Articles

For the first time ever, the three counties that surround the Santa Ana River have joined forces with 14 cities and the private sector to complete the crest-to-coast trail.

What are the viable options to protect the safety of neighborhoods where foreclosed homes are abandoned and become unsightly invitations to unlawful activity and sources of health risks?

The legislative year was dominated by a three-way battle among the governor, Democrats and Republicans over how to close a $24 billion deficit spanning two budget cycles.

Voters are overwhelmingly reinvesting in their local governments, local infrastructure and local services by approving ballot measures that authorize tax increases and bond issues for public…

What does the two-thirds requirement mean for California’s budget process?

Protecting local control requires flexibility and responsiveness to the needs and desires of the electorate on issues that demand substantive, thoughtful public policy – without sacrificing local…

Increasing fuel prices and tightening budget constraints have many local officials exploring a transition to fuel-efficient and alternative fuel vehicles.

Communities are increasingly embracing green building measures.

Work that preciously took up to two days to complete is now finished in a matter of minutes, thanks to software that integrates computerized maintenance management systems with geographic information.

By promoting urban-centered growth and restoring contaminated areas to viable use, redevelopment helps preserve the environment and open space while reducing sprawl and commute times.

Cities are increasingly using regulations and incentives to develop new greener building practices that reduce development’s short-and long-term environmental impacts.

Laurence Wiener is an attorney with Richards, Watson & Gershon and can be reached at LWiener@rwglaw.com.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was conceived in the 1970s to promote the goal of ensuring that local government decision-makers understand the environmental impacts of their decisions. To implement this goal, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research developed CEQA implementation guidelines, which stated that Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) should be no more than 150 pages and written in plain language that can be readily understood by decision-makers and the public.

Brian Heaton is former communications specialist for the League. Bill Higgins is the League’s housing and land use legislative representative and can be reached at bhiggins@cacities.org.

At first glance, drafting a new housing element may not seem that complicated. The housing element requires a city to plan for its fair share of housing for each income category: very low, low, moderate and above moderate. The city must identify the land where this housing will be located. To the extent that communities cannot complete this inventory, they must develop a program so that all the land will be identified and appropriately zoned by the end of the five-year planning period.

California’s catastrophic fires raise a number of questions about fire safety and land use planning.

The City of Hemet won an Award for Excellence for this project in the Housing Programs and Innovations category of the 2007 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program. For more information about the award program, visit www.cacities.org/helenputnam.

Does your city want to help its residents understand how local government works? Are you frustrated when people complain about how city revenues are raised and spent? Do you wish you had an easy way to explain the Brown Act and Public Records Act to the public and your newly elected and appointed officials?

Two new programs for California local governments leverage current sources of funding to finance road improvement projects.

The 2007-08 Legislature is a special class because former local government officials now constitute a majority in both the Senate and Assembly. When these new members took office in January 2007, they brought fresh ideas and a local perspective to statewide policy-making.

Joshua W. Shaw is executive director of the California Transit Association (CTA). He can be reached at josh@shawyoder.org. For more information about CTA, visit www.caltransit.org .

Public transit vehicles carry millions of Californians, providing traffic congestion relief and vital access for residents. But state policy-makers are not investing adequately in public transit. Since FY 2001, they have shifted, loaned or just plain cut $2.94 billion in transit funding.

This column is a service of the Institute for Local Government (ILG) Ethics Project, which offers resources on public service ethics for local officials. For more information, visit www.ca-ilg.org/trust. ILG thanks the following individuals for their contributions to this article: Buck Delventhal, San Francisco City Attorney’s Office; Joe Pannone, Aleshire and Wynder; Richard P. Shanahan, Bartkiewicz, Kronick & Shanahan; and Louis Leone, Stubbs & Leone.

QUESTION

As the chief executive for a local government agency, I have seen elected officials become bogged down in the details of various ethics laws. Instead of examining the proper thing to do in a specific situation, the focus shifts to whether a certain course of action will get an official in trouble with the law.

Eva Spiegel is communications director for the League and can be reached at espiegel@cacities.org.

