City Planners Develop Utopian Vision of Santa Clarita : Growth: Four meetings are planned to encourage public input in creating a blueprint for the future of the valley.

It sounds like Utopia: a city with plentiful parks, unspoiled hillsides, free-flowing traffic and lots of oak trees.

And don’t forget the monorail. Or the airport. Or the four-year university.

If a citizens committee charged with plotting the future of Santa Clarita has its way, that’s exactly what the city will look like in 20 years.

In short, Santa Clarita would become a model city, a home to high-tech industry as well as suburbanites looking for a house and a patch of lawn to call their own. That is the vision contained in a master plan for the development of the city and the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley. Councilwoman Jan Heidt has called it the most important document the city will ever produce.

Beginning Monday, the city will hold a series of public forums that will help create that plan, technically known as a general plan.

The meeting is one of four informal public forums scheduled this month to explain the general plan, answer questions from property owners and hear the public’s recommendations on improving the plan.

The focal point of the forums will be a map which designates the potential development of land, with categories that range from commercial development to agriculture. That map, developed by the 23-member General Plan Advisory Committee, embodies the committee’s hopes for a grander future for the 2-year-old city.

Chris Trinkley, the city principal planner, called the map the heart of the general plan. “It’s the hopes and dreams and aspirations,” she said.

Property owners will be encouraged to find their parcels on the map and discuss the plan with city planners and advisory committee members, Trinkley said.

Santa Clarita officials are hoping for large crowds at the public forums but concede they could have a hard time rousing public interest in an inherently dry subject weighted down by dreary jargon such as “density bonuses,” “noise impact management” and “hillside management overlays.” Even the name--general plan--is a snoozer.

“From a P.R. perspective, we have got to change that word,” said Gail Foy, city public information officer.

City officials said their task will be generating interest in the plan without raising false expectations about the plan’s power to shape future development.

“It’s not a document that solves all the problems,” Trinkley said. “It doesn’t give all the answers.”

Under state law, every city and county is required to draft a general plan, a broad blueprint for development in a region.

For instance, it could indicate the city’s desire for an industrial park in the southern part of the city, but it can’t force a developer to start construction. Instead, the plan provides a framework that would allow an industrial park to be built. In that regard, the plan is subject to the highs and lows of the economy and the desires of entrepreneurs.

The plan contains dozens of goals and policies. Some of the unusual or potentially controversial ones urge the city to:

* Discourage development and severe grading on the valley’s picturesque and rugged hillsides.

* Oppose development outside the city limits which does not provide adequate roads, schools, sewers or other public services for the growing population.

* Set design standards to improve the appearance of development despite the building industry’s traditional opposition to such standards.

* Annex most of the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley.

* Establish the Santa Clara River as a focal point for recreation in the city.

* Encourage all new office buildings and industries to make child care available to employees.

* Encourage the development of English-language classes and monitor their availability to the public.

* Promote affordable housing.

* Promote Santa Clarita as a commercial link between Los Angeles and Northern California.

Although the plan contains numerous goals and policies, it does not spell out nitty-gritty details, such as the dimensions of parking spaces or the height of buildings. Those details, said Trinkley, are left to zoning and other ordinances which implement the plan’s overall goals.

The draft of Santa Clarita’s general plan, in the works for almost two years, was written by the advisory committee selected by the City Council. In addition to the public forums, city staffers will present the plan to community groups and homeowner associations.

Eventually, the plan must be approved by the city Planning Commission and City Council, which could happen as soon as this fall. City Manager George Caravalho said the final approval could be delayed until next spring if the deliberations bog down and the work is not completed before Thanksgiving.

Caravalho noted that the current map and a 67-page report listing goals and policies are only drafts that will change during the public debate. “We want to emphasize that the maps are not final,” Trinkley said.

In essence, the plan aims to preserve the valley’s topography, relieve its traffic and social problems and promote a prosperous future.

Compared to the county’s general plan, which governed the area before Santa Clarita incorporated in 1987, the city’s plan is broader in scope, said Ralph Killmeyer, chairman of the advisory committee.

The plan covers not only the 40-square-mile city but an additional 160 square miles in the surrounding valley, which Santa Clarita hopes to annex in the future. In all, it’s an area larger than Atlanta. The huge area is a challenge and a rare opportunity for planners, Trinkley said.

“This is a planner’s dream,” she said.

That dream is codified in general categories, or “elements,” such as land use, housing, safety and noise. In addition to those elements, which are required by law, Santa Clarita’s plan includes some additional elements: economic development, parks and recreation, air quality, community design, human resources and public services, facilities and utilities.

These extra elements address everything from child care and trail systems to recycling and cultural affairs.

The county plan viewed the Santa Clarita Valley as another San Fernando Valley, Killmeyer complained. The city’s proposed plan strives for the opposite, stressing a small-town atmosphere over urban growth. In fact, one goal is to “discourage the development of additional strip commercial centers and corner mini-shopping centers.”

And unlike the county planners, the city sees the need to preserve the right of way for a futuristic monorail that proponents believe could be built to shuttle residents throughout the city. The plan does not address how the monorail would be built or who would pay for it. The plan also recommends that a committee be established to lobby for a four-year college in the area. “They haven’t considered the possibility of a university,” Killmeyer said of the county plan. “We have.”

In another departure, the city’s general plan says residential development should be limited unless there are adequate schools to serve the influx of new students.

Conversely, the county supervisors have said that state law makes education a state responsibility and thus prevents the county from denying development proposals just because they might have a negative impact on schools.

Other ideas are sure to surface in the public hearing process. Councilman Carl Boyer III recently suggested that the general plan recommend special incentives to residential developers who try to sell to people who work in the Santa Clarita Valley. Such a plan would cut down on commuting, he said. “I think it’s something we want to look into,” he said.

For all its goals and recommendations, the plan is supposed to be a flexible document that can be amended and revised as the city grows, Killmeyer said.

“It’s not absolutely rigid,” Planning Commissioner Connie Worden said.

“It’s a living document,” Councilman Howard P. (Buck) McKeon said.

But the advisory committee also hopes that the final plan will retain some solidity, Killmeyer said.

Santa Clarita officials and community activists have complained that the county’s general plan was amended frequently during the 1980s to accommodate the plans of developers, thus fueling the region’s explosive growth. “There was no control over it,” Killmeyer said.

Killmeyer hopes the city’s general plan will change with age, but slowly and with care.

Trinkley agreed. “This is not something we want to change frequently,” she said.

NEXT STEP

Beginning Monday, the city of Santa Clarita will hold a series of public forums to explain a proposed general plan that would guide growth in the city through the year 2010. The forums, to be held in each of Santa Clarita’s four communities, are planned as informal meetings where city planners will explain the general plan map and answer residents’ questions. All forums will start at 7 p.m.

Saugus: Monday, Arroyo Seco Junior High School, multipurpose room, 27171 Vista Delgado Drive.

Valencia: Thursday, College of the Canyons, main dining room, 26455 N. Rockwell Canyon Road.

Newhall: June 18, Old Orchard Elementary School, multipurpose room, 25141 N. Avenida Rondel.

Canyon Country: June 21, Canyon High School, lecture hall B, 19300 Nadal St.