agreements with the Federal government and such there are a variety of ways this is going to be addressed but just for simplicity, I kind of put it under environmentally sensitive lands ordinance but the county is working on this but I think the Steering Committee needs to make recommendations, very specific recommendations, on an ordinance combining and strengthening existing County environmental ordinances into one big package and then of course there are going to be new elements that we are going to be adding to our ESLO or land use ordinance, whatever it is going to be, that are consistent with SPCP goals that we have not dealt with here in Pima County in the past because we didn't have the information that we have now on how to best preserve lands and so we want to add new elements and this will as we've been saying I think be an incentive for the development community that an ESLO in particular will provide a one stop shopping for landowners that are seeking to develop their property. Another element of the regulation for conservation land system that we've talked about a bit is establish mitigation and set aside standards and I have put that later on in my presentation that that's something that we really all need to develop together. O.K. That last one I should say was the extent of what we have put together as bit of the road map and now I would like to get into (I'm sorry, next slide again) and I'm actually going to be reading these because I want to make sure that everybody is clear, you have them there and you know how to read, but I want to go over all of these because we feel that we have agreement on these and it would be great to hear from you all afterwards if you think there are others that we have left out or if there are things that maybe we were mistaken and we don't have agreement on. These are what we took out of other presentations, we have the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan should provide for protection of species and habitats, that SPCP Development and Implementation should have broad participation and support from public and private stakeholders and all jurisdictions operating in Pima County. Next, a variety of incentives should be provided to help meet conservation goals, the burden of funding should be fairly distributed and a variety of sources should be identified and goal oriented management plans should be developed for land within the preserve. All development, again we've taken this and we agree with it, all development will comply with Endangered Species Act where applicable. Regulations should be as streamlined and user friendly as possible. Pima County should protect some high priority CLS lands through an open space bond and we think that should happen fairly quickly as part of this process. Economic analysis of regional impact and we believe if you've heard that we should look at the potential benefits as well as the potential costs and we need to do this as part of the SPCP. Have sufficient acreage for mitigation available to ensure concurrency of conservation so conservation and development can happen concurrently. This came up from the last presentation by Chris and Mike and I just want to reiterate that was I think a great presentation where I think it is really helping us to move forward. The SPCP should provide for anticipated growth in a way that increases overall quality of life for the general public. For example, implement policies that address affordable housing, access to recreation, cultural and historical preservation, attracting better jobs, etc. and that future land use patterns will be different from the past. And another issue that came us recently water will be a limiting factor for development in the region. These are again comparing key concepts. We are not saying we necessarily disagree with these, as a matter of fact, I don't think we do disagree with any of them. Some of them are issues that have come up that we either need more clarification on from the folks that have presented them or we really need like I said before, we need to sit down and develop the details of these fairly specifically. First, the discussion of the number of species to be covered. Second, work with stakeholders on defining fair compensation and regulation. Work with stakeholders on detailing procedure for mitigation. Identifying incentives for conservation, again being such as the transfer of development, tax incentives for conservation. We've talked about a tool box of incentives that we need to develop and we need to do that together. Again, these are things that we are going to be needing to talk to the State legislature about. Develop goal oriented adaptive management plan. That has come up on a number of occasions and in talking with some of the ranchers, I think we need to sit down together and really put the details to that one. More discussion is needed on a couple of issues identify and promote other funding mechanisms to equitably and adequately provide for incentives. Simple acquisitions, management and monitoring and unforeseen circumstances are things that I have touched on earlier. Identify priority issues related to the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Some of the issues that we talked about before and we need to collaborate to develop specific strategies that address these concerns without undermining the biological goals of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Like Alan brought up earlier, we need to be moving forward on these issues together and not do some of the initiatives to the detriment of others. We really tried to outline the necessary steps to gain us a Section 10 permit through the Endangered Species Act and also look at the big picture to enhance the quality of life for all residents of Pima County and we also tried to go through a lot of these issues that we've seen and tried to compare and contract and hopefully put aside many of these issues that we agree upon so we can really focus on those issues that we need to develop together and I think that is what we should be focusing on. So, I thank you very much for the time and what I would like to do, like I said earlier, if people do have comments or questions, I was hoping to get a representative from the other three organizationsbeside the coalition.
Question: We ought to approach this thing kind of in a two phased approach. One is let's focus on what we absolutely have to do and what we absolutely can afford and if we can afford more and we can do more let's go. So I would be one person who doesn't agree with that concept just the way you stated it.
