My comments to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors on July 14, 2026:
"I'm
dropping off this request and it's length prohibits my reading it
into public comment. I have to admit, I'm not sorry that I was
out-of-town during the April 28, 2026 Modesto City Council meeting as
it would have been an utter waste of time. The slimy tactics of that
bought and paid for council blow my mind! They send notice of the
General Plan update on the agenda at 4:58pm on a Friday, they switch
maps from the ones that they supposedly did their due-diligence with
at Salida and Wood Colony MACs, they hold a private special planning
commission meeting, and are holding their public scoping meeting
tomorrow online only. There's not much more they legally could do to
limit public participation. As a Salida resident, they don't care
what I, nor the 14,000 people of Salida, nor the over 3,000 people of
Wood Colony have to say anyways. They don't view us as neighbors and
they do not treat us like the human beings that we are. As Ken Carlson reported in the Modesto Bee, their votes have been bought and
that is enough to curtail any shred of humanity they might have left.
To
quote the current chair of Salida MAC, Karen Gorne, “We will fight
tooth and nail.” This can be the hard way or a slightly difficult
way, depending upon you. I'm here to inform you that Salida is going
to petition for a Community Services District and if Modesto is not
going to preserve the
high quality farmland of our neighbor, Wood
Colony, then Salida will. Folded into our CSD is  |
Stanislaus County's Prime Farmland
in dark green |
Wood Colony as our
farmland mitigated green belt. When land is developed in Salida,
farmland will be mitigated in Wood Colony. This provides for no
minimum on acreage like the farmland trusts that require a minimum of
40 acres. Modesto cannot be trusted; we have learned from a former
city employee that Modesto is using the land around the Jennings
treatment plant for ag mitigation. I have put in a PRA to Modesto and
the former employee has told me they are willing to verify this
information to Supervisor Withrow. So the slightly less difficult way
for Salida is if you create the CSD. If you want to go the harder
route, then so be it. Those greedy puppets are not getting one inch
of Salida's land. Also
in this document, are the issues surrounding two EIRs being conducted
on Salida Community Plan lands. Case precedence of Save Tara vs.
City of West Hollywood found an agency may not commit itself to a
project before completing CEQA review. Which brings me to the minutes
from your workshop in Hughson: I inquired to Salida MAC as to whether
the County's efforts to put a Central Valley Circular facility in
Salida to recycle paper and cardboard has been brought to Salida MAC
and they replied it had not. The word “efforts” makes it sound
like it's not definite and I would suggest it is brought to Salida
MAC as soon as possible before spending more funding on something
that may not be compatible to the community. Please address at the
MAC the environmental impacts of such a facility in Salida. You can
model it on the cardboard and paper recycling business that I
frequent, American Recycling on Morgan Road, which has burned down
twice in recent memory. I am assuming you don't intend to place the
facility near homes or schools?
As Supervisor Chiesa said in his speech, "Communities are living systems".
Stanislaus
County has a vision PDF online that includes values that “Each
person matters” and the “County works everyday to build people's
trust.” That is exactly what Salida and Wood Colony need right now
– that we matter and can trust you"
Formal request:
July
14, 2026
VIA
EMAIL AND HAND DELIVERY
Thomas
E. Boze, County Counsel
Stanislaus
County Board of Supervisors
1010
Tenth Street
Modesto,
CA 95354
Re:
The Salida Community Plan Initiative (Ordinance C.S. 1005) — Demand
for Compliance with Voter-Enacted Law; Section 3.08 Incorporation
Study Funds; the Initiative’s Financing Architecture; Conflicting
Environmental Reviews; Preservation of Salida’s Incorporation
Viability; Request for County Action on Salida Self-Governance
Dear
Mr. Boze and Honorable Members of the Board:
This
letter addresses the County’s obligations under the voter-enacted
Salida Area Planning, Road Improvement, Economic Development and
Farmland Protection Initiative, adopted by this Board on August 7,
2007 as Ordinance C.S. 1005 pursuant to Elections Code section 9116,
and the County’s posture toward the City of Modesto’s General
Plan 2050 effort. We request the actions in Part VIII and identify
the legal basis for each. We prefer resolution but reserve all
remedies.
I.
The Initiative Is Voter-Protected Law the Board Cannot Amend by
Administrative or Budgetary Action — a Principle This Board Has
Already Acknowledged.
