61028964.1/059821.0004
Todd A. Williams
Director
[email protected]
1111 Broadway, 24th Floor
Oakland, California 94607
PH (510) 622-7630 | FX (510) 834-1928
fennemorelaw.com
October 6, 2025
VIA EMAIL ([email protected])
Karen Murphy, City Attorney
City of Piedmont
120 Vista Avenue
Piedmont, CA 94611
[email protected]
Re: City Council Meeting of October 6, 2025, Item 8
Moraga Canyon Specific Plan and Restrictions on Use of Coaches Field Property Transferred by Mountain View Cemetery to the City of Piedmont Dear City Attorney Murphy:1
Thank you for your response of today to my letters of October 3, 2025, and September 3, 2025, on behalf of my client, Mountain View Cemetery (“Cemetery”) concerning restrictions contained in the Real Estate Sale Agreement (“Agreement”) and Grant Deed for the property, consisting of APN Nos. 048-7002-003 and 050-4579-0 (the “Property”), sold by the Cemetery to the City in 1993. (A copy of your response letter is attached hereto.) In summary, my letters reminded the City that the purpose of the Agreement was for the City’s use of the Coaches Field site, as a “park, sports playfield, municipal recreational facility, city corporation yard or other appropriate municipal use.” (See Agreement at Section 2.4.) Moreover, Section 7.1(a) (Buyer’s Covenants, Deed Covenants) of the Agreement states that “[t]he Property shall be exclusively used for municipal purposes as reasonably determined from time to time by the Buyer….” These restrictions run with the land an would bind any future purchasers, successors or assignees. Specifically, the Grant Deed states t2 The Grant Deed for the Property includes this covenant and states as follows: “Grantee, and such successors and assigns shall use the Property exclusively for municipal purposes as reasonably determined from time to time by Grantee….” The Grant Deed also states that the agreements and covenants contained therein, run with the land for the benefit of the Cemetery, and are enforceable by the Grantor (i.e., the Cemetery), and binding upon the Grantee (City).
The City’s response takes the position that whatever use the City puts the Property to, including, but not limited to, multifamily housing constructed and owned by a private developer, 1 This letter is copied to the City Council and should be included in the record of proceedings in this matter. 2 Both the Agreement and Grant Deed are attached to my October 6, 2025 and September 3, 2025 letters.
Karen Murphy, City Attorney
October 6, 2025
61028964.1/059821.0004
is a municipal purpose as reasonably determined by the City. You note that the Agreement excludes the storage of hazardous and toxic materials, but that such uses would be the only ones that would not be acceptable.
As an initial matter, we are not aware of any determination made by the City as to what constitutes a municipal use. Certainly, the City has an obligation to plan for the production of housing, but the restriction on the Property is based on its actual “use” and it cannot be used for any non-municipal purposes as that term is “reasonably determined.” Your response suggests that any use to which the Property is put, even by a future private owner, would be a municipal purpose which would effectively write this restriction out of the Agreement.
We respectfully disagree that the City’s interpretation is reasonable, or that the use of the Property for private development of multifamily housing would be satisfy the limitation that the Property be used “exclusively for municipal purposes.”
Once the Property is sold, the new owner’s intent to develop and build private housing is a private, non-municipal enterprise. Should the City sell the land to a private developer, the encumbrance of municipal purposes would be passed to the new owner, and ultimately any residents. People residing in private homes would not be a municipal use. Furthermore, the new owner(s), not being part of government, would be barred from making “reasonable” changes to municipal activities from time to time, since there would no longer be any municipal activities to change, whether reasonable or not.
Making a reasonable change to municipal activities is not the same as labeling a nonmunicipal activity (i.e., private development) as a municipal activity. If it were, there would be no distinction between municipal and residential, cultural, recreation or private activities, rendering the term “municipal use” meaningless. The City proposes to terminate municipal activities, not amend such activities (i.e., to a different municipal use than those that the Property is currently being used for).
If the City proceeds with adoption of the Moraga Canyon Specific Plan, the City must provide clear notice to any potential buyer of the restrictions referenced herein, and that the Cemetery intends to enforce against any purchaser the fulfillment of its duty to engage in municipal purposes.
