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Lacking a quorum for its April 7 meeting, members of a San Juan Bautista city council committee dealing with growth informally discussed changes to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the city and the San Benito County Board of Supervisors. City Manager Ashley Collick, City Attorney John Geffen and City Planner Ariel Goodspeed were in attendance.
The MOU has been the subject of ongoing meetings since it was first proposed last June. Originally designed to give the city varying degrees of input into developments within three designated areas outside city limits, the final draft submitted to the supervisors had been revised to cover only developments directly adjacent to the city.
“It’s just purely advisory,” Councilmember Dan DeVries told BenitoLink. “It’s in complete deference to the county’s jurisdictional authority. but at the same time provides an opportunity for the San Juan community to voice its opinions or feedback on possible developments.”
As drafted by the committee, the MOU sets forward a structure for the city to have input into potential developments at its borders at different stages in the process of approval:
- Planning staff from the county and city would meet at least quarterly to discuss proposals, inquiries, and development interests.
- The county would transmit any application for development near the city.
- The applicant would have to make an informal presentation to the city’s planning commission.
- The city would file comments and feedback to the county.
- The county would reply to the city’s concerns.
- All mitigation measures would be submitted to the city as the application progresses.
- The city would be allowed to voice its support or opposition to the project, and the county would give the opinion “great weight.”
The supervisors made three changes to the document and resubmitted the MOU to the city for review and approval:
- The MOU will renew automatically every year unless it is terminated.
- The word “informal” to describe the review was dropped.
- San Juan must schedule a presentation within 30 days or waive its right to input.
While unable to formally vote on accepting the MOU due to the lack of quorum, participants at the meeting recommended that Collick place the revised MOU on the consent agenda for the April 15 city council meeting. If passed, it will be sent to the board of supervisors, where DeVries said he expected that it would be met with final approval.
“From that point forward,” DeVries told BenitoLink, “when people say they have to do a ‘San Juan presentation,’ you’ll know what they’re talking about, and you’ll know how it all started.”
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