News - Local

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

SLO annexation talks get a late start Tuesday night

Review of General Plan process delays Foothill-LOVR discussion

Comments (0) |

The San Luis Obispo City Council only started discussing the possible annexation of 1,380 acres of land at the intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Los Osos Valley Road late Tuesday night.

That is because the council got bogged down reviewing the process for updating the city’s General Plan, a document that governs development and annexations.

The annexation proposal and the General Plan update are in a way connected.

The property owners in the proposed annexation area were asking for the council to remove their proposal from the much more complicated General Plan process.

The council, meanwhile, was reviewing a proposal to update the land use, circulation and parks and recreation elements of the General Plan over a $1.4 million three-year process from 2009 to 2012. The housing element is updated on a five-year cycle, with the next update set for summer 2009.

Some of the property owners at Foothill and Los Osos Valley have asked that their annexation be considered independent of the General Plan update process. City staff had in turn recommended the council refer the question of annexing the now rural land to the General Plan process, because the annexation at issue is so large.

Property owners in the proposed Cerro San Luis annexation area include different members of the Madonna and Twisselman families and Congregation Beth David. Dan de Vaul is also a property owner, and there are some individuals who own smaller parcels near Laguna Lake.

Some of the property owners were hoping for a speedier process, worried that the single annexation could get mired in issues that are hotly contested elsewhere, said private planner Carol Florence of Oasis Associates. She represents the Jewish temple and some other owners.

City staff in turn said in its staff report that because of the size of the annexation — 1,380 acres compared to a currently proposed annexation of just 236 acres that has been in the works for many years in the Orcutt Road area — its larger ramifications must be studied as part of the whole General Plan process.

The land has been in the city’s sphere of influence since 2006, when the Local Agency Formation Commission decided to add areas to the city for possible annexation.

The property is now rural and stretches up Cerro San Luis and southeast to the overflow wetlands from Laguna Lake.