Attachment 15
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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5757 PACIFIC AVENUE \ SUITE 222 \ STOCKTON, CA 95207 \ PH 209.472.7700 Steven A. Herum
[email protected]
March 18, 2025
BY ELECTRONIC-MAIL
Ms. Celeste Fiore, Chairperson of Manteca Planning Commission and Honorable Members of the Manteca Planning Commission
City Hall
1001 West Center Street
Manteca, California 95337
[email protected]
Re: Union Ranch Project
ANX 21-034, PRZ 21-035, SDJ 20-142, GPA 25-01, DAA 25-01
Dear Chairperson Fiore and Members of the Manteca Planning Commission:
This office represents Delicato Family Vineyards (Delicato). Delicato owns and operates one of the five largest wineries in the United States and employs over 850 people. The main operation is located in the Manteca area providing important family wage jobs to numerous Manteca residents and contributing substantially to the local economy by buying goods and services from local businesses and professional companies. Delicato’s direct and indirect impact to Manteca’s economy is substantial.
Accordingly, Delicato holds a vital and substantial interest in working collaboratively with the City of Manteca to make sure development decisions achieve Manteca’s objectives for a vibrant jobs/housing balance and sustainable growth without unjustly damaging Delicato’s operation or otherwise impairing its ability to continue to operate the winery.
To attain a vibrant jobs/housing balance it is vital for planning and development decisions to protect significant job creating businesses such as the Delicato winery. Delicato provides the following comments about the Union Ranch project.1
1. Inadequate Treatment and Mitigation of Traffic Impacts.
Manteca continues approving massive residential projects without sufficient traffic mitigation measures. Current mitigation measures are insufficient in at least two major ways. First, insufficient funds are collected from residential projects to fund roadway improvements designed to lessen impacts caused by introducing significant traffic increases to already congested streets.
Second, deferred timing of paying traffic circulation improvement funds prevents the City from
1 In addition, Delicato incorporates by this reference as though set forth in full the October 14, 2022 comment letter concerning the Union Ranch project, except for sections IV and VII of the letter, that was submitted to Lea C.
Simvoulakis, Planning Manager,.
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constructing needed traffic improvements contemporaneously with the buildout of residential projects.
A substantial delay between creating more traffic from new homes and the corresponding time when mitigating circulation improvements are funded and constructed results in needless traffic congestion and lengthy delays at major intersections.2 Simply stated, the current process fails to lessen traffic impacts in a reasonable period of time. It means unmitigated significant traffic impacts remains unaddressed for an unknown period of time.
To address this serious problem the City and Delicato agreed the City would embrace new land use rules intended to achieve a temporal relationship between adding more cars to roads and funding implementation measures designed to lessen impacts from additional traffic. The agreed upon language states in part as follows:
The City shall…adopt a mandatory General Plan policy that requires -- on or before installing subdivision improvements – that all land use applications proposing residential uses include an enforceable condition of approval requiring an applicant to adopt and establish a legally-binding financing plan…(to) provide for immediately available and sufficient funds (sufficient funds shall be defined as equaling the project’s fair share or nexus contribution to the impact) to construct all new or expansions of roadways (including but not limited to roads, curbs, gutters, bicycle lanes, and landscaping) that are required as a direct or cumulative result of the development.
(Bolding and underlying added.) Again, Delicato and Manteca agreed to this language.
Furthermore the Planning Commission was asked to review this language. It unanimously recommended that the City Council follow this language. In keeping with the City’s promise to Delicato and the community, Delicato respectfully asks this condition of approval be imposed on the pending tentative subdivision map.
In addition, Delicato notes that none of the so-called public benefit funds included in the draft Development Agreement are specifically reserved for traffic improvements. Delicato recommends that some portion of the public benefit funds expressly be reserved for traffic mitigation items.
2. The treatment of potential conflicts with agricultural cultivation and processing uses was truncated and insufficient to satisfy CEQA.