Carolyn: My only response is that we feel strongly that we can achieve more than a minimal compliance. We've seen plans that have achieved minimal compliance. They've actually not achieved goals of the Endangered Species Act. We feel that if we can get creative, we can put together a plan that does a lot more than minimal compliance and is not such a pie in the sky, it's not going to cost that much more. We can do things right and we can, this community can afford them. I believe that and I don't think we should limit ourselves.
Question: Do all the lands within the CLS need to have site analysis or just the ones that are going to be developed?
Rob: Just the ones that are going to be developed.
Question: Does the preserve keep getting larger because on several slides you showed how we need to add to the preserve so that one never knows how large the preserve will be or eventually all of CLS can become a preserve then?
Carolyn: Maybe I wasn't clear but currently we have not identified a preserve. We are making a distinction between the conservation land system, much of that is going to be developed and some of that we hope to go through a process and decide what needs to be acquired that will get us a Section 10 permit that will achieve the goals of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Many of those lands will be most likely in my assumption will be inside the biological core important riparian areas, possibly recovery management areas and be adjacent to currently protected land but like I said at the beginning, I don't think that we are going to be seeing the entire conservation land system. It's pretty big to be that we need to acquire all that and protect it. We, the coalition anyway, has already gone before the Board of Supervisors and supported large developments within the biological core and I am sure that that will continue happening and I'm sure we will support some more of it. We see it as a subset of the conservation land system. There's nothing now, we're starting from scratch.
Question: In comparing key concepts, when you say one of the ways to fund is bond, the County may put it forth, but the bonding issue may fail.
Luther: We don't know whether a bond is going to pass in an election. There's that point and then the second point is if the sales tax is enacted it can come and go depending on the political winds of change. Of course you have to go to the voters and have them approve it and it would have to be acceptable to the voters. I think you are absolutely right about a sales tax. There is a variety of mechanisms for funding conservation. The best mechanisms have a variety of approaches. In this state we have a hard time with certain approaches. A bond measure is the most reliable. Sales tax is something that ought to certainly be considered but it is more volatile that something that is backed by the property tax. There are pros and cons of all of them. Personally I like the idea of a bond measure because it is something the voters have always been more comfortable with as a general policy.
Question: Could you please go over rezoning and what other legislative acts you were referring to in your presentation?
Carolyn: We feel that if a development, if a landowner needs, talking about legislative acts, there are other issues besides just rezoning, things like special or conditional use permits, time extensions for rezonings, things that a landowner needs to get dispensation from the actual Board of Supervisors that those need to be looked at and dealt with in terms of the conservation plan. The point is that rezonings aren't the only things that we need to look at when we are asking for all these issues through the development planning. There are a lot of other acts or requests I should say that need to be approved by the Board of Supervisors. Those were a couple of examples.
Question: On the issue of compensation, where all economic uses have been extinguished; is that taking the point that if you have a diminution or reduction in value that's not a compensatable (sic) event?
Panel Members: It's really not going to be any of us can sit here and say when compensation is required. That's something that the Courts are deciding and we'll be following that.
Carolyn: I guess my additional response to that would be that we feel we put that on the side because I think we all agree on that and that's what we want, it's the others, if we are talking about other levels of what exactly is diminished property rights and things like that, that needs to be part of the discussion that we need to come to agreement on. We strongly feel what we put up there on the slide, is open to discussion.
Question: When we talk about areas of agreement; I would think that it would be extremely helpful if we could get comments by the other stakeholders' groups and if there is uniformity that these in fact are areas of agreement and I would think it will take some massaging of the words but I think you have provided something that can certainly be worked on by the other stakeholders groups. I think we now are at a point where we can begin to hear from the other stakeholders groups and to make a final decision on areas of agreement and then focus on the discussion areas. Do you envision this Steering Committee dealing with state and federal representatives to be able to make informed recommendations to the county? As for example, we have now identified who the two Congressmen are going to be from Pima County, one of whom has a great deal of knowledge about conservation generally and the other of whom has a great deal of knowledge about the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Might it help in making good recommendations in your mind to the County that we begin consulting with Kolby and Grijalva?