Sincerely,
FENNEMORE LLP
Todd A. Williams
/taw
Karen Murphy, City Attorney
October 6, 2025
61028964.1/059821.0004
Attachments: City Attorney letter dated October 6, 2025.jr cc: Client
Mayor Betsy Smegal Anderson and City Council ([email protected]) Kevin Jackson, Director of Planning and Building ([email protected]) Pierce MacDonald, Senior Planner ([email protected])
From: Lawrence Siskind
To: City Council
Subject: The impact of the Mountain View Cemetery on the Moraga Canyon Specific Plan Date: Monday, October 6, 2025 9:29:05 PM
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Dear Council Members:
I attended tonight's City Council meeting and intended to offer a comment by Zoom.
Unfortunately, I mishandled the "Raise hand" button, and inadvertently removed myself from the list.
Because I consider this an important point, I am writing to you after the public comment period has ended. I hope you will give it your attention.
The accompanying materials, starting at page 555, include correspondence between counsel for the Mountain View Cemetery and the Planning Commission.
Cemetery counsel pointed out, on May 1 and again on Sept. 3, that the land on which Coaches Field, the Corporation Yard, and the Skate Park are located -- in short, the land under discussion tonight -- was sold to the City in 1992 with a restrictive covenant, limiting the use of the land to “municipal purposes.”
Cemetery counsel, in both letters, stated that the Cemetery did not consider the private construction of housing to be a municipal purpose.
Finally, and most importantly, Cemetery counsel stated that the Cemetery intended to enforce its rights.
I will not address the merits of the points made in these letters, but I can recognize a legal threat when I see one. My questions are:
Why hasn’t the City responded to these threats of legal action? Shouldn’t we address them before proceeding down a path that may prove to be a deadend? Thank you for considering this tardy comment.
Regards,
Lawrence Siskind
From: Daphne Albert
To: City Council
Subject: Re: Housing Element
Date: Monday, October 6, 2025 5:26:17 PM
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Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.
We recognize the pressing need to address housing, but we must be unequivocally clear:
the conversion of actively used parkland along the Moraga Avenue corridor—including sites like Blair Park and Coaches Field—may not be legally justifiable. This land is subject to multiple, overlapping layers of protection—state, local, and federal—which collectively render its use for high-density housing effectively impossible.
The primary constraint lies in the California Public Park Preservation Act, or PPPA. This state law requires that if we convert dedicated public parkland to a non-park use, the City must acquire replacement parkland of comparable size and comparable character.
Given Piedmont’s fully built-out nature, securing equivalent replacement parkland is, practically speaking, an impossible prerequisite. Failure to meet this standard renders any conversion unlawful.
Furthermore, while the Surplus Land Act prioritizes housing on public land, this specific land doesn't qualify. Case law confirms that actively used parkland—like our fields and open space—cannot be arbitrarily declared "surplus" for residential development. To bypass this would invite immediate and certain legal challenge.
We must also respect our local democratic process. The Piedmont City Charter reserves to the electorate the authority to rezone public or park facilities. Any attempt to change the zoning along Moraga Avenue to allow multi-family housing would trigger a mandatory, citywide voter approval. Without this direct vote, any rezoning effort is legally invalid.
In conclusion, these sites are legally constrained. They are protected by the PPPA, exempted from the Surplus Land Act, protected by the City Charter’s voter requirements, and guarded by potential federal regulations. We recommend the City exclude Blair Park, Coaches Field, and Moraga Avenue open space from housing element rezoning proposals and focus our efforts on non-park parcels, consistent with our legal obligations.
Thank you.
Daphne Albert, 12 Abbott Way, Piedmont
From: Joy Kaiser
To: Kevin Jackson
Subject: comment for city council meeting re Moraga canyon Date: Thursday, October 2, 2025 7:23:43 PM
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Hi Kevin,
My name is Joy Kaiser and I live at _. I'd like to submit a comment ahead of the meeting on Monday. I'll also submit the same comment to the feedback page. I was concerned at the last meeting when the consultant shared the negative results of the CEQA review, and earnestly confused about why these findings were just glazed over.
I want to draw your attention to what the CEQA review already tells us: Moraga Canyon is one of the worst sites in Piedmont to build a large housing complex. CEQA doesn’t give letter grades, but it does issue the harshest designation possible: “Significant and Unavoidable Impacts.” That’s the verdict this site has received in multiple categories.
