SDCP - Steering Committee Meeting Notes January 8, 2003

DRAFT

SDCP - Steering Committee
Pima County Public Works Bldg. Rm 'C'
6:00pm to 9:00pm
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Meeting Notes

Participants: Maeveen Beham, David Steele. See attached sign in sheet.

Documents made available to the Steering Committee members at the meeting:
* Agendas
* Newspaper Article by Steering Committee members Luther Propst and Chris Sheafe.
* Draft Statements of General Agreement
* Developing the Habitat Conservation Plan
* Habitat Conservation Plan Outline
* Scope of Work
* Letters to the Board of Supervisors from Cindy Coping and Jonathan DuHamel
* CD's Numbered 15 and 16 Containing SDCP Reports

Meeting Commenced at 6:00pm
Meeting commenced with 28 Steering Committee members and 5 members of the general public. By 7:15 there were 42 Steering Committee members and 13 members of the general public. David Steele opened by introducing himself, reviewing the ground rules and reviewing the agenda.

Logistics for the next Study Session:
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Pima County Public Works Bldg. Rm. 'C'
201 N. Stone

Logistics for the next Ad-Hoc Subcommittee meeting:
Monday, January 13, 2003
3:00pm to 5:00 pm
Arizona Builders' Alliance
1661 N. Swan Road
Suite 144

Administrative Matters:
Information distribution
Many Steering Committee members have requested to receive meeting materials via email. As a result, Steering Committee members may opt to have meeting materials emailed to them or receive hard copies via US mail. Sign-up sheets will be available at the next meeting.

GIS Information:
Mo and John in our office have been able to create kind of a stand-alone program that'll enable you to go into, focus in on specific area and be able to show map layers or take map layers off. This is a program that enables us at these meetings or on your own to look at these layers and look at actually where the proposed conservation land system and the various designations of the conservation land system are impacting specific areas on the map.

Old Business:
Approve meeting notes from December 7th meeting:
No objections, meeting notes approved.

Review and Approve Quarterly Reports, 3rd and 4th Quarters:
* Lucy Vitale wants the Ad-Hoc meetings to be noted and counted. David noted that the change had been done, but not the copy he had.

* Lisa Stage noted the misspelling of Maeveen Behan's name.
* Lucy Vitale wants to be addressed by both her first and last name.

Approved with the noted changes.

Follow-up from the Hartmann Motion:
Authorize David Steele to begin writing the background portion of the plan; he's agreed to do. We authorized that small stakeholder meetings occur outside of the Steering Committee, that they begin immediately to clarify points of agreement and disagreement and flesh out details. And by our first meeting in January, today, the results of these informal meetings be brought to the full Steering Committee for refinement and decisions

Status of Stakeholder discussions:
* Luther Propst and Chris Sheafe wrote a dialogue that was printed in the Arizona Daily Star. Copies of the article were mailed to the Steering Committee and available at the meeting. There were no questions at this meeting regarding this article.
* Mike Zimet and Bruce Gungle were going to present their discussion paper at this meeting, this item was deferred to a future meeting.
* Carolyn Campbell, Rob Marshall and David Goldstein met for an initial discussion and were planning on having a few more and perhaps broadening the group with a couple other members and talking about the issues.
* The conservation stakeholder group met with property rights stakeholder group and developers stakeholder group. They walked away with homework and they will be meeting next week where hopefully people will bring their homework back and they will move forward.

Review Draft of Steering Committee Report:
* David will have a preliminary draft that he will present at the January 22nd meeting. This issue was deferred until then.

Call to the Public: None.

Meeting with Legislators and other Policy makers
Due to the many time constraints and conflicts with the Steering Committee and legislators, David suggested that the Steering defer the face-to-face until after the recommendations. Come to agreement on the issues on which a great deal of work has already been done and send that in letter on behalf of the Steering Committee to the Board of Supervisors asking them to include that in their legislative agenda.