Because
the Initiative qualified by petition and was adopted without
alteration under Elections Code section 9116, it carries the full
protection of Elections Code section 9125: it “shall not be
repealed or amended except by a vote of the people,” except as the
measure itself provides. The County’s own Chief Executive Office
confirmed this in writing on August 31, 2012. Controlling authority:
Because
the Initiative qualified by petition and was adopted without
alteration under Elections Code section 9116, it carries the full
protection of Elections Code section 9125: it “shall not be
repealed or amended except by a vote of the people,” except as the
measure itself provides. The County’s own Chief Executive Office
confirmed this in writing on August 31, 2012. Controlling authority:
DeVita
v. County of Napa
(1995) 9 Cal.4th 763; Rossi
v. Brown
(1995) 9 Cal.4th 688. Because section 9125 prohibits amendment or
repeal except by the voters, County actions that effectively alter or
nullify the Initiative’s substantive provisions would be subject to
judicial review.
This
Board has itself stated the governing principle. At the March 15,
2022 hearing on General Plan Amendment PLN2019-0079, District 3
Supervisor Withrow explained, on the record: “It’s wrong to treat
one applicant… one way and all the people who’ve come in here…
a different way. This initiative requires that a programmatic EIR be
prepared prior to the development within the amendment area. It
doesn’t say ‘may.’ It doesn’t say the county has the
discretion to ignore this in favor of one developer.” We ask only
that the County apply that same rule — the Initiative is mandatory
and may not be cherry-picked — to every subject below.
The
County’s record also shows why vigilance is warranted. In September
2019, County Planning filed CEQA documents asserting that parcel APN
003-014-007 was included in the Initiative’s Exhibit B-1 map by
“draftsman’s error” and could be administratively “corrected”
— twelve years after adoption, unchallenged in the interim, and
surfacing only when the owner sought to develop. A Salida resident’s
formal CEQA referral response (L. Powell, June 30, 2021) objected on
precisely the section 9125 grounds stated here, quoting the Initial
Study’s own language; the Board thereafter denied the project 3-2.
The episode establishes two things: the County has previously
attempted administrative amendment of the voter-enacted map, and the
County has already once receded when confronted with section 9125.
This letter asks it to recede again — before, rather than after,
litigation.
II.
Section 3.08’s Incorporation Study Funds Have Been Applied to a
Different Purpose Than the One the Voters’ Measure Contemplated.
Development
Agreement Section 3.08 required Residential Applicants to pay the
County $150,000, due concurrently with execution of the Agreement in
2007, which the County was to “use or direct… to an appropriate
local agency to help fund studies considering the potential
incorporation of the Salida Area.” That discretion belongs to the
County. But the public record raises real questions about how it has
been exercised:
The
July 22, 2025 Board agenda item (Resolution 2025-0397) shows the
$1,049,000 Program EIR effort — a development-clearance document
for the Amendment Area, prepared under a July 23, 2024 agreement
with Ascent Environmental, Inc. — funded in part by $75,000
in “Salida Incorporation Study” fund balance,
alongside $682,720 in County General Fund and $291,220 in “Salida
Planning Efforts” fund balance.
Only
$75,000 of the original $150,000 appears as remaining fund balance.
We request a full accounting: what portion has been expended, on
what, and pursuant to what direction.
We
further request confirmation of the scope, budget line, and
independence of the “incorporation feasibility analysis” folded
into the Ascent contract, and Salida MAC review of its assumptions
before finalization — particularly any assumption that the City of
Modesto is or would remain Salida’s water purveyor (see the July
22, 2025 County–Modesto MOU, Resolution 2025-0397; Gov. Code §
56133; Vineyard
Area Citizens for Responsible Growth v. City of Rancho Cordova
(2007) 40 Cal.4th 412). The purveyor assumption matters because the
record of Modesto’s conduct is documented and one-sided: a
standing “will not serve” position for new Salida development
since acquiring the Del Este system; refusal of water service to
Gregori High School, forcing the school district to drill its own
well; the November 25, 2014 council action singling out Salida-area
territory — alone among former Del Este communities — for
removal from routine water-connection approvals; and the March 3,
2021 denial of service to the Lark Landing project. An incorporation
feasibility analysis should evaluate reasonably foreseeable
alternatives for municipal water service and should not assume
continued service from a jurisdiction actively pursuing annexation
of the same territory.
