Salida Gas Station Shenanigans Recap

My comments to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 during public comment about the Salida Gas Station project. Fortunately, three of the supervisors listened to the residents and voted against the project, albeit for varying reasons. Our own District 3 Supervisor was spot on in his comments (watch the video 4:41 minutes).

"Good evening, I'm presenting a recap of facts you might not have heard -

August 2007 – The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors pulls the Salida Now initiative off of the ballot and passes it by 3 votes thus making it the new Salida Community Plan. One of those votes is cast by Jeff Grover, whose 2^nd cousin owns the land within the map area of the Plan which has brought us here tonight.

July 31, 2012 - At the Hammett Road Interchange meeting held at Salida Library Community Room one of the consultants of the study said, “The
problem is, any significant development around the Hammett Road Interchange causes the Hammett interchange to fail in it's ability to service traffic, so it would need to be improved.”

Sometime between 2013-2017 – Water well #299, (Vizcaya's) is shut down for being over the limit in arsenic.

December 7, 2018 - An email between Stanislaus County Deputy Director,Miguel Galvez, to Stanislaus County Planner, Kristin Doud and copied to Stanislaus County Planning Director, Angela Freitas, Galvez writes: "The Grover family is interested in developing their property by the Hammett Road overcrossing. They would like to develop a service station on the 9.6 ac. parcel (APN 003-014-007), it would be temporary until the property is taken for the development of the new interchange."

May 1, 2019 – Email from Miguel Galvez stating that Baldev Grewal came to the planning counter on April 29, 2019 with a proposal to develop the Grover property and is considering several options: 1. Convenience market with gas station 2. commercial parcel map with speculative highway commercial development on four-five parcels 3. propose a parcel map and develop all the properties in phases, with one property to be developed with a hotel. The email also states that Mr. Grewal wishes to move with the General Plan Amendment ASAP then go for a building permit for the convenience market.

September 11, 2019 – Planning files notice with CEQA, mentions the“drafting error” that was unchallenged when the Initiative was passed and unchallenged in the 12 years since.

November 6, 2019 – The Modesto Bee points out that City of Modesto approved water for the project and nowhere in the documents was it mentioned that there would be a “truck stop” or “travel plaza”.

January 28, 2020 - ”I wouldn't have bought a house there” words spoken by a Stanislaus county employee at Salida MAC when asked if he would want to live near the various developments being planned around Hammett and Pirrone. At least five Vizcaya residents sold their homes before this gas station is built. Some disclosed what was going in to the new owners and some did not.

March 3, 2021 – City of Modesto Associate Engineer sends an email to Miguel Galvez stating that the city has denied water service to Brinca's Lark Landing Project citing insufficient fire flow to serve the property at full build out. They cite the contaminated well serving the Vizcaya neighborhood that was shut down.

March 23, 2021 – The split vote at Salida MAC – a motion is made to vote against the gas station project and the newest MAC member who votes nay on the motion does not disclose that he became employed not even a month prior by the same realty company handling the gas station land. The other person to vote nay on the motion is a Stanislaus County employee and it is brought up at the meeting that the county will receive a 75% discount purchasing land for a new storm drain basin if this project is approved.

May 2021 – Moore Biologics is hired by applicants to do environmental assessment and says there's no evidence of Swainson's Hawk nor burrows for a Burrowing Owl at the site.

Burrow at site

June 5, 2021 – An amateur ornithologist photographed a Swainson's Hawk and a nest within one mile of the site.

July 13, 2021 – I sent the Board of Supervisors a photograph of burrows on the site.

February 15, 2022 – In my comments to the Stanislaus County Planning Commission, I refer to sections of the Salida Community Plan that state it cannot be changed and institutes a Community Facilities District. There may a provision in the plan for piecemeal development but that does not mean the rest of the plan can be cherry-picked. Also want to note that potential natural gas fueling has been added and still no EIR. Planning Commission votes 4-3 to oppose the project. The applicant gets off easy if he only has to pay 7-8 years of Mello Roos taxes.

February 22, 2022 – Salida MAC votes unanimously to oppose the project. After the meeting, the developer says he should just sell the land to Travel America which is a truck stop company bringing us right back to where we began.

To sum up the timeline, I oppose this piecemeal-development-truck-stop-or-gas-station-with-two-types-of-fuel-not-at-other-gas-stations-in-the-county-but-could-wipe-Vizcaya-from-the-map-like-in-San-Bruno-or-the-hydrogen-station-explosion-in-Norway-still-with-no-EIR-for-the-threatened-status-species. The county has gone out of it's way to help this project get approved, whether it's ignoring conflicts of MAC members, not requiring an EIR or other requirements of the Salida Community Plan, bypassing Salida MAC before the Planning Commission, and the list goes on. You have heard many reasons tonight to oppose the project but if you need more then County policy 19 and 20, provide you with the means as well as Board of Supervisors policy 10.46.020."

