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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

December 28, 2005

Lagoon foes ponder move

This time last year, Marian Conning was setting up for a final battle with the Vacaville City Council.

The spokeswoman and de-facto leader of Friends of Lagoon Valley, Conning was very familiar to anyone watching cable Channel 26 on a Tuesday night. Her group was fighting a proposed development in Lower Lagoon Valley in southern Vacaville - a development that seemed to clear every hurdle in its way.

In February, the council approved the development plans. Soon after, the Friends group filed suit against the city and developer Triad Communities.

And just a month ago, a Solano County judge ruled against Friends, saying its case, which sought to stop the proposed 1,025-home project completely, had no legal basis.

So Conning's group stands at a crossroads. It has until the end of January to file an appeal of the recent court decision, an action which would be a costly maneuver. Or, the group can end the battle and let the project - as well as a local measure setting an urban limit line around Vacaville - go forward.

No decision has been made, but Conning said it's more likely that the group will file the appeal.

"We are leaning toward it," Conning said. "That's where the group is right now."

She said a steering committee has met several times, both with San Francisco attorney Stuart Flashman and without, to weigh the options. She said group leaders have also called a number of locals who have donated to Friends over the past two years to get their opinion.

Friends wasn't the first group to file suit in opposition of the highly controversial project. In the summer of 2004, the Greenbelt Alliance sued the city because of what it perceived as errors in its environmental approvals.

Bay Area-based Greenbelt Alliance settled with the city and Triad out of court in December, in an agreement which resulted in a 300-home reduction for the project and a condition requiring Triad to fund the placing on a future ballot of a measure establishing an urban limit line around Vacaville's current sphere of influence.

Three months later, the council approved an updated plan. The members of Friends held a sort of silent protest at that meeting, with no one speaking in opposition of the project after numerous previous meetings on the topic had run very long, and with numerous speakers.

About a month after the City Council's approval of the updated plan, Friends filed suit.

Representatives from Greenbelt Alliance have said previously that the urban limit line measure, which would ban development in Upper Lagoon Valley, Vaca Valley and Pleasants Valley for the next 20 years, will wait on the resolution of Friends' suit.

Triad officials have said work will continue on the project's final map, which is expected sometime this spring.

It's not likely Friends will have a big meeting and a vote on whether to appeal before January's end. Conning said the costs and logistics for a group with somewhere around 200 members prevent such a routine. But she emphasized that the general consensus of the group will rule.

"Nobody wants to bang our head against a wall," Conning said. "But I don't think we're there right now."

Tom Hall can be reached at vacaville@thereporter.com.

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