Approve agenda/date:
David put together an agenda based upon the discussions the Steering Committee had in November. The proposed agenda consists of introductory comments, overview and background of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, stakeholder views, business and development interests, environmental and neighborhood interests, and ranching interests, the three broader categories would do the presentations, then a Q & A with a larger panel. There would be a presentation of issues, if the Steering Committee were able to decide on specific issues to present to the legislators. Followed by an additional question and answer period, a call to the public, then an adjournment, then an opportunity for informal discussion.
· Some members requested a format so that the meeting moved at a more swift and organized pace.
· Other members recommended fixed time slots so that there would be sufficient time allotted for questions and answers.

Issues to raise with Legislators
The Steering Committee discussed and voted on the approved language of each issue. The presentation was on David's laptop and he was making changes as the Steering Committee suggested them.

Heritage Fund-Lisa Stage:
Motion: Approve language.

Despite the current budget crisis, the parks and preserves that protect our unique natural cultural heritage still require management and federal law regarding the protection of endangered species and protection of endangered species must still be observed. We therefore respectfully request the legislature abide by the will of the voters when it established the Heritage Fund in 1990, A.R.S. 5-22, and maintain the Heritage Fund as dedicated funding for the purposes for which it was established.

Motion Passed.

Arizona Preserve Initative-Gayle Hartmann
Motion: Approve language.

The Steering Committee recommends that legislators work with the state land department so that Arizona Preserve Initiative funds conservation efforts in Pima County.

Motion Passed.

Transfer of Development Rights-Christine McVie:
Motion: Approve language.

The legislation should also permit transfer of development rights across jurisdictional boundaries mutually acceptable to the respective jurisdictions.

Motion Passed.

Conservation Easements-Debbie Hecht:
Motion: Approve language.

The Steering Committee supports legislation for clear and simple guidelines that gives incentives to property owners who want to use conservation easements to protect and preserve their properties. These incentives could include reductions in the property taxes. Any law should be consistent with the federal tax guidelines for conservation easements. These incentives should include a method to reduce their property tax rate.

Motion Passed.

Lottery-Doug McVie:
Motion: Approve language.

Recommends that legislation be sought to establish county-by-county lotteries, the proceeds for which will be spent in the county in which the tickets are sold. 50% of it will go to fund Arizona Preserve Initiatives in the respective county. Other revenues generated by these games would go for the purchase of development rights Heritage Fund and education.

Motion Passed.

Private Property Rights-Michael Zimet:
At the December 11th meeting Michael Zimet and Bruce Gungle had agreed to meet with David and write a discussion paper on areas of agreement regarding property rights within the context of the SDCP. This item was deferred to the January 22nd meeting.

Call to the Public: None

New Business:
Steering Committee Draft Statement of Agreement:
The Issues Matrix was created in order to identify the areas of agreement between the various stakeholder groups within the Steering Committee. David wrote a list of the areas of agreement drawing from the Issues Matrix and made changes as the Steering Committee dictated the changes in wording.
* The Steering Committee went item by item making corrections, additions and deletions until general consensus was reached by item.
* The wording of the items would be changed and presented for review by the Steering Committee at the January 22nd meeting.
* The item regarding funding came under question and the wording was put to vote.

Motion: All those in favor of adding the last sentence to that bullet which says: We request that the Board of Supervisors authorize a bond election for 2003.

Motion Passed.
Of the 40 members present there were 33 yes votes, 5 no votes and two members that did not vote.