Summary of the Vizcaya posts

 I didn't realize just how many times I've addressed the issue of development around Vizcaya until I looked back at past posts. Vizcaya residents especially need to read these posts so they know the history and issues involving the land around their neighborhood.

GROVER FAMILY - Our former Stanislaus County District 3 Supervisor, Jeff Grover, was one of the three votes which passed the Salida Community Plan in 2007. JEFF GROVER WOULD HAVE BEEN CONFLICTED FROM VOTING ON THE PLAN IF HIS COUSIN, MARK GROVER (owner of Grover Landscaping) HAD SIGNED A DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT. It's NOT a "drafting error" that they just suddenly noticed after 14 years when Mark Grover wants to sell his land for development. The land has NOT SOLD yet as you can see by this out-of-boundary water service agreement that Mark and Lorraine Grover have requested on the Modesto City Council agenda for TODAY, Tuesday, April 13, 2021.

Read:

When the past comes back to haunt you

STANISLAUS COUNTY - A Stanislaus County employee even truthfully stated at a past meeting when asked, that he "Wouldn't have bought a house there" meaning in Vizcaya and knowing what development would be put in by the homes. The county machine is churning like a steamroller towards Vizcaya. A county employee on the Salida Municipal Advisory Council voted in favor of the project despite three meetings where Salida residents were unanimously opposed. Why does the county want this project so much? Besides being a large tax

Current Vizcaya drainage basin in 2021

generator, the county will get a new drainage basin for Vizcaya at "75% off" the land price. The highly questionable and extreme lengths the county seems to be going to in order to push this project through include allowing the votes of a county employee and a new MAC member who became a real estate agent on March 1, 2021 FOR THE VERY SAME COMPANY HANDLING THE SALE OF THE LAND and he DID NOT DISCLOSE THIS NEW JOB publicly at the MAC meeting nor conflict himself out of voting.  The county machine is also doing a very poor job of notifying Vizcaya residents of what is transpiring including planning to adopt a Negative CEQA document on the project when it was only announced at the March 2021 Salida MAC meeting that hydrogen fueling tanks have been added to the project. There is no mention of the hydrogen tanks in the Salida Gas Station Project.

Read:

"I wouldn't have bought a house there" in Salida's Vizcaya neighborhood

A Conflicted MAC

The due diligence of transparency, taxes, and development

Salida residents, and especially those in Vizcaya, need to SPEAK UP! You need to write to planning@stancounty.com and contact all five county supervisors. You need to attend meetings when you can, even if it's virtual on Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Call them on the mat for these things. 

Sign the petition to support Vizcaya and share the link. Time is running out.

The due diligence of transparency, taxes, and development

My Public Comment to the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, March 3, 2020 at 9 am:

"Good morning, just to quickly address the email request I sent you to cease the practice of private meetings with MAC members: while it may be in compliance to the Brown Act, there's no way for the public to independently gauge the County's due diligence if there's no record via public attendance or minutes to record what transpired. I wrote to all of you because I don't know if this is something new or something that you all do, but I only know it because Salida MAC members have told me and my supervisor mentioned it at the last MAC meeting. The solution should not be that the supervisor stops mentioning it because that makes it all the less transparent; it just would be better to cease the practice and shine the light of transparency on all governmental meetings.

I do think, with much thanks going to Salida MAC, that the County HAS been (with the exception of the closed door meetings) demonstrating appropriate due diligence in regards to the proposed CSA10 tax increase meetings. My honest opinion is that $33 a year is not a big deal, but I am against the tax in principle. The principle being that it seems the County's first solution for any shortfall is to raise taxes on the constituency as opposed to finding another solution. I do know that the County did look at sub-contracting the landscaping work out and that prevailing wage killed that option. However, I don't think the County has exhausted all other options like applying for grants to xeriscape around the developments or reapportioning our property taxes to include more for park maintenance. 