The staff report concludes the project does not impede the “physical and economic” integrity of agricultural uses. But the staff report analysis is illogical and incoherent. Furthermore, it omits
2 A multitude of air quality studies find that vehicle idling at intersections exacerbates significant air pollution problems. This impact was omitted from the EIR’s air pollution analysis. Nor were air pollution impacts “correlated” to incidents of health problems in a manner explained in state Supreme and Appellate court opinions that Delicato previously presented to the city.
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potential impacts between the project and the Delicato operation. 3 Here is what the staff report
states:
10. The effect of the project on maintaining the physical and economic integrity of agricultural lands and achievement of Resource Conservation and Community Design Elements goals.
Analysis: While there will be the physical removal of existing agricultural land, it will not result in substantial adverse effects on a designated scenic vista as analyzed and determined by the FEIR. There are no structures over 45 feet high that would impede views of the surrounding agricultural areas from the Project vicinity. To reduce the visual impacts of the development, development within the Project site is required to be consistent with the General Plan’s Resource Conservation and Community Design goals and policies and the Manteca Zoning Ordinance which includes design standards.
Ultimately, the Project will be subject to lighting, landscaping, and building design standards which will collectively minimize the visual impacts to the greatest extent feasible as the site transitions from agricultural to urban/suburban uses.
Staff Report at page 8.
The accompanying analysis misses the point by a mile. Somehow “physical and economic integrity” of agricultural operations will not result in “substantial adverse effects” because no designated scenic vista is impaired. Believing scenic vista preservation mitigates a potential conflict with agricultural operations, both cultivation and processing, is incomprehensible and bizarre. Indeed, the staff report impliedly impeaches the legally sufficiency of the EIR by suggesting this form of conflict was not addressed in a meaningful way.
Delicato anticipates the EIR author may quibble that the EIR recommends paying mitigation fees to purchase conservation easements as a way to mitigate the loss of farmland. Delicato notes, first, that paying a fee for the loss of agricultural land omits any meaningful discussion of potential conflicts between the project and the agricultural operations remaining after other land is taking out of agricultural production.
Second, it is uncertain whether paying a fee to remove land from agricultural production is a viable or recognized mitigation measure. A 2013 opinion found offsite agricultural conservation easements funded through the imposition of mitigation measures may appropriately mitigate for a direct loss of farmland when a project converts agricultural land to a nonagricultural use. (Masonite Corp v. County of Mendocino (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th 230, 238.) However, fee based mitigation was subsequently rejected by a more recent opinion, which concluded that losing agricultural land remained significant after imposing a conservation easements funding mitigation measure. (King & Gardiner Farms, LLC v. County of Kern (2020) 45 Cal.App.5th 814, 875.
3 Delicato does not assert there will be a conflict between the proposal and the winery operation. But it does assert that a legally sufficient analysis would identify and study potential conflicts between these uses. This analysis should be conducted for all residential proposal within the general area of the winery operation. Instead this EIR never mentions Delicato’s operation and failing to conduct this analysis rendering the discussion of project impacts to agriculture legally insufficient.
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King & Gardinerl concluded a mitigation measure requiring offsite farmland conservation easements did not adequately lessen the significance from converting agricultural land. The court explained that conservation easements do not mitigate agricultural land conversion impacts because they do not create new farmland to offset the loss of the converted existing farmland. (Id. at 875.) 4
In sum, it is unclear whether it is appropriate under CEQA for a lead agency to find that requiring an offsite conservation easement as mitigation is sufficient to “avoid,” minimize,” or “substantially lessen” the impact to farmland that results when it is developed. (CEQA Guidelines, §§ 15091(a)(1), 15092(b)(2).) Plus, paying this fee is irrelevant about whether there could be a conflict with agricultural operations.
In conclusion, the project and the project EIR have serious shortcomings that need to be cured before formal action is taken on the land use request.
Very truly yours,
STEVEN A. HERUM
Attorney-at-Law
SAH:sb
4 The EIR author may argue Save the Hill Group v. City of Livermore (2022) 76 Cal.App.5th 1092 is more recent authority on this subject. But Save the Hill blindly applies the reasoning of Masonite without expanding the analysis or logic of Masonite or distinguishing King & Gardiner’s contrary conclusion.
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