Applying
section 3.08 funds earmarked for incorporation studies to a
development-entitlement EIR, without a clear public accounting,
raises a substantial question whether the County has redirected a
voter-protected measure’s dedicated funding to a different purpose
— reviewable as an expenditure contrary to law under Code of Civil
Procedure section 526a (Blair
v. Pitchess
(1971) 5 Cal.3d 258; White
v. Davis
(1975) 13 Cal.3d 757) and remediable by writ under Code of Civil
Procedure section 1085.
III.
The Initiative’s Own Financing Architecture — the Section 4.03
Fee and the Section 2.09 Districts — Assigns These Costs to
Applicants, Not the General Fund.
The
voters’ measure built a complete funding system for exactly the
costs now being charged to the public:
The
Salida Community Plan fee.
Development Agreement Section 4.03(A), implemented through the
Initiative’s zoning provisions (§ 21.66.110), requires a fee on
persons seeking approvals in the Amendment Area, sized to defray —
but not exceed — the cost of “preparation, election or adoption,
and administration of the Initiative, planning studies and
subsequent Development Plans, and environmental
impact report,”
including “actual County costs, third-party consultant costs, and
other reasonable costs,” with Applicants credited for eligible
costs they front. The Initiative assigns environmental-review costs
to the development the review enables — not to the General Fund,
and not to incorporation-study money. We request confirmation of the
fee’s current status (including whether it has been established
and is collecting) and an accounting of how PEIR costs will be
recovered through it.
The
mandatory financing districts.
Development Agreement Section 2.09 provides: “Prior to the
recordation of any final map, the Applicant filing such map shall
petition County to form (or annex into, as applicable) community
facilities districts or other such financing districts solely
burdening the applicable portion of the Project Site.” District
formation before development is not optional under the voters’
measure. We request confirmation that no final map will record, and
no Development Plan will be approved, without compliance with
Section 2.09.
IV.
The County Is Running Environmental Review on a Collision Course
with Modesto’s — Whose Own Process Shows Hallmarks of
Predetermination.
The
County’s PEIR analyzes buildout of the same territory — including
the Landmark Business Park area — that Modesto’s General Plan
2050 proposes to absorb into its sphere of influence. Each EIR must
analyze inconsistency with applicable plans, including the
voter-enacted Salida Community Plan (CEQA Guidelines § 15125(d)),
and cumulative impacts of the concurrent proposals; CEQA applies
fully to annexation and sphere actions (Bozung
v. Local Agency Formation Com.
(1975) 13 Cal.3d 263). As to Modesto’s process specifically:
Commitment
before review.
By March 2026, Modesto had assembled parcel-by-parcel “Property
Owner Support Maps” cataloging landowner commitments to a specific
expansion footprint before any Draft EIR existed, following an April
2026 Council vote to pursue its largest expansion option. An agency
may not commit itself to a project before completing CEQA review
(Save
Tara v. City of West Hollywood
(2008) 45 Cal.4th 116).
An
unstable project description.
The map presented to the Salida and Wood Colony Municipal Advisory
Councils differed from the map the Council ultimately voted on, with
territory added back “for study” at and after the hearing. “An
accurate, stable and finite project description is the sine qua non
of an informative and legally sufficient EIR.” (County
of Inyo v. City of Los Angeles
(1977) 71 Cal.App.3d 185, 193.)
Stated
intent to override its own voters.
At the February 2026 Salida MAC meeting, Modesto planning staff
indicated the City Council would proceed notwithstanding a negative
advisory vote under Modesto’s Measures A and M — the framework
whose administration has previously been the subject of federal
litigation. Committee
Concerning Community Improvement v. City of Modesto
(9th Cir. 2009) 583 F.3d 690. The City’s own Measure M History Map
(UGR-15-001) confirms that every advisory vote to extend sewer north
of Kiernan Avenue has been defeated by Modesto’s electorate.
Mitigation
that warrants scrutiny.
