Editorial: Sonoma, to grow or not to grow?

When it comes to city planning, timing can be everything. Was an ambitious development approved in an era of pro-growth city government? Was a conservation easement made possible by the death of a landowner and the potential sale of her farmland? Was a neighborhood annexed because its current residents supported city inclusion?

Changes to a city – described by some as progress, by others as the demise of small-town character – are as often predictable and preplanned as they are subject to the trends of the times and political whims of the day.

Because when it comes to city planning, timing can be everything.

The City of Sonoma has a timing issue to confront in the weeks and months ahead: the impending expiration of its current Urban Growth Boundary, the border around the city limits beyond which most development is barred. The Sonoma City Council will discuss the UGB, as well as a look at the city General Plan, at its next meeting, Monday, July 28.

Sonoma’s UGB was passed in 2000, with 64 percent of city voters approving it for a 20 year term, which expires in December of 2020. Since it was passed by voter initiative, it can only be renewed by voter initiative – hence the somewhat urgent need for the community to remind itself what wonky terms like zoning, density, sphere of influence and urban growth actually mean and why they matter. Its expiration may still be 18 months away, but supporters of renewal will likely push for a March 2020 vote when, unlike the November 2020 general election, it won’t be lost among sexier political campaigns nor face the army of “no on everything” voters who show up for the big elections.

Urban growth boundaries have been around since the 1950s – Lexington, Kentucky has the distinction of creating the first UGB in the United States in 1958 – but they didn’t really come to prominence until the 1970s when Oregon was the first, and still only, to adopt statewide UGB requirements. Since then they’ve become common elements of city planning code; most municipalities in Sonoma County established some form of urban growth boundary in the 1990s, with only Cloverdale dragging its heels until 2010.

Sonoma’s Urban Growth Boundary aligns largely with its city limits – though it actually extends beyond the city in small pockets maintained by the county, but considered falling under the city’s “sphere of influence,” including several streets near Fifth Street West and Leveroni Road, a small area near Broadway south of Leveroni and an area to the west of where Verano Avenue meets Sonoma Highway.

The Urban Growth Boundary concept has its roots as a mechanism to counter the planning visions, or lack thereof, that grew out of the 1960s and ‘70s post-war years when the tide of baby boomers came of home-buying age and many cities and suburbs accommodated the mass of mobile young families by building laterally – spreading out development far and wide with large-tract houses, spacious back yards and driveways that required their own zip codes. Aptly dubbed “sprawl,” it led to hour-long work commutes, fuel emissions spewing by the ton and a dearth of walkable communities, among other headaches of late 20th century America. It’s also part of what mobilized the environmental movement, as conservation of vanishing open space became one of the genuinely notable success stories in such regions as Marin and Sonoma counties. Opposition to over-reaching developers and the establishment of state parks, county open space districts and various other forms of growth boundaries have been a big part of that.

Urban growth boundaries have essentially done exactly as promised: ended sprawl.

Sonoma’s is no exception; it has quietly limited growth in the 95476 zip code for the last 20 years and its extension in some form or other is almost guaranteed. But its expiration is coming at a particularly interesting time – a time when the consensus No. 1 issue facing the community, according to a recent survey from the Sonoma Ecology Center’s nascent Sustainable Sonoma program, is none other than Sonoma’s lack of available housing stock.

By their very nature UGBs contribute to the tight reins on housing – coupled with Sonoma’s Growth Management Ordinance, which limits development in the city to a sparse 65 units on average per year, it’s no surprise Sonoma has witnessed the effects of the housing crisis first hand.

Younger generations moving away, lower- and middle-income residents being priced out, the further gentrification of the community – “no growth” has its consequences.

Of course, the urban growth boundary’s role in what’s been dubbed “the housing crisis” is debatable. Much of the available space in the UGB is outside the city limits and would require annexation before the city had any real control over its urban growth – and then, in some cases, costly environmental review. Still, the already developed Eighth Street East corridor, which is outside the city, has been on the radar for more than a few UGB-expanding advocates, not only for its housing possibilities, but also for the business district’s tax opportunities.

And those who have followed the recent Donald Street battle with the county over its inclusion in the development-geared Springs Specific Plan would be familiar with at least some Donald neighborhood residents’ interest in being made part of Sonoma proper.

Fred Allebach, chair of the Sonoma Community Services and Environment Commission, no knee-jerk development advocate by any means, lobbied the Sonoma City Council this week to keep an “open mind” before advocating renewal of the UGB, as is.

Allebach implored the council in an email “not to have issues reduced to simplistic buzzwords like sprawl and character that are nothing but code for no changes and maintaining property owners’ status quo.”

Allebach has described the UGB as being among the no-growth limits that have prevented socio-economic equality in Sonoma. “The end result,” he once wrote, “has been to consolidate class power within city boundaries.” Whether that’s overstatement is subject to opinion. What isn’t is Sonoma’s failure thus far to fulfill a primary promise of urban growth boundaries: the creation of adequate infill housing to supply a community’s housing needs. Whether down to neighborhood opposition, vanishing state redevelopment funds or costly environmental review, the bottom line is: adequate infill development simply hasn’t happened.

The idea that environmental conservation can be oppositional to social justice has always been as intriguing as it is alarming. Pitting our better natures against themselves is rarely the goal of civic planning. Of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other; there’s no zero sum game.

And perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that Sonoma’s urban growth boundary will enjoy renewed community discussion at a time of intense housing need.

When it comes to city planning, timing can be everything.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.