Listing Key Steering Committee Decisions, Pima County:
Maeveen: I think I have 8 handouts for you today, and two of them are disks and so 11 new studies. One of them is an update of the list of studies, and I think the two that I would hope you would read in particular is riparian priorities, if you take a look at that because I think you'll see the wish list of some of the science community and county staff for what might be included in MSCP. Some of the least expensive highest biological value land. And then you'll see study 138, multi-species plan comparison, this is a hard copy of it. Paul Former wrote this and he wanted to give his insights as the author of some of the biggest plans, how they compare and how Pima County compares to them. And so you have that on disk too. That's a real thoughtful piece. I also brought the scope of work for the economic study for you, and if you turn to the last page, you can see the timeline for it. Twelve weeks. What you'll see from the economic consultant, when you'll see it by the scope of work timeline. In 6 weeks they'll have sort of the original mapping and the background work done, and they want to come and talk to you on February 1st, describe the project, and then come back within 2 weeks and show you the first deliverables. And at the same time, they're getting together program costs, almost a separate study, and funding options, another separate study, and that will all be delivered to you, three major deliverables in 12 weeks. So pretty fast timeline, but you'll see the pieces of it all along. Couple weeks ago, or maybe even a couple months ago I was here and a question came up about responses that I had written to Jonathan and Cindy long ago. These are old pieces of mail. But I read them directly back to them. They wrote and copied a lot of people, out of just, I don't know, politeness, I just wrote back to them, but there was a request from the committee that I distribute that to everyone, so you'll see those. And then I have my final two handouts are 2 summary documents and it's, I guess, the subject today that I'm here to talk about. When I spoke last time, I said I thought you might be making things a little too hard for yourself by not knowing what goes into a Section 10 permit application. So these 2 documents are the finest summary I could find. I thought, if I write something down, then you're going to worry about it and struggle with that. So instead I just go to the source, and this first document that says, "Habitat Conservation Plan Outline", I got this from a training manual that Fish & Wildlife uses in their own national training for Fish & Wildlife employees. They, I think once a year, Sherry, I'm not sure what it is, but they train people to go work with people like us to create HCP's. And in that document there's a summary, an outline of how to create a Habitat Conservation Plan. And I read through this and it has all the parts and you can almost go through this and see what questions need to be answered, and I thought I would go through some of this and tell you what we at the county would really like to hear from the community. So that's one document I brought. Then the very last one is some excerpts from the Habitat Conservation Plan handbook, Fish & Wildlife, that just gives greater explanation. So if you want to take up any of these topics as a Steering Committee and give your recommendation on them, here's more background to figure out how to think about that and what Fish & Wildlife says about it. So that's what I brought you, today's reading. And I'm going to work from this document that says "Habitat Conservation Plan Outline" and just to show you. If you read any of the major regional HCP's, they really boil down to this. This is the table of contents. And you lose sight of this because sometimes they go on for 400 pages on one of the topics, but this is what it boils down to. I thought I would go through and say, here's the part that really needs the community to weigh in, and here's the part that's just a set of facts that get plugged in. And see if that leaves you with any more clarification about how to organize your discussions from her. The first section, "Overview and Background", they recommend that you define, as author of an MSCP, what the terms should be. We've suggested 20 years, following EPA's letter to us, EPA thinks we can't predict growth impacts past 20 years, and so they're recommending a 20 year permit. Twenty years is short, that's very short, and so if you spend 5 years planning for a 20 year permit, some people would think that was a big investment. I know most regional HCP's spend 10 years planning and then they want a permit that lasts 30, 50, 100 years. So 20 years is short, and that's I think a discussion that we could value your opinion about that. So that's what you generally find in the overview background section. We'll move down to 1.3, "Plan Area", "identify the boundaries covered by the plan". We've never talked about