LAKE COUNTY — Six years of work is coming to a conclusion as the Lake County Board of Supervisors considers adopting an updated General Plan.
The document defines community boundaries throughout the county and outlines growth policies and land use policies for the next 20 years, according to Lake County Community Development Director Rick Coel. The Lake County Planning Commission held three hearings about the proposed update starting in May and continuing through July.
The document”s last stop before adoption is the board of supervisors. Hearings began Tuesday. The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 2 at 1:30 p.m. in the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
“I think that all the tough work has been done up to this point. A lot of the concerns have been vetted before it even got to us, so it might shape up pretty quickly as far as the board of supervisors is concerned,” Supervisor Rob Brown said.
Community boundaries drawn in the plan are meant to guide where commercial and dense residential development can happen in order to preserve open space, ensure agricultural soils are used most effectively, and to protect water and sewer systems and road networks, according to Coel.
“What we are trying to do is encourage infill development to occur where we already have communities, and discourage subdivision of small lots to be on the outside of those areas,” Coel said.
Coel said infill is development that happens inside community boundaries. He said another goal of encouraging infill is to keep walking distances short so residents can walk their communities.
Coel said agricultural and water resource elements are included in the update for the first time this year. The current General Plan was last updated in 1981, according to Coel, and was overdue for an update.
“We didn”t have environmental laws until 1970, much less a subdivision ordinance, until 1971. Up until the late ”60s and early ”70s, there was not much local control over how things developed, so it went on its own. There was no long run planning. Now what we”re trying to do is turn that around and have more logical and orderly growth,” Coel said.
Coel said approximately 75 volunteers in four separate committees have taken community input and hammered out the details of the general plan update during the past six years.
“We”re talking about the big picture and the long haul,” Supervisor Ed Robey said.
Robey said a disagreement about where the community growth boundary should be drawn in Middletown, which is in his district, may be part of the discussion at the next hearing. Robey said he was absent for the first hearing because he had a medical appointment.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
