Board Meeting on Tuesday -- October 28th part 2 > Rexroad.com

After reading the agenda are supporting material a little more closely we do have some other very important items.

The Esparto Downtown Mixed Use Zoning Ordinance is on the agenda in the afternoon. We will see how Duane wants to play this. Some of the sign restrictions and things seem to be inconsistent with what he advocates for on a regular basis. If he supports this ordinance in his district then it would be kind of difficult to argue against the enforcement of this stuff later on.

This is the rub that I have too. For someone that values private property rights to a high degree I often become troubled by the imposition of use limitations. However, clearly I would not support someone building a skyscaper on West El Dorado Drive. That would be unreasonable in my mind.

The question of what is reasonable is a tough one.

The other item of interest to me is the last one. Item 8.01. This is potentially good stuff. It is also potentially harmful stuff. The creation of habitat in Yolo County can come at a cost to farmers.

The ides of having mitigation banks for habitat is a good one. The funny thing is that this si the idea I proposed with the agricultural land mitigation and I could not even get a second. The ag part of it is even easier to understand. This could be a good and important discussion.

Comments

By Charlie in Esparto @ Sunday, October 26, 2008 9:38 PM

Matt,

Here is the deal on the Esparto 'mix-ord'...They to want to put housing on second or higher floors (but they also want to say who can live in it). Not a one of these folks proposing this have ever lived on Main Street Esparto. So far as I know - my spouse and I live are the only current residets of Main Street and the traffic noise is non-stop. We use 'white' noise to sleep at night (background noise to quite the traffic sounds).

Now consider this...these are the same bunch that want to put 'knob-outs' on Main street to make the traffic go even slower...so now we will have traffic jams (if they prevail with that nonsense) What we need is several street lights and a HWY 16 bi-pass that travel from Madison to Capay north of Esparto.

Never the less...ask them it the have ever really considered the outcome of this zoning (or if they ever bothered to ask the few residents of main street about the noise of their foolhardy plans).

Lets just say there is a ‘Liberal Birkenstock Bunch’ that want down town Esparto to look like Davis…Problem is we have thousands of autos traveling Main Street going to the Casino. They actually think these gamblers will stop and shop (when they are 12 miles from the gaming)…'If' they make them drive though a ‘mix-ord’ area with ‘knob-outs’. It is all foolishness…and worse of all they oppose traffic lights so the children can safely cross Main to get to and from school.

Anyway…ask those questions… They can’t answer them and will likely get angry…but ..O-well!

Charlie-san

By JRH @ Monday, October 27, 2008 10:59 PM

It has been a while since Charlie was at one of the DMX meetings and the ordinance has changed quite a lot in that time. The current DMX ordinance allows but does not require vertical mixed use. None of the property owners wanted a residential component in their commercial buildings so, except for the apartment over the old drug store, there won't be any. One could more properly characterize the current ordinance as a Trojan horse that effectively rezones 60% of Esparto's undeveloped commercial land to residential. The owner/developer of that land will probably request a larger residential percentage. He wants to build single family homes behind a narrow commercial strip on the north side of SR-16/Woodland Ave. The Esparto Citizens Advisory Committee is concerned about the loss of commercial land and wants a smaller residential percentage.

The ordinance doesn't require any changes to existing buildings. The ordinance does have building design guidelines for new construction and renovations. Most of these guidelines were recommendations from the Streetscape Project. Yes, that was the project that recommended "bulb-outs" for SR-16/Yolo Ave, but street changes are not part of the DMX ordinance.

The current zoning for downtown (C2) permits 40 foot tall signs. Not too many people today want signs that tall in their downtown. The proposed sign requirements are similar to those in Woodland, the dreaded Davis, and old town Sacramento. To my surprise, the business owners haven't complained about the sign requirements. But they will have another chance tomorrow.

JRH

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