western Pima County but we have all the data, we have everything that we need to include western Pima County and we can do that. So it's a recommendation we'd like, what you want the boundaries of the plan area to be, eastern Pima County, western Pima County, and when you read the HCP handbook you'll see they say if you're doing a regional planning your county usually just use the county line. But it's a discussion point. One point four (1.4), "Species to be Covered by the Permit". And this is a live topic in the Steering Committee. Do you want listed species only? Do you want the priority vulnerable species? How do you want to cast that? I would add that there's a section I'll call your attention to in the larger handout that describes basing your take permit on habitat and not on species. And that, you can do that or you can do a hybrid, part species, part habitat. And there's a benefit to doing that way which you might want to discuss as part of filling in the blank on section 1.4. If you go to the next page, "Environmental Setting Biological Resources". This is really for the science team. Climate, topology, geology, vegetation, wildlife. Two point oh (2.0). And so you see these sections and MSCP's, it's really pretty rote what goes in there particular to the area and we can fill that in from the technical side. Three point oh (3.0), "Project Description", this is all yours. And if you turn to the next page, "The Activities to be Covered by the Permit". What do you want covered? Do you want county projects, permitting programs? What do you want the scope of the permit to be? What is not described in the permit is not covered. If you look at Clark County's MSCP, they have a long, long list of every department in Clark County government that's covered, every project, it's very specific. And so that's a decision point and a recommendation that we'd like from the Steering Committee. Four point one (4.1), "Potential Biological Impacts", once you've answered some of these earlier questions you can get, you can fit the science that's been gathered to complete this section. But I wanted to call your attention to 4.1.1, "Anticipated take, wildlife species". And it goes along with what I was saying earlier. The description here is, "Quantify the level of take anticipated for each covered species. Take could be expressed as a number of individual animals or habitat acres." When people do small HCP's, there's real species specifics. So if you look at the Habitat Conservation Plan for one development project, they'll count the number of owls, they'll count the number of pineapple cactus. Now when you move from 10 acres to two and a half million, you're not going to be able to do that kind of count. And I guess what I'm suggesting is, we have this quantified in terms of habitat. That's really the direction of the science team; quantify the level of take anticipated for covered species. It says, "Take could be expressed as a number of individual animals, as habitat acres or other appropriate measures". So there's different ways to express take. Here's my understanding of it, and maybe Sherry can weigh in a little bit. But we've talked about this among ourselves and I've always worried about having a list of 55 species and having all those covered. And people will debate how much that you know about each one of them and whether you know enough. And then you get your permit in the end and then something completely off the list becomes endangered. And everyone feels betrayed, it happened in San Diego, because you focused on these 55 and then some butterfly shows up and all bets are off for the MSCP and you're stuck with the single species listing again. I have always thought that one of the ways to avoid that dilemma was to have a hybrid approach where you talk about species, you covered your compliance issues, you dealt with the ones that are difficult issues in the community for us, pygmy owl, pineapple cactus. And then you capture so much habitat with, another part of the permit is described in terms of habitat so that it's almost like a trapdoor. The habitat covers more than the individual species you've listed. And so if you cover a sufficient amount of all the different types of habitat and something, number 56, number 57, right, something you never thought of as listed, you can look to the habitat aspect of your MSCP and find, I hope, that you're covered. So I think that's the art of drafting the MSCP, that we anticipate that we don't know everything today and that there's ways within the way the Fish & Wildlife can structure a permit that will cover us. So we're not just set up for some disappointment like I think other communities have experienced. That's what I'm getting at, that's what I'm getting at. And I know that Fish & Wildlife will say, we have to monitor in terms of individual species, but you can cast your permit in terms of habitat. So I think to deal with both at the same time might be helpful. Now I'm going to let Sherry talk.