Modesto’s public materials commit only to unspecified future
“conservation easements or in-lieu fees to an established,
qualified mitigation program.” The community has received
information from a former City employee, which it is corroborating
through Public Records Act requests, indicating the City may intend
to credit City-owned agricultural land near its wastewater treatment
facilities — approximately 1,700 acres of which is understood to
be leased out for farming — toward farmland mitigation. Mitigation
from land the converting agency already owns and cannot itself
develop supplies no additionality, permanence, or independent
enforcement, and is not “mitigation” within CEQA Guidelines
section 15370; unspecified future programs are impermissibly
deferred mitigation (Guidelines § 15126.4(a)(1)(B)). Nor can
mitigation be adequate where the replacement land is of demonstrably
lower agricultural classification than the land converted:
California Department of Conservation Farmland Mapping and
Monitoring Program (FMMP) data show the territory proposed for
conversion within and north of the Salida Community Plan area and
Wood Colony is predominantly Prime Farmland and Farmland of
Statewide Importance, substantially overlapping areas of very high
groundwater recharge — a double designation requiring analysis
under both the agricultural-resources and SGMA/water-supply sections
of any EIR. The lawful benchmark in this county is the program this
Board adopted and the Fifth District Court of Appeal upheld:
permanent agricultural conservation easements on comparable land
held by a qualified independent entity (Building
Industry Assn. of Central California v. County of Stanislaus
(2010) 190 Cal.App.4th 582, review denied).
V.
LAFCO Law, Policy, and the County’s Own Tax Agreements
Independently Protect Salida.
Stanislaus
LAFCO’s May 2014 response to Modesto’s prior general plan NOP
stated the governing tests: sphere expansion requires a finding of
“insufficient land… within the current sphere of influence” —
while Modesto then held over 11,000 sphere acres outside city limits
and had voluntarily removed 1,254 acres of already-approved
territory from its own growth map — and LAFCO’s adopted policy
that sphere boundaries “maintain a separation between existing
communities… and the identity of an individual community,”
expressly naming Salida
and Wood Colony.
LAFCO rejected Modesto’s attempt on Salida and the Beckwith
Triangle in 1996. (Gov. Code §§ 56377, 56425, 56668.)
Historic
downtown Salida was designated a disadvantaged community by this
County in the early 2000s for federal sewer funding. Under
Government Code section 56375(a)(8) (SB 244), LAFCO may not approve
a city annexation exceeding 10 acres where a disadvantaged
unincorporated community is contiguous unless an application to
annex that community is also filed. We request that the County
preserve and produce the records establishing that designation.
The
2022 Master Property Tax Revenue Agreement (Board Resolution
2022-0298) excludes the Salida
Area
from its automatic terms, reserving property tax sharing there for
independent negotiation — an exclusion with unbroken lineage to
the 1996 master agreement, which likewise excluded Salida for
separate negotiation. The Ninth Circuit discussed the role
tax-sharing arrangements played in the annexation process challenged
in Committee,
supra,
583 F.3d 690. The Board therefore retains — and has retained for
thirty years — a genuine checkpoint over the fiscal terms of any
Salida-area annexation, which we ask it to exercise rather than
waive.
Under
Development Agreement Section 4.01, once Subsequent Approvals comply
with the Initiative, “County shall not require any further
legislative-level entitlements to enable Applicants to build out the
Project.” We ask the County to confirm how the PEIR’s scope is
consistent with this provision.
California
law defines a community of interest as “a contiguous population
which shares common social and economic interests that should be
included within a single district for purposes of its effective and
fair representation.” Salida and Wood Colony each satisfy that
definition many times over — a fact the County itself has
operationalized through their Municipal Advisory Councils — and the
same principle that requires keeping such communities whole for
representation counsels against boundary actions that dismember them.
VI.
Allowing Modesto to Absorb the Amendment Area Would Foreclose the
Very Incorporation the Initiative Funded.
The
Amendment Area is not merely land; it is Salida’s future municipal
territory and tax base — the geography that makes cityhood
feasible. If Modesto absorbs the Community Plan lands north and south
of Kiernan, Salida is walled in: bounded by Modesto to the east and
south, with growth possible only westward into Wood Colony, which
neither community wants. A community with nowhere to grow faces
incorporation denial on that very ground — as East Los Angeles’s
incorporation effort learned — and a Salida stripped of its
employment lands would stagnate into precisely the disadvantaged
county island that state law (SB 244) was enacted to prevent,
ultimately becoming Modesto’s forced obligation rather than its own
city. Community support for self-governance is longstanding and
substantial. The County cannot square facilitating that outcome with
its duties under the Initiative: a measure whose stated purposes
include Salida’s economic development, whose Development Agreement
funds incorporation studies (§ 3.08), and whose zoning contemplates
district governance (§ 21.66.100) is not implemented by policies
that render incorporation geographically and fiscally impossible.