And I take exception to County employees referring to those, like myself, who do not live in CSA 10 tax homes as “freeloaders”. Just because the County decided to raid CSA10 for my neighborhood's storm drain maintenance at some point between 2013 and now, does not turn my neighborhood into “freeloaders”. One of the biggest reasons I chose my house

Some CSA10 Parks & Streetscape budget for 2012-2013

is because it DID'NT have Mello Roos or CSA taxes on it. My realtor didn't say, “Well be prepared because in 27 years, the County is going to put a tax on you that you didn't sign up for, unlike the people in Mello Roos homes. In 2013, I asked Matt Machado what covered my storm drain maintenance and he replied, “the gas tax”. So yes, $33 isn't a big deal right now, but it all adds up in the long run. I think that if anyone deserves a tax increase in Salida, it's our fire department and the County should exhaust every available option including grants before proceeding with this CSA10 increase.

Now onto the topic of Vizcaya: it's appalling to expect the working people of Salida to plan to attend a neighborhood meeting with only 6-8 days notice which is what you are doing to them since you just announced the date yesterday. Why can't you give them two weeks notice at least? What's the rush? The short notice ensures a low attendance and that is poor due diligence for a county which is “striving to be the best in America”. Give them a second meeting at least for the people who cannot make the first one. And perhaps on a Saturday. 

I was reading the Salida Community Plan (SCP) over the weekend and it struck me what a strange limbo Salida is in with it. It says that “...one of the primary purposes of the Amendment Area is to provide for a mix of land uses that can facilitate the Salida Community's financial and fiscal self-sufficiency” but if you allow these two gas stations and other businesses the loophole of a “drafting error” to not be included in the SCP then that hurts the existing community. I believe that Jeff Grover had good intentions for us with the SCP but I one hundred percent disagree that a man who is a building contractor would have allowed a "drafting error" to proceed for 13 years, especially when it affects his cousins' land. Put yourself in the shoes of the people who live in Vizcaya, which also does include County employees: would YOU choose to buy a home by two gas stations and two hotels? What will that do to their homes' resale value? 

I can tell you how the potential of a 4-story hotel impacted MY neighborhood: when a home went up for sale across the street, two buyers backed out just from word that a hotel would be built on the lot behind us and this home didn't even border it! No one wants to walk out of their house and see hotels, or live with the noise, air, and light pollution of gas stations.

I also ask that when Planning does the environmental studies, to do them by a place with at least two gas stations to measure the pollutants that will be influencing the air quality around the homes. Thank you for your consideration."

"I wouldn't have bought a house there" in Salida's Vizcaya neighborhood

My comments during the public comment period at the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors 9 am meeting on February 25, 2020:

”I wouldn't have bought a house there” are words that have haunted me since the January Salida MAC meeting. They were spoken by a county employee; an honest answer to a Salida resident who asked him if he would want to live near the various developments being planned around Hammett and Pirrone.

“I wouldn't have bought a house there” begs the question then – is that because we cannot trust the County to not allow development conducive to homes? Checking what is to be built in empty lots and farmers' fields around your home is not something most people think to do, myself included. When I purchased my home 27 years ago I did not check the county zoning to see what was going to be built in the vacant lot behind my home. I was absolutely horrified last year when plans were circulating for a 4-story hotel and that's not something that would have surfaced either had I checked then.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with Supervisor DeMartini about my neighborhood and he also honestly remarked, “They should never have allowed homes to be built there, it should all be industrial and commercial.” I was surprised when he said it, but the more I think about it, I have to agree. As I've mentioned in recent public comment here, I can hear Freeway 99, even with my windows closed – that's how close I am to it.

But it is what it is and there are thousands of homes on the east side of Salida. We've been pretty fortunate as long as I've lived there with one or two exceptions, the businesses built along Pirrone have been pretty quiet and not a nuisance to their neighbors.

But that will all change now if you approve the planned developments at Pirrone and Hammett. And here's why you should not: It is a stupid use of that land. The developer does not even have a gas station committed – he's trying to sell it to 7/11 or Circle K. There are gas stations at Pelandale, Kiernan and Ripon, we do not need one there too that will cause noise, light and air pollution on the Vizcaya neighborhood. The other projects include a fast food type restaurant, two hotels, and a mini-storage. I don't know how close the hotels are to the homes, but if they are close, that's a permanent invasion of the homeowners privacy. And a mini-storage on that prime freeway frontage location is an insane waste of land! We already have two mini-storage businesses in Salida and one is a ½ mile down on Pirrone.

Modesto has been complaining for years that they don't have anywhere to build a business park on 99 and here's this beautiful pristine area that would be perfect for that or even better, my husband's idea that he wrote to you in an e-mail about – create tourism with a San Antonio River Walk-type development. If you haven't already heard, Madera County is building one along the San Joaquin River. A San Antonio River Walk in Salida would bring much more tourism to the county than shooting pumpkins out of catapults or the Frank Raines ATV billboard currently up in Salida.