Sherry Barrette, US Fish and Wildlife: Just to clarify. When we do the permit, we do have to list all the species that are covered on the permit, so it's not an open-ended thing. But what Maeveen said is correct that if another species is listed that we didn't consider, we would look first to what efforts have already been done and if there is substantial amount of conservation in particular for that species already being accommodated, we can amend the permit, and that's the key step. Because amendment still requires additional, an application and going through the NEPA(?) process and everything to make sure that it's fully assessed. So what we plan at the landscape level, look at habitat. In the end we still analyze at the species level to make sure everybody's covered. Now those can be groups of species even in the monitoring, there can be some species simply on a habitat basis. Some species will need to be monitored on an individual basis, but we can look at it from the habitat perspective in that regard.

Maeveen: All right, and in the larger document I gave you, there's a description of the different burden that attaches to types of amendments. And I would want to be very cognizant of that as we finalize our MSCP and implementing agreement so that we have built in to the agreement the most streamlined version of amendment possible. And that's what I'm after. That's why I keep suggesting it's the habitat also, and not to lose sight of that. I haven't seen, frankly I haven't seen a lot of habitat based conservation plans. San Diego I think kind of gave lip service to that, but I believe we could develop something that would be a little bit smarter than HCP's that have gone before. So that's what I'm after with that suggestion. Then on section 5, "Conservation Strategy: Measures to Minimize and Mitigate Take", there's two discussion points here. One has to do with avoiding and minimizing. This is program suggestions and the programs will have a price tag attached to them. And we would love to hear from you, you don't want to see or you do want to see education programs, more or less surveys, relocation, timing restrictions, prohibition on ??, this kind of think, these program aspects. And that gets into a level of detail that might bother some county staff but it doesn't bother me because I would like for you to have thought about this and also considered that if the county's going to take on a new program, there's a cost attached to it and we should talk about that up front. So that's what I see in 5.1. I just don't want anyone to be surprised. And I tell you what happens is every time the county makes a decision to open up a conservation bank or buy a ranch or something like that, the cost falls on a county department and so people don't talk about that or they don't realize what that is necessarily at the time of the decision, but that's something I would like to talk about up front as we discuss these program elements. Five point two (5.2), "Measures to Mitigate Unavoidable Impact", so this has more to do with development. Do you want the MSCP to take the shape of a reserve, a habitat bank, you know, like we see now with the county has a bank, Altar Valley now has a bank. Do you want to set up a lot of little banks and do it that way or do you want to take a broader approach, enhancement. So there's options there. Then 6, "Funding". There's a whole discussion to be had there and I just want to emphasize what it says in this document, "note that funding must be guaranteed". And there's different ways to guarantee funding as part of an MSCP. One is to have the mitigation take place before the impact. That's the developer's least favorite or the project proponents, the public entity's least favorite because you have to achieve the conservation goal before you get to go forward, so there's the bottleneck there. And that has happened in some projects. Do you want to phase it in so there's some goes forward or they go forward together, the conservation commitment and the impact? I can tell you that's the way Clark County's designed. The incentives are aligned where there's an impact fee attached to conversion of acres and so there's the only impediment on development is the $550 impact fee but that has been deemed to be sufficient to achieve what they want in conservation. So that the incentives are aligned.

Question: If we're going to do an economic analysis, why should any of these things come as a surprise? Why aren't they all in the economic appraisal of what the cost is for the MSCP?
Maeveen: And they are. All I'm suggesting is that when you make your preferred recommendation, this is a decision point. It would be nice if you made a recommendation and here are some of the ways different jurisdictions have decided. Some have decided, if I can finish, some have decided you pay for the conservation up front, some have decided you pay for it along the way, and some have decided don't put the cost on the development community, just generalize the cost to the community, float a bond, or they suggest have an endowment or a trust fund. Those are just different mechanisms. If you go to the next page, "A Plan Implementation", I've heard that people want to have a discussion about what is your future. Do you become an oversight committee? Do you become an implementation group? Do you forget this forever? And that's really, within the outline, here's a suggestion about how to talk about that in the place that is normal to see this in MSCP's. So what kind of public participation and oversight should the conservation program have in the future. And that's really your recommendation. There's been no recommendation from the county on that, we're waiting to hear from you as to what you want.
Unforeseen Circumstances", I wanted to emphasize this because there's already been a disagreement in the community about what people call unforeseen circumstances or "no surprises clause". And we've had one HCP go through with a no surprises clause attached to it which means if something comes up that's outside the boundary of the written document, the landowner is not going to be liable. Deal's a deal is the way Interior described it. And that bothers some people in the conservation community. There were disagreements about that clause. And I don't want, I want that discussion to be up front for us and I want all interests to weigh into it so that that is fully developed and we hear from you as to what your recommendation is. So that's it, that's the outline for an MSCP. The other documents that ride along with that are the implementing agreement. That's the contract between Pima County and Fish & Wildlife. It looks like a contract and it includes the terms of the MSCP. Another one is the EIS and a lot of your discussions about, well what would be the effect on affordable housing and what would be the effect on all these other interests, mining and the economy, the place where that discussion shows up in a document is the EIS. So those are the 3 major documents, the MSCP, the Implementing Agreement and the EIS. And the EIS belongs to Fish & Wildlife, they have federal responsibility for that. So this larger document that I have, this gives you a way to think about these decision points. And so I'm not going to walk you through it or read it to you or anything like, but if you like the idea of sort of filling in the blanks on an outline like this or even just voting on some of these items and adding whatever you want, you can find more detail about how to think about those issues in this larger document. So my feeling is that we need to hear from you on these items and anything else you want, but certainly on that much. And I think it's, if you do that much, you will have done what every other MSCP has done. I want to call your attention to one section in this larger document, and this is my own hope, that we'll be able to have either separately or as part of the conservation plan a safe harbor agreement. . "Safe Harbor Policy: Linking Safe Harbor Assurances to Habitat Conservation Plans". Michael Bean says don't link them. He doesn't like to see that. I'm not sure what Fish & Wildlife's policy is on that right now, but whether it's linked or separate, I would like to think about a safe harbor for the county and a safe harbor that allows landowners to opt into it so that the ranch community can have some assurances and changes the incentive system and they might want to get involved in protecting leopard frogs or other species. So if you have any recommendations about that, I'd appreciate it, too. And that's all, that's all I have.