1. Wildfire & Evacuation
The Housing Element EIR admits wildfire evacuation delays could be 8 to 40 minutes. That is not a minor inconvenience, it is a life-threatening risk. No amount of lane striping or landscaping offsets the reality of funneling hundreds of new residents into an already narrow canyon during a fire. CEQA was blunt: this impact is unavoidable.
2. Traffic & Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT)
The traffic and VMT studies were conducted over two years ago, before the large-scale return-to-office movement. At that time, commuter patterns were far lower. The reality today is heavier, faster traffic on Moraga Avenue. Relying on outdated traffic counts undercuts today’s reality. This is not a safe corridor, and adding nearly 1,000 new car trips a day makes it worse.
3. Climate Impacts
CEQA already concluded that greenhouse gas emissions and VMT cannot be mitigated here.
And the Specific Plan itself offers no meaningful specifics on how development would be environmentally friendly.
Will the project be all-electric, with no new gas pipelines? Will there be adequate EV charging for residents, or just token stalls? Will solar, storage, or energy offsets be required?
Right now, the answer to each of these questions is no. A plan without enforceable commitments is not in line with the city's climate goals.
4. A “Specific Plan” Without Specifics
This is called a “Specific Plan,” but there is very little that is specific about it. Key issues such as traffic, infrastructure, fire evacuation, and sustainability are all kicked down the road with vague promises that they’ll be solved later. Piedmont deserves better than a placeholder plan that locks us into unavoidable risks without real mitigation.
Conclusion
When CEQA itself says a site has significant and unavoidable impacts across wildfire, traffic, climate, and infrastructure, the message is clear: this is the wrong site for large-scale development. Approving the MCSP as written would mean ignoring not only community concerns, but the environmental record.
I urge you to reject the Moraga Canyon Specific Plan in its current state. The project needs to be appropriately scaled to the conditions of the site and more thoroughly detailed.
Thank you,
Joy Kaiser
From: Deborah Leland
To: City Council; Kevin Jackson
Subject: Comments on the MCSP
Date: Friday, October 3, 2025 10:04:43 AM
Attachments: D Leland Letter to CC 10-3-25 re MCSP.pdf
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Dear Mayor and City Council Members, please see the attached letter.
Kevin, could you please deliver this letter to the MCSP consultants (including the traffic consultant) today, so that they could be prepared to respond on Monday to any of the circulation specifics, if so directed by the council members or staff? Thank you very much,
Deborah Leland
Date: October 3, 2025
To: Piedmont City Council
CC: Kevin Jackson, Director of City Planning
MCSP Consultants
From: Deborah Leland
Re: Draft Moraga Canyon Specific Plan
I am a current Moraga Canyon resident who wants to work with the City to create a viable plan that facilitates housing development in Moraga Canyon. I appreciate the City’s efforts to comply with State law and the Piedmont Housing Element in creating the Moraga Canyon Specific Plan.
There is a tremendous need to create more housing -- particularly more affordable housing – in Piedmont, and I hope that the City will approve a plan that (a) actually facilitates such housing getting built, and (b) augments – but does not overwhelm – the existing Moraga Canyon community.
Unfortunately, I believe the current draft plan tries to fit too much into the canyon, exacerbating rather than alleviating existing unsafe conditions, and I urge the City Council to heed the legitimate concerns of the canyon’s current residents by making several changes to the MCSP before approving it. Specifically:
● Reduce the Unit Count. Moraga Canyon is a viable location for housing development; however, allowing for 199 units in Moraga Canyon is just too much. The maximum number of units allowable under the MCSP should be lowered to 132 consistent with the needs specified in the Housing Element.
○ Throughout the Housing Element process, the City frequently touted spreading the housing site inventory out throughout the City. But then multiple potential sites in the center of town were removed from the inventory, and additional units allocated to Moraga Canyon. Now, if 199 units out of 587 needed are in Moraga Canyon, that would represent over one-third of the total units. This runs strongly against the City’s goals for distribution housing throughout the City. ○ The reason the allowable unit count was increased to 199 was to try to raise the amount that a developer would pay the City for that development right, so that the City could use those funds to pay to expand Coaches Field and upgrade the Corp Yard. If the City wants expanded recreation and public facilities, it should pursue a bond measure for everyone in the City to pay for it. That burden shouldn’t be on the backs of housing developers, or on one particular neighborhood of the City.
