Here we go again with Modesto trying to annex Salida's land

The land that Modesto's Costco sits on used to be in Salida's tax base. When Modesto annexed it into their city, they agreed to split the sales tax with Stanislaus County 50/50. Can you imagine just how much money Salida would have in tax revenue alone just from Costco? And that doesn't even take into account the other retail stores on that land. Then in 2009, Modesto annexed the land that Kaiser Hospital was built on which removed more tax base from Salida. The loss of tax base has hurt Salida to the point of having to contract out for fire coverage. And the wheels are in motion for it to happen again.

I wrote about the proposed Scannell warehouse project in 2024, but at the time, it was being developed through Stanislaus County. According to a March 5, 2025 article in the Modesto Bee, the developer chose to apply to the city as a "quicker route to get the project approved and built." Why?

Perhaps the developer thinks the project will receive utilities more quickly than they would through the county. But they may have forgotten that every single Measures A & M vote to extend sewer service north of Kiernan into Salida Community Plan area has been voted down by Modesto voters. See the red area on the city's map here.

Another reason to push for a "quicker route" might be the rationale to get it built before anyone notices it and fights it. Many people note the empty Jack Rabbit warehouse on Kiernan and Tully, not to mention the many other warehouses sitting empty in the region. And the commercial environment for another sprawling Scannells warehouse is an unfriendly one at the state and community levels. Legislation was introduced to inhibit new warehouses in California. Scannells has had similar warehouse proposals rejected in other states. Additionally, a new California law slated to begin in 2026 could impact this Scannells project due to neighboring Gregori High School and nearby homes.

You can respond to the Notice of Preparation by March 27, 2025 and watch the March 20th online scoping meeting from 3-4pm. It's also recommended to attend the Salida Municipal Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 7pm at the Salida Library Community Room. 

Development in Salida should mean tax revenue for Salida

 (NOTE: These comments were shared during public comment by Katherine Borges at the Tuesday, August 8, 2023 Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting.)

Several years ago during the time I served as Chair of Salida MAC, I asked former Public Works Director, Matt Machado for sidewalks in downtown Salida and his reply was, “If we do it for you, we have to do it for everyone.” I will note here that the Airport and Robertson Road communities are now being given sidewalks by Stanislaus County.

There's a development project currently progressing that is slated to be built on land within the boundaries of the Salida Community Plan. The Scannells warehouse project which would be built on the northwest corner of Kiernan and

Dale. Another project along Pelandale called “Kiernan Business Park South”. Dave Romano is the lead on both projects, and it may have slipped his mind that he signed a development agreement in 2007 for the Salida Community Plan area project which is still in force until 2032.

The Salida Community Plan requires a programmatic EIR and these are my supervisor's comments from the March 2022 Supervisor board meeting regarding the Salida gas station project. To quote Terry: “It's wrong to treat one applicant and all other applicants one way and all the people who've come in here and this one 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.” End quote. That needs to apply to Mr. Romano as well.

The development pressure on Salida is strong. There was also a housing developer who was considering a project within SCP lands. The biggest sticking point with developing within the Salida Community Plan has always been the programmatic EIR because at the time the initiative was passed, it was just one developer who was going to oversee the whole project. Dave Romano is not going to want to pay for the whole thing if he's not developing the entire area. So the solution here is for Stanislaus County to do the EIR in-house just like you did for the Crows Landing Industrial Business Park. Remember the “If we do it for you, we have to do it for everyone”?

Additionally, Crows Landing Industrial Park and even Kiernan Business Park South both have Community Services Districts and the county will need to create one for Salida too because if these projects were only county developed, then you would be creating another county island like Beard Industrial Park which will NEVER be annexed into the City of Modesto. Salida deserves the revenue from any development. If Salida had the tax sharing from previous lands like Costco that were annexed out of our districts, then we would have had the funding to keep our fire department. If we had the tax revenue from Costco, we could install our own sidewalks and not have to wait years while the county installs sidewalks everywhere else first. If you want development in Salida, then do the EIR and CSD. It is what the Salida Community Plan calls for and it's the right thing to do for the Community of Salida.

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.

Modesto Bee Op Ed: Modesto trying to take bite out of Salida

BY KATHERINE BORGES
11/24/2014 4:00 AM  UPDATED: 11/25/2014 1:55 PM

The first time Modesto City Councilman John Gunderson attended a Salida Municipal Advisory Council meeting back on Aug. 28, 2012, he was there to answer questions that Salidans had about the proposed annexation to Modesto.

If Salida were annexed, it would become part of Gunderson’s district.

Responding to a question regarding the annexation time frame, Gunderson said: “Nothing is going to happen for years anyway, other than maybe the nibble, nibble on your outskirts. That’s possible if the economy gets better.”

In the two years since, Salida residents have resoundingly decried Modesto’s annexation attempts.

A few weeks ago, in September, Gunderson appeared on the “Dave Bowman Show” on KFIV 1360 AM, and when asked whether Salida should be annexed, Gunderson replied he was against annexing “Salida proper.”

When Bowman pressed him to define “Salida proper,” Gunderson revealed there’s “a section being considered” and “the property owner seems to want to be with the city so he can develop.”

It appears the time for nibbling on Salida has arrived.

This proposed nibbling would occur on land Stanislaus County designated for Salida in the 2007 update of the Salida Community Plan. It’s north of Kiernan, west of Dale Road and east of Stoddard. Because this land isn’t within the current boundaries of Salida’s urbanized area, it might be more difficult for Salida residents to stop this raid.

Past annexations have put Costco and the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center into Modesto, nibbling away thousands of acres from Salida’s future tax base. Since purchasing the Del Este Water Co. in the mid-1990s, which supplied residents of Salida, Modesto has withheld supplying water to new development in Salida unless they get to annex the land into the city. Despite approving out-of-boundary water service agreements for other Del Este-served communities like Del Rio, Modesto’s quid pro quo is land-for-water from Salida.

If Modesto is once again allowed to extort land from Salida, will Modesto’s leap across Kiernan open Modesto to further legal ramifications? The encroachment north of Kiernan is Modesto’s effort to surround Salida, in effect an acre-by-acre creep toward turning Salida into an unincorporated county island. Not only is the creation of county islands prohibited by state law, the city of Modesto has already been sued with regard to county islands in the past for a practice known as “municipal underbounding.”

Coined by urban geographers, municipal underbounding describes annexation policies and practices in which cities grow around islands of low-income minority communities, often in favor of annexing predominantly white communities. Modesto holds the distinction of being one of the few cities in the United States to already have had a municipal underbounding lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in 2004 on behalf of four neighborhoods which, unlike Salida, lack basic amenities such as sewer service. Granted, the city and county are slowly working toward annexing these communities into the city. But does “working toward” warrant a land grab on the tax base of a neighboring community?

It’s time for Modesto’s elected representatives to be held accountable. The unincorporated communities should be annexed first before the city casts beyond its borders. It’s time for Modesto to end its status quo abuse of Salida – end the water extortion, stop the annexations, no more nibbling.

Be a good neighbor, Modesto.

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The Modesto Bee does not keep many of its articles nor opinion pieces online indefinitely so as the author of this piece, I am republishing it with thanks and credit to the Modesto Bee for its original publication.

The article's original link:
http://www.modbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article4059497.html#storylink=cpy