Question: You skipped over alternatives in the short document and I wonder if you can give us some advice about alternatives and maybe there's a purpose for why you skipped over it. Should we be thinking about alternatives?
Maeveen: Sure. We have alternatives framed as part of the economic analysis. And I think this section, it's not parallel to the other sections. This section can be written once decisions are made in the other, you know, if you have the project description, you've made a decision on your alternative. You're either going to do nothing or you're going to include, the alternatives happen to be, you know, no action, include just projects, include permitting, you know. So the alternatives, the answer to section 7 shows up in other aspects of this outline and it just is not parallel, it's a faulty parallelism in the way they set up this table of contents. So that's why I skipped over it, because it's just duplicative.

Bruce Gungle: I just wanted to bring people's attention. You look at the Habitat Conservation Plan outline that Maeveen just ran through, the shorter version, and just ask that people take that and compare that to the presentation that the Coalition did with the Sonoran Desert Museum and The Nature Conservancy and others, because that presentation was very much tiered to many of these specifics. So that might make that presentation make more sense. If you go back and look at the slides that were presented then, many of the things that were offered, the ideas that came out of that presentation were tiered to these HCP requirements.

Question: I thought there were 4 amendments to the comp plan having to do with the conservation plan.
Maeveen: Only one of them was policy related. So there's parcel specific decisions and then there's policy issues, and the one policy issue that I know of was the conservation land system. And there's a request that the current guidelines which suggest that 75% of the area, this isn't inconsistent with the zoning, but that the Board think about having 75% of the area in certain parts of the conservation land system stay open and site projects around the resource and that kind of thing. And there was a request for that to be raised, the percent of that to be raised. So that's what's been referred back.

Question: . I just had a quick question back to the economic analysis. You have the timeline. What's week one? Did they start January 1st, is that week one?
Maeveen: Our kickoff meeting was yesterday, but they have, they can use coverages, so last week we sent them what their initial request was and all the hard copy documents, and when we met they realized that we have much data then they imagined, so they made a second request and they have all that now, too. For those of you who want to see what they're doing, just go to our website and go to the page that says FTP site and follow the path and you'll see what's listed, the coverages that are listed on the FTP site and that's what they're dealing with. It's very public, very public study.