Proposition 90, the eminent domain reform initiative on the November 2006 ballot, was a Trojan horse measure that included provisions unrelated to eminent domain. Prop. 90 would have cost California taxpayers billions of dollars annually and would have eroded basic laws protecting the state’s economy, environment and communities. The measure would have also undermined cities’ land use authority and local control. It was part of an effort to capitalize on public outrage over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelov. City of New London, which affirmed its previous ruling that government can use eminent domain to acquire private property for economic development purposes.

Dan Carrigg is legislative director for the League and can be reached at carriggd@cacities.org.

In his 2007 State of the State address, Governor Schwarzenegger called for an era of “post-partisanship.” Recently reelected, the governor was eager to build upon the legislative achievements of 2006, which included voters’ approval of the state infrastructure package, the enactment of AB 32 (Nuñez) climate change legislation, the increase of the minimum wage and other accomplishments. The governor maintained that 2006 proved politicians could set aside their differences and tackle California’s problems.

The City of Santa Maria won an Award for Excellence in the Health and Wellness Programs category of the 2007 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program. For more about the award program, visit www.cacities.org/helenputnam.

Global warming has the potential to threaten California’s economy, environment, communities and residents in many different ways. This article presents an overview of these impacts.

Maria Rivera is an associate justice for the First District Court of Appeal, Division Four, where she has served since January 2002. From January 1997 to January 2002, she was a judge of the Superior Court in Contra Costa County. She can be reached at Maria.Rivera@jud.ca.gov.

This article is excerpted and condensed from a speech given by Justice Rivera to the League’s City Attorneys Conference on May 3, 2007, in Monterey, California.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A good public servant becomes so at a high cost of personal sacrifice. We need such men and women; when we find them we owe them our gratitude and, above all, our respect.”

Special thanks to the following California Association of Public Information Officials members who contributed to the on-site conference newsletter and this article, and helped staff the conference media room: Ann Erdman, public information officer, Pasadena; Brad Rovanpera, public information officer, Walnut Creek; Judy Franz, retired deputy city manager, Santa Monica; Mark Mazzaferro, public information officer, Vacaville; Mike Maxfield, public information officer, Yorba Linda; Scott Summerfield, principal, SAE Communications; Sue Schlerf, assistant city manager, Reno, Nev.; and Tom Manheim, public outreach manager, San Jose.

Rod Diridon Jr. was a founding member of both the Santa Clara Campaign Finance Reform Committee (chair) and the Ethics Ordinance Committee. He is a former two-term city council member and currently the city auditor and elected city clerk for the City of Santa Clara. He can be reached at rdiridon@ci.santa-clara.ca.us.

The City of Santa Clara won the Grand Prize in the Enhancing Public Trust, Ethics and Community Involvement category of the 2007 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program. For more about the award program, visit www.cacities.org/helenputnam.

For many, “ethical government” is an oxymoron. At all levels of government, too many disappointments in promising candidates have made voters skeptical and cynical about the ability of government officials to achieve a high professional standard of ethics.

Kourtney Burdick is the League’s deputy general counsel. She can be reached at kburdick@cacities.org.

In response to the rising cost of living in California, 21 cities have enacted living wage ordinances (LWOs). Included in this group are large cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland; small cities such as Sonoma and Fair-fax; and medium-sized cities like Berkeley.¹ These ordinances vary in some respects, but in general, their purpose is the same: They set a wage requirement that is higher — often much higher — than federal and state minimum wages.²

Arnold Schwarzenegger is governor of California.

As everyone reading this magazine knows, a solid infrastructure system is the key to a strong economy and a high quality of life.

The James Irvine Foundation and the Community Technology Foundation of California have provided financial support to the Institute for Local Government to help increase local governments’ capacity to more successfully implement inclusive public involvement processes. The goal is to help cities and counties successfully involve their diverse communities in civic engagement efforts. With an initial focus on the Central Valley, participating cities to date include Lodi, Madera, Selma and Stockton.

A heads up for city councils on new requirements related to their city’s financial statements.