Carolyn: Yes, and that's a serious yes. On the issue of the areas of agreement, our vision for putting those together was that I would like to see if we do have areas of agreement that everybody had said yes that we don't have to continue to discuss them, because I feel that we have been discussing a lot of things, people have been saying things in a different way than other stakeholders but we've actually been agreeing and I don't think we need to be doing that anymore. So I was hoping that what we put together where we could direct our energies is to be looking at the areas that we still need more discussion on, that we might not agree right off the bat and what we have discussed and what we would like to do is to begin contacting folks and start sitting down with people a few at a time or whatever people have time for and let's start talking about these issues and see where we can get because we've had presentations from the development community, from the conservation community, the Altar Valley Ranchers, the Ironwood Alliance and some individuals and there's a lot on the table right now and I think we are ready to start getting into the details and that's what I'm suggesting we do both inside the Steering Committee and outside and I would encourage anybody to call us as well if you would like to sit down and talk about this.
Question: Regarding old neighborhoods that are decayed, that were affordable housing when they were in good shape and can and maybe should be affordable housing again. Rehabilitation, maintenance those kinds of concepts. Do you believe that the planning for that kind of redevelopment belongs in our plan and if so, how do we get it in there?
Luther: I don't have a strong view whether it needs to be in this plan or dealt with in a collateral way along the same path but it certainly is something that should be dealt with. I wish Chris Sheafe were here because his presentation talked about the importance of figuring out how we are going to accommodate the 420,000 people or whatever that number is that will arrive in the plan's lifetime and certainly through things like Rio Nuevo and other efforts to promote more livable communities were development already exists and to redevelop what it feels is essential to making this work. I don't know that we want to try to load that in to this plan, per se, but I think we certainly need to, as conservation advocates and everyone else, we need to embrace that as part of an effort to protect endangered species in the County. It may be overly burdensome to make it part of this plan but it needs to be part of the overall program.
Question: The County is already implementing this CLS so isn't that number 3, your last block a moot point?
Carolyn: Through the comprehensive plan they have developed urban development guidelines, regional plan policies, things like that. However, until those could be revisited by this group, we could have different recommendations that those get stronger or change or whatever but until that becomes codified in a variety of ways in a Section 10 permit, then it really hasn't done anything to further the goals of getting that habitat conservation permit.
Question: Are you proposing that we have an ordinance that's even more restrictive than the upper overlay zoning ordinance which requires 300 foot setbacks and 50% open space already?
Carolyn: Well first let me give you the background. There are other communities that have done habitat conservation plans that have combined a kind of super ordinance research protection ordinance or conservation environmentally sensitive lands ordinance and there is a process going on with a committee that I think Christina talked about that her and Alan and Lori and some a couple others are on right now and the County is going through that process to have an environmentally sensitive land ordinance. I am not suggesting that every one of them needs to be different or strengthened but we have had some problems in the past with Hillside Development Overlay, there's some changes perhaps to the riparian overlay zone, whether or not the buffer ordinance in particular needs to be different, I don't know. I mean we were involved in the last round of the strengthening of the buffer overlay zone ordinance and I think it is a good ordinance. I don't know if it could be better or not and I am not involved in that process but I am suggesting that what's the combination we can have one ordinance where they are all fitting together so that it kicks in at the same level for parcels and slopes or whatever and also we have that one stop shopping and I think there is definitely room for strengthening the ordinances. But like I said I am not sure about the buffer particular. I don't know if anybody else has any particular thoughts.
Question: Federal lands have to conform with Endangered Species Act. The only reason we will be asking them if we take a conservation land system that doesn't limit itself to endangered species, we've got 40 other species, so they may not be able to adhere to our requests, other than for endangered species and if we hinge our plan on them conforming to other species, they may not have the authority to conform with, we might fall flat. And so a word of caution, we may not want to hinge our plan on them federal lands conforming when they may not have the authority or the discretion to make those conformances and can we keep them out of the mix beyond endangered species which they have to conform to anyway.
Rob: Its given the proportion of federal land in the conservation land system, we thought it was necessary just to see where there was conservation that could be accomplished through the federal lands. We realize that they don't have an obligation but they did sign an agreement with the County that they would participate in this process and so the potential remains that there are things that could be done. We put in there to explore that potential.
Panel Member: Now, a park superintendent may last a tenure of a couple of years, forest supervisor may be around that time too and so the agreements that they make with the county may not last any longer than their tenure and so I think the Fish and Wildlife Service will recognize that when we go up for a Section 10 that relies on a lot of federal discretionary decisions beyond the Endangered Species Act and maybe we can just use the federal contribution to the endangered species part of it and not to the other sensitive species that contributed to the conservation land system.
