SLO County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding corrects the record on his Dana Reserve vote | Opinion

On April 24, the SLO Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to approve the controversial Dana Reserve project in Nipomo. The project will allow for the phased development of a 288-acre master-planned community with 1,470 houses and up to 200,000 square feet of commercial space.

I voted against Dana Reserve because I thought the project, as proposed, was out of balance. I also believed there was a win-win to be achieved that would have reduced environmental and community impacts while still building hundreds of new homes — a compromise I heartily advocated for.

In response, some groups have not only maligned me for voting against the project but also the people of Nipomo who advocated in good faith for a compromise. I am writing this to correct the record.

Going back to my first campaign for county supervisor, I’ve always run on a platform of supporting workforce and affordable housing. I believe we have a housing affordability crisis locally, and the county has a significant role in creating housing that our families, seniors and workforce can afford.

To that end, I have consistently advocated to make housing a board priority for two consecutive years. I have also worked diligently with our staff, community partners such as the Home Builders Association and other supervisors on a comprehensive update to the county’s housing policy that will facilitate the construction of more housing, especially affordable housing.

I believe that housing projects need to meet the needs of our community without negatively impacting our quality of life and environment. For every project the board votes on, I evaluate its costs and benefits. I do not believe my role as a county supervisor is to rubber stamp every project that comes before me simply because a developer has invested a lot of time and money into it.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t accept campaign contributions from developers. I want everyone involved in the process — from the general public to developers with projects before the county — to know that I will objectively and fairly consider every development project on its merits alone.

As with all projects I vote on, I objectively evaluated the Dana Reserve project as proposed and concluded there were serious issues that needed to be addressed before it could proceed. Here are a few of the main reasons why I voted against it:

Lack of affordable housing

Only 448 of the 1,470 units (a mere 30%) will count toward our state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation under the very low-income, low-income or moderate-income categories. The remaining 1,022 units will be for above moderate-income earners — a category of housing we have had no trouble building in this county.

Among those, potentially 191 would be affordable at the workforce level when first sold or rented, but not necessarily afterward. I believe a project of this size should have more units affordable to the people who already live and work here, with more guarantees that the units will remain affordable into the future.

Environmental impacts

The project’s Environmental Impact Report identified 19 significant and unavoidable adverse impacts to air quality, biological resources, land use and planning, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, housing and population. Chief among them will be the removal of 3,000 mature oak trees, including those within one of the last remaining old oak groves on the Nipomo Mesa.

Also concerning is the 4,500 people that this project will add to Nipomo, which is admittedly unplanned and unmitigated in the Environmental Impact Report — especially problematic considering Nipomo already struggles disproportionately with traffic and water issues.

These are serious impacts that should be mitigated to the greatest extent possible and only accepted for a project that meaningfully addresses our housing affordability needs. I do not believe the approved project achieves the appropriate balance of affordable housing for the adverse impacts it will create.

Fiscal impacts and public safety

Another area of concern is how the county will cover the costs of providing services to the new residents who will live in the Dana Reserve. After factoring in projected costs and the property taxes the project will generate, the fiscal impact to the county is estimated to range from a potential net positive of about $130,000 to a net loss of about $612,000 annually, assuming the county keeps all of the property taxes it collects.

On June 18, the Board of Supervisors will discuss a property tax sharing agreement requested by the Nipomo Community Services District that, if approved by our board, would result in an annual fiscal loss of $294,000 per year in the best-case scenario and over $1,000,000 per year in the worst-case scenario.

This would mean even less money for fire protection, sheriff’s deputies and other core services that the county will need to provide to these new residents, further straining resources in an already overburdened Nipomo. As it stands right now, at certain times Nipomo and the rest of unincorporated South County have only two sheriff’s deputies on patrol. I do not believe that housing projects must shoulder the burden of solving existing deficiencies, but, at the very least, they should not exacerbate them.

Ultimately, I was not convinced that the benefits of approving a project that contains just 30% of the type of housing that we need the most outweighed the environmental, fiscal and public safety impacts.

I believe a compromise approach — like the community plan developed by the Nipomo Action Committee, South County Advisory Council, and the Nipomo Oak Alliance — was much closer to the type of balanced project that we needed.

That community plan would have built 800-900 homes while preserving at least half of the oak trees slated to be cut down. It also garnered widespread support from the community, demonstrating that the people of Nipomo are willing to accept reasonable development in their community.

Proponents of the Dana Reserve project have claimed that the alternative plan was grossly infeasible. The only data we have to base that off of is an analysis commissioned by the developer that was not peer reviewed or vetted by county staff. As I said during the hearing, the Board of Supervisors could have facilitated a win-win that would have addressed many of these reasonable concerns while still resulting in a feasible project.

I am disappointed that we were unable to achieve that win-win, and that, as a result, the project is now being litigated by the community. If just one other board member had joined Supervisor Bruce Gibson and me during the hearing, I believe we would be well on our way to building a better housing project without the delay of protracted litigation.

In the meantime, I will keep advocating for balanced decision-making and the needs of the people of Nipomo and South County.

This story was originally published June 16, 2024 at 5:00 AM.