The "living systems" of Salida and Wood Colony

 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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Confirm Section 2.09 compliance: no final map recordation or Development Plan approval without the mandated community facilities district petition.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Support the Salida CSD formation petition with a full powers menu, consistent with Part VII.

9. 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.