Sherry Barrett of the Fish and Wildlife Service: I can provide some clarification on this issue. The permit to not rely on federal funding for the mitigation component. O.K. So what you need to consider is if the federal agencies are involved, they are in a partnership mode but their mitigation will not able to be their contributions cannot be used as part of the mitigation for the NSL take permit that the county would apply for so Mitch is correct that it would be partnership we can do MOUs with those different federal agencies for their contributions for management, maybe even acquisition of additional lands and if they acquire lands through the Land and Water Conservation Fund that land can also not be used for mitigation for the county's permit.
Carolyn: That's a little bit of a different issue and we realize that, but I want to add to what Rob said and remind folks that a variety of federal agencies signed on an agreement with county early on and it's not, I don't want it to be portrayed that the federal agencies have to follow along with whatever the county does. I am hoping and I think it is incumbent on the County to continue to work together and have those federal agencies help develop the plan and be part of it. Another issue would be to say that the federal agencies, the land managers, are implementing the goals of the STCP does not mean that we are going to have uniform management on all different lands. You look at some of the other plans where different municipalities are all signed on to the general goals of the plan and they all implement it differently, so those agencies, the folks that work for those agencies, will know what they will be able to accomplish and what they need to accomplish for other species outside. I don't want to have the impression that it's a uniform application of the same exact protection for the same amount of species. And then lastly when I was comparing it to the municipalities that there should be a federal agency stay on that they would be part of some solid agreements that they are signing just like the county that if the leadership changes then we would actually have to open up the plan and amend it if something changes, just like the future Board of Supervisors would be tied to this unless they would want to open up the whole plan by doing something differently so with agreements I think a lot of this can be accomplished and what you are talking about can be dealt with.
Question: Can you please explain to me what you mean exactly by your statement on the regulation of the CLS that you would provide one stop shopping for landowners seeking to develop property. Could you expand on that a little bit please?
Carolyn: Simply that putting together all the ordinances into one ordinance. Right now property owners need to be dealing with a variety of environmental ordinances that don't always match up and like Nancy said they might not be so effective. If you are in an area that's in an buffer zone and its effective by the Hillside development zone ordinance there might be some conflicts there that we think we can iron out by putting them together and doing a realistic look at how we can streamline the whole development process by having one ordinance. I don't know how else really to say it but that's the vision that we have and what the county committee is working towards now and has been effective in other communities that have put together a broad ordinance.
Question: Can we ask for an opinion from the county attorney as to whether or not the county has authority to bind future boards of supervisors to the extent that we need to address a time period that will far exceed the term of the current board of supervisors?
David: Why don't we set that up as an issue for a future agenda item in the near term and maybe we can ask someone from the county attorney's office to come and, you know, tell him what we are specifically looking for but agendize it and have them come and make a presentation.
Questions from the Public:
Question: Weren't you scheduled on the Agenda to address affordable housing?
Carolyn: The coalition was on the agenda prior to this agenda item to deal with in conjunction with Alan's presentation, also a presentation on affordable housing. We had asked the Steering Committee to let us give that presentation at the next study session so we could focus on this presentation tonight and we will be doing that and we will have information available on the research that we have done.
Question: Were you planning on making an additional presentation on that and does the coalition have a paper or some kind of analysis of the economic impacts from your prospective.
Carolyn: The coalition also released a report that we gave a presentation on at a Steering Committee meeting 6 or 8 weeks ago on the potential economic benefits of conservation, protecting natural resources in the Sonoran Desert. I don't know if you got a copy of that but I will certainly, I brought one, I've got extra copies whoever didn't get one and I will give you one this evening. Like we said in our presentation here tonight, we do believe that an economic analysis needs to be done for the Section 10 permit and it needs to look at the economic cost and benefits of conservation and I think we've made that point consistently over the last couple of years.
Question: What is the quality of life?
Carolyn: We truly believe the quality of life can be enhanced by the conservation plan and we hope to see that in our deliberations and I guess that's an answer that will need to come later if there are conflicting, if that does not happen but I truly don't believe it will. But like I said, that's not what we are doing with this presentation. We did not pretend to define the quality of life and what exactly that means. But, I think it is a question that we all need to talk about in the Steering Committee. That's why there were so many issues there about affordable housing, cultural and historical preservation, access to recreation, other things that are either part an element of the conservation plan outside the biological resources or they are connected with what we are trying to do and I would like to see us address that and answer that question. I don't feel that we need to be answering it ourselves right now.
Next Steps Moving beyond receiving information to developing specific recommendations:
David presented a brief overview of the steps the Steering Committee has taken since September:
* Steering Committee has heard from all stakeholder groups and other sources that have provide information.