And that's nonsense that it was a “drafting error” and not included in the Salida Community Plan. Jeff Grover would not have been able to vote on the Plan if his cousin's land was included and oh, they just all of sudden call it a drafting error when after 13 years they haven't complained nor was it corrected in the County's recent General Plan update.

To sum it up, the buck stops with you – you are the ones with the binding votes. Put yourselves in our shoes and don't vote to make Salida just another ho hum gas station exit next to a neighborhood where you or your employees wouldn't buy a house there."

When the past comes back to haunt you

According to Lowell H. Beachler's book, "Wood Colony District", the first Grovers to settle in Wood Colony were Ira and Maggie Grover, who moved to the area in 1918. They bought a farm on Shoemake and are buried in the Wood Colony Cemetery. Several Grover families descended from Ira and Maggie's four children still live in Wood Colony today. 

One of their descendants, Jeff Grover, served on the very first Salida Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) board when it was formed in 1984. He was then elected to represent our community on the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. In 2007, Jeff Grover pulled the Salida Now initiative off the ballot and was one of three "yes" votes needed to pass it into the new Salida Community Plan. 

The Grovers in Salida and Wood Colony are related. Jeff's cousin owns a landscaping business with locations in Salida and Modesto. And the Grover family owns a large tract of property off of Pirrone near Hammett.

And this is where the past has come to haunt us in the present and future.

I honestly believe that Jeff Grover tried to improve Salida by replacing the old Salida Community Plan (SCP) with the Salida Now initiative because it expanded Salida's boundaries and called for more beneficial aspects for the community like a recreational riverfront parkway along the Stanislaus River. He didn't know the economic recession was coming that caused the developer to pull out of the project and would result in Salida being frozen in time (2007) ever since.

But here's the rub: Jeff Grover would have been conflicted out of voting on the Salida Community Plan if his family was named anywhere in the SCP document - if they derived benefit - if they signed a Developer Agreement (DA). Oh, they most certainly would benefit if the SCP were activated - they own land in both areas of Salida - by Hammett and the landscaping business on Ladd and Stoddard. So now this is why the Stanislaus County Planning Department is saying it was "draftman's error" that the Grover Family Properties land was included in the SCP map. It's no accident it's there, it's a matter of convenience to now remove it because the Grover family wishes to develop it. It's a free country, so a landowner can sell their land at any time. But the benefit is derived when they can sell their land for commercial land prices, as it's now zoned in the SCP rather than selling for agricultural land prices.

And what they plan to sell their land for will create the tenth level of Hades for Salida. The truck stop/travel plaza they propose to put there will be a magnet for crime and

Grover Family Properties land with Vizcaya neighborhood
in background. Salida, California - November 2019

vagrancy that Salida does not have the law enforcement coverage to handle. In neighboring Ripon, the police told a Salida resident that 84% of their crime calls result from the truck stops located at Jack Tone Road. 

Even worse than the horrendous criminal impact upon Salida is the fact that the truck stop/travel plaza will be located just feet from the Vizcaya residential neighborhood. There is NO BUFFER that could be installed to protect this neighborhood from the 24-hour onslaught of light pollution, noise pollution and air pollution, let alone the criminal element just beyond a cinder block wall with no gate to the neighborhood. 

Additionally, the water well in Vizcaya was shut down several years ago due to being over the allowed level of arsenic contaminates. The way the well system was explained to me is the water for Vizcaya will be drawn from the next closest well. The only time it brings in surface water from the City of Modesto system is when there is high usage (like during the summer months). A truck stop is generally a high water user so will draw more from the system to the business in addition to creating the possibility of contaminating the water for the Vizcaya neighborhood. I say this because it is already happening at the truck stop in Ripon. 

Which brings up another glaring point on why allowing this project would be the epitome of bad planning: NOWHERE DO YOU FIND TRUCK STOPS BUILT NEXT TO NEIGHBORHOODS!  Just look at existing truck stops: Ripon, Madera, everywhere between here and Montana (as a Salida resident pointed out from a recent road trip), municipalities DO NOT build truck stops by neighborhoods for all the aforementioned reasons given. They know to provide the natural buffer of distance to protect the residents from the various pollutants and the criminal elements. 

Our community needs to continue to oppose this planned atrocity. Sign the petition, write letters in opposition and send to the Stanislaus County Planning Department.

Grover Family, I implore you - don't do this to Salida. Don't do this to your longtime neighbors. Develop your land for something quiet that will buffer the Vizcaya neighborhood just like all the other businesses currently on Pirrone.