Every discretionary act the County takes regarding the Amendment Area
— the PEIR’s assumptions, tax negotiations, LAFCO positions, EIR
comments — should be measured against this question: does it
preserve or foreclose Salida’s capacity for self-governance?
VII.
Salida Will Petition to Form a Community Services District with Full
Powers — an Action Both the Initiative and Prior County Planning
Have Long Contemplated.
Community
representatives intend to petition Stanislaus LAFCO to form the
Salida Community Services District under the Community Services
District Law (Gov. Code § 61000 et seq.). This is not a departure
from County policy but its overdue fulfillment. General Plan text
predating the 2007 Initiative already described a Salida community
services district as a co-processor, alongside Project proponents and
the County, of development approvals in Salida — text the 2007
ordinance amended only to update the unit count, not to abandon the
concept. The anticipated district was never formed only because the
residential market collapse of 2008–2009 stalled the development
the Initiative entitled. The Initiative’s zoning provisions (§
21.66.100) independently confirm the same expectation, conditioning
Amendment Area development on annexation to or service from “a
sanitary district, water district, and/or community services
district,” and Section 2.09 mandates financing districts besides.
We
ask the Board to support formation of a district with a full powers
menu — comparable to the Mountain House Community Services
District, which governed that community for nearly three decades
before its 2024 incorporation as San Joaquin County’s newest city —
rather than the narrower model of the County’s own Keyes Community
Services District, which since 1995 has held only water, wastewater
collection, and street lighting powers. Because a district holds only
the powers requested and granted at formation, with latent powers
activated only through separate LAFCO proceedings (Gov. Code §
61106), the scope requested at formation will determine what Salida’s
district can do for years. The County’s constructive participation
follows from its duty to implement, not impede, a voter-enacted
measure whose own planning documents anticipated it. (Elec. Code §
9125; DeVita,
supra.)
VIII.
Requested Actions.
Provide
a full accounting
of the Section 3.08 $150,000 incorporation-study payment: amounts
expended, purposes, and the County’s direction, including the
basis for applying $75,000 to the PEIR.
Confirm
the status of the Section 4.03 / § 21.66.110 Salida Community Plan
fee
and how PEIR costs will be recovered from it consistent with the
Initiative.
Confirm
Section 2.09 compliance:
no final map recordation or Development Plan approval without the
mandated community facilities district petition.
Provide
Salida MAC review
of the incorporation feasibility analysis’s scope and assumptions
before finalization, including independence from any assumption that
Modesto is Salida’s water purveyor.
Adopt
a Board resolution
that the County will not negotiate any tax-sharing agreement
transferring Salida Area revenues to any city while Salida
self-governance planning is underway, consistent with the Salida
Area exclusion carried in the County’s master tax agreements since
1996.
Direct
County Counsel and Planning to file comments
on Modesto’s General Plan 2050 EIR addressing: the conflict with
the voter-enacted Salida Community Plan; the Save
Tara
and County
of Inyo
defects above; farmland mitigation adequacy under the BIA
v. Stanislaus
standard; section 56375(a)(8)/SB 244 compliance as to downtown
Salida; and the foreclosure of Salida’s incorporation viability
described in Part VI.
Reaffirm
by resolution
the county-recognized community boundaries and
communities-of-interest status of Salida and Wood Colony, consistent
with California’s recognized Communities of Interest principles
and Stanislaus LAFCO’s separation-of-communities policies.
Support
the Salida CSD formation petition with a full powers menu,
consistent with Part VII.
Preserve
all records
relating to the Section 3.08 fund, the Section 4.03 fee, Section
2.09 compliance, the PLN2019-0079 “draftsman’s error”
determinations, the Ascent and West Yost contracts, the downtown
Salida disadvantaged-community designation, and County–Modesto
communications regarding the Salida area.
We
request a written response within thirty (30) days. We prefer
cooperation, but reserve all rights and remedies, including
enforcement of Elections Code section 9125, taxpayer action under
Code of Civil Procedure section 526a, and writ relief under Code of
Civil Procedure section 1085.