* The Steering Committee is starting to hear some specific recommendations; so differences have got to be reconciled, action items have to be presented to the full Steering Committee, so they can take some up or down action on them.· The Steering Committee needs to ensure that action is taken at meetings. The Ad Hoc subcommittee has discussed this, there's a finite number of meetings between now and end of March, so the Steering Committee needs to start focusing on making the meetings action oriented to where specific proposals from various stakeholders can be considered and acted upon. Perhaps form a drafting group to identify the areas of agreement, present that to the Steering Committee and then the Steering Committee can react to it. Then that same group can identify areas of disagreement, have the various points of view articulated and develop a plan to reconcile those.
Gayle Hartman made the following motion:
1. We the Steering Committee authorize David to begin writing the background portion of the Plan, something he has already agreed to do.
2. We authorize that small stakeholder meetings occur outside of the Steering Committee, that they begin immediately to clarify points of agreement and disagreement and flesh out the details of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.
3. By our first meeting in January the results of these informal meetings be brought to the full Steering Committee for refinement and decisions.
Discussion:
· While some members were not sure that the drafting group could do its work within this time line, other members were of the opinion that without knowing if the County could afford the plan, who pays for the plan, and at what phase taxpayers have to pay for the plan, that any formulation or modification of the plan would be impossible.
· Other Steering Committee members stated that the Steering Committee needed to "get down to what the real charge is here, that is to develop and alternative for the Habitat Conservation Plan, which is what we need to do to get a Section 10 permit.The cost of the SDCP, the bigger vision of the SDCP, is what we are going to really grapple with, but we are sitting here trying to talk about it as if it were part of our consideration right now and I want to remind us that Sharon Bronson and others have said that our business here is to do an alternative to the Habitat Conservation Plan and all these other things that we are talking about are terrific and I certainly want to be in the middle of all of them but if we want to get on with this practice, let's get back to the Habitat Conservation Plan get that solved and then get on to the next piece."
· Some members voiced that there were a few points of agreement and a few points of near agreement that could be written up. These members felt that they did not want further exploration of these areas, but to write a first a draft, not a final draft, but to bring something in writing to the Steering Committee, for the Steering Committee to discuss and either pass or send back for edits, corrections or additions.
Motion passed.
Meeting with legislators and other policy makers:
Pursuant to the Ad Hoc's Committee's directions, David drafted and distributed a discussion paper with respect to a meeting with policy makers. It had been previously suggested, that the Steering Committee meet with state legislators and other key policy makers, city council members, and policy makers. There was discussion about meeting with them after the election; the next opportunity to do that being the December 7th meeting. Some of the proponents of the meeting with legislators wanted to elaborate on this. Most opted to forego meeting with the elected officials on December 7th.
· Some members voiced that this meeting should be postponed until the Spring when the Steering Committee would have some agreement regarding what the Steering Committee needs from the legislators. They felt it was premature to meet with them unless the Steering Committee had something to offer them in the form of a plan. They also felt the Steering Committee should make this meeting as meaningful as possible; that the Steering Committee is not ready to give the legislature and elected officials a statement of policy, nor the areas of agreement because the Steering Committee will not vote on this item until January. These Steering Committee members wanted to agendize issues that the Steering Committee would ask the legislature to deal with such as broadening the authority of the county to deal with purchase of development rights.
* Other members stated that there was some agreement, in certain segments on certain issues. They voiced that since the legislative session is a very short one, the Steering Committee will have lost its opportunity to meet with the legislature for another year if they do not meet with them before they go into session.
Proposed Steering Committee Schedule Changes:
Although the initial motion was to have the legislature and elected officials attend the December 7th meeting, the Steering Committee began to discuss an additional meeting or study session in December. Several dates were mentioned.
· Ernie Cohen proposed converting the November 16th study session to a meeting.
· Gerald Juliani proposed Wednesday, December 11th as a meeting.
· Trevor Hare proposed to keep the Saturday, November 16th a study session and we would have the legislative briefing on that day.
Luther Propst made the following motion:
Wednesday, December 11th to be a study session to meet with the legislators and other policy makers. Keep November 16th as a study session. Use the December 7th meeting to finalize the agenda for the December 11th study session.
Motion passed.
Call to the Public: None.
New Business:
Executive Session Role of Facilitator
The Steering Committee met in Executive Session.
Meeting Adjourned 9:00pm