● Address Unsafe Conditions at Maxwelton Road. The City and its consultants have repeatedly emphasized that the MCSP includes actions to improve the Moraga Ave roadway and create “a safer public realm.” I applaud that intention, but in looking at the details of the MCSP, it fails to meet this objective in two ways: (a) the focus is only on portions of the MCSP area that include new development sites and areas to the west toward the center of the City, but ignores the eastern portion of the MCSP area including the Maxwelton Road intersection; and (b) vehicular safety along Moraga Ave is ignored.
In particular:
○ Section 4.2 states the MCSP objectives related to mobility and circulation, and makes no mention of vehicular safety at all. The fourth bullet in Section 4.2 should be modified to add the underlined words: “Enhance vehicular safety and the safety and comfort of the pedestrian and bicycle facilities along Moraga Avenue.”
○ The third bullet of Section 4.2 states the objective of improving pedestrian access across Moraga Avenue, but the plan goes on to focus only on pedestrian crossing at Red Rock Rd. The existing Moraga Canyon community on the north side of Moraga Ave accesses Blair Park via crossing at Maxwelton Road, but no effort or mention is made in the plan to improve safety of that crossing. ○ Stopping Sight Distance Requirement: So much attention has been given to ensuring safe stopping sight distance for new driveway entrances along Moraga Ave, but the existing inadequate sight distance at Maxwelton Rd (as shown on Figure 4.17) has not been addressed at all. Rather, I am concerned that “improvements” contemplated to slow traffic further to the west will actually further impede visibility for cars trying to turn uphill from Maxwelton. For example, in Figures 4.28-4.30, the illustrations show the addition of planters and landscaping in the existing roadway just downhill of the Maxwelton intersection (Section D-D) which would appear to block downhill visibility for cars exiting Maxwelton. At a minimum, the MCSP should be modified to ensure that any roadway improvements do not further degrade sight lines for cars exiting Maxwelton Road. Preferably, the plan would go further and actually include considerations of how roadway improvements could improve current unsafe conditions.
○ Section 4.17 of the MCSP notes that a dedicated left turn pocket is required for a driveway on Moraga Ave serving more than 35 units. Why isn’t that also a requirement for Maxwelton Rd, which serves > 50 units?
○ I am concerned that additional traffic on Moraga Ave will make a barely manageable situation at the narrow mouth of Maxwelton Rd much worse.
Currently, gaps in traffic flow are frequent enough that cars exiting Maxwelton generally don’t have to wait too long to turn out. However, if cars do stack up even two deep on Maxwelton, there is often not enough room for cars entering Maxwelton to pass by, leaving cars trying to enter Maxwelton hanging out (unsafely) into the flow of traffic on Moraga. I foresee this happening more often under the current MCSP for three reasons:
(1) Development would increase trips on Moraga Ave by 8.3%, not 5% as has been repeatedly noted by the City and its consultants. I’m not sure what math maneuvers are being made, but on its face, if average daily trips on Moraga Ave are about 11,000 currently, and development would add 910 trips daily, 910 divided by 11,000 = 8.3%. (2) In addition to more vehicle trips, if cars are entering Moraga Ave in the uphill direction from below Maxwelton Rd, they will be filling the existing breaks in traffic flow, making fewer such breaks at Maxwelton, and increasing the wait time for cars turning out onto Moraga, and increasing the frequency of queuing on Maxwelton.
(3) If there is no traffic control where 100+ units are trying to make a left turn from the south side of Moraga down toward Highland Ave, say during busy morning hours getting kids to school, I am concerned that cars will instead be motivated to turn right uphill instead, and then make a U-turn at Maxwelton, which is highly problematic if another attempts to use that intersection from any direction at the same time.
Could Moraga Ave at Maxwelton Rd be re-marked to allow for a landing zone for cars turning uphill onto Moraga, so that only one direction of traffic would need to be navigated at a time? Ideally, that intersection could include a dedicated left turn lane from Moraga (to also help cyclists trying to turn onto Maxwelton), a landing zone for cars turning left from Maxwelton onto Moraga, and a pedestrian crosswalk. But I fear the Maxwelton intersection has not been examined at all, despite the fact that it is squarely within the MCSP area.
Thank you in advance for your attention to these concerns.
Sincerely,
Deborah Leland
Piedmont