Ellen Hanak is an associate director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California. Her recent report (co-authored by Jay Lund, William Fleenor, Richard Howitt, Jeffrey Mount and Peter Moyle), Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is available online at www.ppic.org.

On any given day, a visitor to California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta might see acres of verdant cropland, meandering boaters, recreational anglers and some Swainson’s hawks or sandhill cranes. Being there, it’s hard to imagine that this peaceful region is in deep trouble and that its fate will have serious consequences for residents throughout the state.

Tracy Jarman is chief of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department and can be reached at tjarman@sandiego.gov.

San Diego Medical Services Enterprise (SDMSE) is a public-private partnership formed as a limited liability company between the City of San Diego’s Fire-Rescue Department and Rural/Metro, a private ambulance company. Since its founding in 1997, SDMSE’s paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) have worked hand-in-hand with city fire department responders on the scene of more than 90,000 emergency calls per year.

Steve Hofbauer is a council member for the City of Palmdale and chair of the League’s Gang and Graffiti Subcommittee. He can be reached at shofbauer@cityofpalmdale.org.

Gang activity is on the rise throughout California and the nation. In Los Angeles alone, gang membership is estimated at 40,000. FBI and California Department of Justice statistics show that violent crime rose 3.7 percent nationally and 4.1 percent in California in the first six months of 2006 compared with the same time period in 2005. And according to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s National Youth Gang Survey, in 2004, approximately one-fourth of all homicides in 171 cities with populations of more than 100,000 were considered gang related. These numbers exclude Los Angeles and Chicago, where more than half of homicides involved gangs.

The City of Palmdale won an Award for Excellence in the Public Safety category of the 2007 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program. For more information, visit www.cacities.org/helenputnam.

The City of Santa Rosa won an Award for Excellence in the Public Safety category of the 2007 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence program. For more information, visit www.cacities.org/helenputnam.

The nuts and bolts of winning community support for affordable housing is the subject of a new Institute for Local Government (ILG) publication, Building Public Support for Affordable Housing: A Toolbox for California Officials.

An alarming trend is appearing in California’s communities: We are losing our young adults (age 20 to 34). It’s not surprising that when young couples decide to start a family and create a home, they look outside the state for an affordable place to live and work. This is happening throughout the nation in areas where home prices and rents have far out paced take-home pay. Not coincidentally, these same communities have not allowed much in the way of new home production in the past 20 years. Meanwhile, young adults are finding them selves priced out of their hometowns and are forced to move farther away from their families.

4 Questions to Consider

Last year, my hometown of Los Angeles was awarded the dubious distinction of being the most unequal city in the country. The gap between L.A.’s richest and poorest residents is greater than in any other U.S. city. In 1970, according to the Brookings Institute, 52 percent of L.A. neighborhoods were middle income. By 2000, that dropped to 28 percent, ranking lowest among the top 100 metropolitan areas in the country. In the process, Los Angeles had achieved an economic inequality index equivalent to that of Mexico.

Eva Spiegel is communications director for the League and managing editor of Western City. She can be reached at espiegel@cacities.org.

In just five years, the Grassroots Regional Network (GRN) has become an integral part of the League’s effort to restore and protect local control for California cities. This innovative program put 15 regional representatives in communities throughout the state in 2002 to increase cities’ impact on the legislative process and statewide ballot measures. The GRN strengthens the connection needed between city officials and the League to accomplish common objectives. The League has a collaborative relationship with city officials, working to help them focus their message and ensuring an effective role for them in shaping public policy that affects cities at the state and national levels.

More than 250 private firms, nonprofit organizations and public agencies at the Exposition will showcase new products and innovative programs that deliver results for cities. Explore the Expo for new ideas and information that you can take back to your city and use right away.

City leaders wanted to give kids options for recreation and alternatives to getting in trouble.

The City of Carlsbad, recognizing an opportunity to create a connection between the municipal govern ment and residents through its children, developed the CityStuff elementary school curriculum for third-graders, who were not being taught about local government in the public schools.