Sonoma City Council eyes 20-year renewal of UGB

Urban Growth Boundary limits would prevent city from acquiring 6-acre Napa Road parcel.|

The Sonoma City Council took steps last week to solidify a ballot measure that would ask voters in the Nov. 3 election to renew the city’s Urban Growth Boundary for another 20 years.

But hopes of a potential UGB extension that would allow annexation of a prized 6-acre parcel for affordable housing on Napa Road were dimmed by the ordinance’s limit of 5-acres per year that the city can acquire.

The parcel at 285 Napa Road had been tapped last September by Habitat for Humanity as a site to build as many as 60 units of affordable housing. But the sweat-equity nonprofit’s development plans were suspended just two months later due to the agency’s severe financial struggles. Local housing advocates have been eyeing the Napa Road parcel ever since in hopes the City of Sonoma could fold the property into its growth boundary to set aside for low-income housing.

The UGB was originally approved by voters in 2000 for an initial 20-year term. As an “urban growth boundary,” the UGB prevents development beyond the boundary which, in Sonoma’s case, coincides with the city limits.

Proponents of the city acquiring the 6-acre Napa Road parcel had been hoping council members at the June 1 meeting would weave more flexibility into the UGB renewal than its 5-acre per year limit.

But, according to City Manager Cathy Capriola, in order to increase the limit to more than the 5 acres per year, a time-consuming environmental review would likely be required and such an analysis would not be completed in time for the November 2020 election.

Still, resident Fred Allebach lobbied the council to make the acquisition of the Napa Road property a priority.

“Do you or do you not want more affordable housing in Sonoma?” asked Allebach during the public-comment period of the meeting. “If there’s a rules-inconsistency problem (in the UGB), then it’s up to you guys to change the rules.”

Allebach described it as “doubtful” that development opportunities like the Napa Road site will come along with any regularity and that the city has “got to get them when you can.”

“As to the flexible or hard five acres,” he said, referring to UGB per year growth limit, “for the difference of one acre you’re not going to get 50-plus units? If you’re looking at this from a common sense perspective, come on get that one acre thing worked out.”

Housing advocate Dave Ransom also urged the City Council to add flexibility to the ordinance to allow for broader extensions of the UGB.

“It is not the time for Sonoma to pull up the draw bridge, rather to open the door with arms wide,” said Ransom.

Teri Shore, the North Bay regional director of the Greenbelt Alliance, predicted that too much flexibility in how the ordinance counted acreage could trigger costly environmental review.

“You might want to think further about writing a 20-year UGB policy for one parcel that may or may not get developed,” cautioned Shore.

In the end, the city council gave direction to staff to return with a resolution for a 20-year extension of the UGB, with a 5-acres gross per year maximum and that changes to the UGB without voter approval would need four votes from the five-member city council.

The resolution is expected to come back for council consideration on June 29.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.

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