The dedication of an entire City Council meeting to the continued public hearing on the compatibility of the new housing development with the Colusa County Airport didn’t get the five members on the dais any closer to making a decision on Tuesday night.
Members of the council said they have been speaking with city, county, and state officials, Airport Land Use commissioners, pilots, and residents, but they will not make a hasty decision to either agree with or overrule findings that some components of the housing project are incompatible with the airport or puts the viability of the airport’s future at risk.
“There is still a lot to sort out,” said Councilwoman Denise Conrado. “We are trying our best to understand.”
The proposed housing project covers about 57 acres in the airport’s influence area, beginning approximately 1,300 feet northwest of the end of Runway 13 and continuing northwest.
Airport Land Use Commission officials said the City of Colusa approved modifications in 2016 to allow Colusa Industrial Properties to eliminate the high-density apartments in order to increase the number of single families homes from 84 to 180, without the city reevaluating the environmental or economic impacts, notifying ALUC of the changes, or complying with all the original mitigation measures outline in the original EIR.
The Colusa County Board of Supervisors and the California Department of Transportation Division of Aeronautics have formally expressed opinions that the housing project – as it is currently proposed – is inconsistent with the airport compatibility plan and that the City of Colusa did not meet California Public Utilities Code notification regulations.
About 10 people who attended Tuesday’s packed public hearing were local pilots (two of whom survived crash landings) or ALUC members.
The pilots, both recreational and agriculture (crop dusters), said increasing the number of homes puts public safety at risk because homes have been built or are proposed to be built too close to the runway.
“Part of the mitigation measures was not to over-tax or impact the airport,” said ALUC Chairman Mike West. “We feel the safety issues here are a big concern.”
Colusa Industrial Properties believes the housing project will not adversely impact airport operations or the ability to provide for the orderly development of the airport in the future
Jake Kley, of Colusa Industrial Properties, said CIP has also committed sufficient open space for agriculture pilots to maneuver, as well as open space (plus the golf course) for emergency landings.
However, Dave Myers, in layman’s terms, likened the city’s proposed flight plan to a 7-foot-wide motor vehicle traveling in a 15-foot lane that is marked by a yellow center line and a white shoulder line.
“You may have plenty of room to maneuver within the lines, but you still don’t build houses on the line,” Myers said.
Myers stressed that the Colusa County Airport does not have a control tower, which means pilots can approach for landing anyway they want.
“When you are up there, you don’t have a white line or a yellow line,” Myers said. “You are just looking out the window.”
While public members told the City Council they do not expect CIP to bulldoze the houses that have already erected or are under construction, they do want the city to stop or slow down in order for the developer to complete a new Environmental Impact Report and follow all mitigation measures outlined in the report, especially since they claim the city has chosen to dismiss many of the 90 mitigation measures outlined in the original report.
Colusa Community Development Director Bryan Stice dispelled the belief that the city is “picking and choosing” what mitigation measures they wanted to follow, because some measures were no longer applicable or practical after CIP’s annexation into the city, such as money for a new jail.
The public also asked for developers to pay the full impact fees established by the City of Colusa and/or put additional funds into an escrow account for future capital improvements. But Colusa officials said that was unnecessary because the city has a different funding mechanism than the county for paying for services and infrastructure, and believe the economic benefit of residential growth in the form of increased sales taxes, gas taxes, and property taxes will provide the mechanism to absorb the impacts. Additionally, homeowners within the housing development will be assessed annually to cover lighting, landscaping, and other site-specific improvements, officials said.
Colusa Mayor Josh Hill has extended the public hearing on the ALUC overrule until 6 PM, Nov. 2.
City officials said they are still reviewing documents and maps that go back some 13 years to when the housing development was first approved, and said they would not succumb to pressure from either Colusa Industrial Properties or city staff to make a hasty or uninformed decision. ■