Question: That study that you mentioned at the very beginning, is that on one of these disks?
Maeveen: It is, it is, yeah. It's modeled after that cost model and what we were trying to suggest there in broad terms that there's tradeoffs. That if you focus on riparian or ranchland for acquisition, you might find a larger unfragmented blocks with high resource value and a lower dollar amount. And that changes when you focus on mountain parks or you focus on developing areas. But the calculus is that the constituent support and neighborhood support shows up in the most expensive areas. And that's another discussion for this committee, how you balance that. I want to make one suggestion to you. I was just thinking, how can you make your life easier, you know. You can think this through, start to finish, through a table of contents, and I want to suggest one more way to think this through. And that is to say if we had a hundred million dollars from a bond initiative, or if we had fifty million or if we had two hundred million or pick any number. Think about what could you buy and what, your question reminded me of this, what would the tradeoffs be? How many acres of ranchland and riparian could you get for fifty million. If you combine that with more expensive land, how much acreage would you use. And you can think backwards like that and it will really, it takes you to the conclusion of this, it just takes you to the conclusion. So you can think about what the community's tolerance is for bonding, is one way of thinking about the ultimate cost of this and the short term acquisition strategies and work backwards from there and combine different types of land, park land, land on the northwest side, riparian and ranch. You can put different combinations of it together and see what looks good to you at that point. You might be really surprised what the tradeoffs are.

Question: What is the status of the booklets or pamphlets on the disks? I mean, are they approved by the Board of Supervisors or what are they?
Maeveen: No, no. They're not adopted documents by the Board. They're just draft documents out for comment to facilitate discussion leading towards documents that are adopted. So if you're saying, I'm a member of the community and I want to know when to worry. The time to worry is when a recommendation comes from this body to the Board and they turn around and act on it. That's the adopted decision of the Board. Until then, it's 225 drafts.

Question: 1.2, "Regulatory Legal Framework for the Plan", that's optional. That's not really something we need to worry about, is it?
Maeveen: Right, it's standard, it shows up the same way in every plan.

David: "Species to be Covered by the Permit", this is that discussion that we had some time ago, 8 or 55, that we've deferred, that I think we need to probably think about getting that up again.
Maeveen: The Economic Consultant is pricing out the options on those
David: Okay, then that's maybe something that we think about dealing with them and we come up on February 1st, when they come here on February 1st. So we can't make a decision on that essentially until we get some results back from the economic consultants, is that what, the options?

Question: Has Pima County made a commitment to 55 species?
Maeveen: in the comprehensive plan, the conservation land system is based on the 55 species. Which really, that's just a proxy for the natural system, okay? So in the local plan that has been adopted, and that is the SDCP and a subset of that is the MSCP, and so the outstanding question is how much regulatory relief do you want, how big an insurance policy do you want to buy? That's the question that's left. And there's another question which is how much enforcement power goes along with that because the local plan is just guidelines and they're always subject to the next decision by the Board. Might be protective, might not be protective.

* It was clarified that the issue of 55 species was voted on and defeated, however as a legislative body the Steering Committee could revisit this issue if it felt it necessary. David pointed out that the Steering Committee has not picked a number of species and although the number of species is a determinant the Steering Committee still has to come back and pick a number. If it's not 55 the Steering Committee has to make a recommendation or find out if there's a consensus position on that, to include plant species as well.

* Sherry Barrett addressed the issue of CIP's--Capital Improvement Projects. She noted that the SDCP is a regional plan, therefore there would be a need to discuss area, general location, and acreage. Two key elements would be, 1) what types of habitat species will be impacted by the CIP and 2) need to analyze the amount of take or loss of habitat versus the amount of conservation. US Fish and Wildlife needs to know generally where impact is going to be and where conservation is going to be.

Question: How do we go about identifying specific tracts of land or portions of land within the overall preserve over which there are issues that we may want to address?

Coordinating Steering Committee work with Economics Consultant:
The economics consultant was not able to attend this meeting therefore this issue was deferred until the February 1st meeting when the Economics Consultant would be able to attend.

Issues for future meeting agendas:
* The January 22nd meeting should either be earlier or shorter.
* The Steering Committee requested to hear from the Recreational Technical Advisory Team. The Recreation Technical Advisory Team would like to present their final report at one of the meetings in February.
* The time period for the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan needs to be revisited.
* What species should be included also needs to be reopened.
* There has not been an amicable date for the attorneys to address the Steering Committee.
* A few members wanted to see the following on a future agenda: the time period for the plan and what species should be included.
* Propose February 26th as a study session.
* March 5th should be the meeting for final adoption of our recommendations.

Call to the Public: None.

Adjourned 9:00pm