The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors yesterday took the first important step toward adopting a new General Plan, the constitution for land use policy and development for the unincorporated areas of the county. The County's current general plan was adopted in 1980. This update is intended to apply to all the County's unincorporated areas through 2035.
With little fanfare, the Board took action on the Final Environmental Impact Report for the General Plan update. The Board also indicated its intent to approve the general plan, related zoning changes, a climate action plan, and a new Hillside Management Ordinance. County Counsel will now prepare the necessary final documents for the General Plan update and related approvals and bring them back to the Board for final consideration. Once finally approved, all future development in the unincorporated areas of the County must be consistent with the new General Plan.
The General Plan divides the county into 11 planning areas to accommodate a more refined level of planning. Those areas are:
- Antelope Valley Planning Area
- Coastal Islands Planning Area
- East San Gabriel Valley Planning Area
- Gateway Planning Area
- Metro Planning Area
- San Fernando Planning Area
- Santa Clarita Valley Planning Area
- Santa Monica Mountains Planning Area
- South Bay Planning Area
- West San Gabriel Valley Planning Area
- Westside Planning Area
The General Plan also establishes mechanisms to implement capital improvement plans for each of these 11 planning areas. Once funding has been secured and priorities have been set, each capital improvement plan will include studies of necessary infrastructure improvements.
The General Plan also establishes Transit Oriented Districts within one-half mile of a transit station to promote transit-oriented development, or pedestrian-friendly and community-serving uses that encourage walking, bicycling, and transit use.
A sub-element of the plan — the Community Climate Action Plan — includes a greenhouse gas emissions inventory and specific measures to reach the County's greenhouse gas emission reduction goals in the unincorporated areas. The plan includes a 2020 GHG emissions target for the unincorporated areas — a reduction of 11% below 2010 levels to achieve consistency with the State's AB 32 goals and the California Air Resource's Board's Scoping Plan. This reduction is the equivalent to removing 506,000 passenger vehicles from the road each year, reducing gasoline consumption by more than 272 million gallons, and providing renewable energy to power over 121,000 homes. The majority of emissions reductions will come from state-level mandates, and the balance will come from new County policies in five areas: green building and energy; land use and transportation; water conservation and wastewater; waste reduction, reuse and recycling; and land conservation and tree planting.
The plan sets aside additional land in the County with a "Significant Ecological Area" designation. The designation is given to land that contains significant biological resources. Some SEAs include undisturbed or lightly disturbed habitats that support valuable or threatened species, linkages and corridors to promote species movement, and are sized to support sustainable populations of species. Hillside Management Areas, or lands with a natural slope of 25% or greater, are also governed by new policies to incorporate sensitive hillside design measures to preserve the physical integrity and scenic value of the hillsides.
The action taken by the Board included an amendment offered by Supervisor Hilda Solis, requesting that the Regional Planning Commission report back to the Board in 90 days on the viability of including "value capture" policies in future land use planning. Value capture mechanisms, as commonly understood, allow local governments to require land owners to "share" the economic value created by "upzoning" changes to land use entitlements, over and above revenue that may be generated by simple increases property taxes when a new structure is finished. It will be interesting to see how the staff reports back on this issue.
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