Urban Limit Lines; the politics of invisible lines in the sand

Board members of the Municipal Advisory Councils (MACs) in Salida and Wood Colony, along with members of other local boards like Salida Sanitary District, etc. received letters from the City of Modesto dated June 9, 2020 requesting feedback about their proposed Urban Limit Lines (ULL). So far, the correspondence and social media postings in response to the letter have been a resounding "leave us alone" from Salida and Wood Colony residents.

First, just what is an Urban Limit Line? That's an invisible line in the sand (or in our case, prime agricultural soil called Hanford Sandy Loam) that would prevent the City of Modesto from land-grabbing upon the communities of Salida and Wood Colony. As most local area 

Modesto Bee map 
https://www.modbee.com/article237666634.html

residents know, Salida and Wood Colony have been fighting proposed annexations by Modesto for quite some time now.  Typically, a ULL would be met with open arms by our unincorporated communities for the protection they offer, so why is this one not?

Because the ULL does NOT match up to our communities' boundaries which means that Modesto would still have the opportunity to develop and sprawl into Salida and Wood Colony. 

Politicians in Modesto didn't just wake up one day and decide to implement the ULL, nor did they wake up and decide to go after Salida and Wood Colony once again - they are doing this for two reasons: former Modesto City Councilman, Denny Jackman and landowners in Salida and Wood Colony. 

Denny Jackman is perhaps the most well-known farmland preservationist in our county. He co-authored with former Modesto mayor, Garrad Marsh, Measure E - a county-wide residential ULL that was passed by voters in 2007. Denny then tried to repeat the success with a City of Modesto ULL initiative in 2015 known as Measure I. The Modesto Chamber of Commerce and local unions poured money into an anti-Measure I campaign and the initiative was narrowly defeated.

Denny is not one to give up so easily. To put it bluntly, he is threatening Modesto with another ULL ballot initiative if they did not implement a ULL on their own. The June 9 letter even says this but much more diplomatically: "Mr. Jackman informed the City Council that he intended to proceed with another attempt to impose the same limitations as he had pursued in 2015." But this new ULL is not exactly the same as the one in 2015. The ULL sacrifices much more of Wood Colony. Salida's lines are pretty much the same as 2015 but they do not follow Salida's Community Plan (SCP) boundaries. Why? On both counts: landowners.

Based on social media posts on NextDoor regarding this topic and a recent Wood Colony MAC meeting, it appears that Bill Lyons Jr. is affecting the boundaries in Wood Colony. He is the largest landowner there. For Salida, the main chunks of land cut out of our SCP boundaries is everything south of Kiernan and Joe Gallo's land north of Kiernan. Back during the Measure I initiative, (this was told to me by a Wood Colony friend) Denny ran into Dave Romano (who reps for Joe Gallo) and Dave told him they'd fight the initiative if the land wasn't removed from the ULL. That's why it's not a clean line north of Kiernan (west of Dale), even though all that land has been designated for Salida in the SCP with a Development Agreement signed by Mr. Romano. 

Back to the ULL and my thoughts: the Modesto City Council is in a rock and hard place trying to appease Denny and compromise with powerful families like Lyons and Gallo who want to sell their lands for commercial prices (much higher than ag prices). Additionally, while their lands are in areas designated for Salida and Wood Colony, the land cannot be developed unless City of Modesto agrees to supply water for new development. Historically for Salida, this has meant that Modesto will not supply the water unless they get to annex the land. (That's how Salida lost Costco and Kaiser from it's districts.)

I cannot see the residents of Salida and Wood Colony being on board for something that does not fully protect our communities from annexation. We can let the Modesto City Council know what we think of their invisible lines in the sand, but they don't have a history of listening to us since we are not constituents. However, their past votes have proven to be political campaign ammo and have killed re-election bids so I guess we'll see.