Boulder Ridge Golf Course
by George Bettisworth
December 1999

 The Boulder Ridge Golf Course Development has been one of the most controversial land use decisions in Santa Clara County this decade.  Boulder Ridge-located in the foothills immediately south east of Almaden Lake Park, caused a mult-year legal battle.
 Eventually, the project was modified and approved after significant restrictions were imposed.  We have collected nearly 75 newspaper articles about  Boulder Ridge, two are duplicated below for your historical reference.
 Progress and completion date for the golf course are unknown.
 

San Jose Mercury News September 28, 1994
EDITORIALS
Golf melee
Plan for new course was shanked from trap to trap

     The Santa Clara County supervisors will not soon forget the Boulder Ridge Golf Course plan, although most of them probably would like to.

The original vote approving the course Last year infuriated Boulder Ridge's Almaden Valley neighbors but the neighbors didn't just get mad, they got busy. They raised questions about campaign contributions, a loan, and friendships linking some of the supervisors to the developer's team, and they kept up the pressure until the board enacted a new code of ethics. They also sued to challenge the golf course decision, which forced the supervisors to reconsider it Tuesday.

This time, things were different.

Supervisor Mike Honda, who represents Almaden, again moved to approve the golf course. But this time he included restrictions that help to satisfy the concerns of the neighbors, who believe developer Rocke Garcia's true aim is to put houses on the site.

Among other things, Honda sought an open space easement over much of the land, and specified that if Garcia decides to add anything to the plan, even a pool, the project will be referred to the city of San Jose for approval.

It should have been turned over to the city in the first place. The golf course will have serious impacts on the Immediate neighborhood, which is in San Jose. But Mayor Susan Hammer's letter last week arguing for annexation came a year too late, and Councilman Joe Head's testimony on the issue Tuesday was fuzzy at best. The supervisors remained unswayed.

Honda's motion was a very good compromise, however. He went as far as he could to control the project without losing the support of the rest of the board. (The vote was 4-0; Zoe Lofgren abstained because of a conflict discovered by the neighbors.)

    Honda previously has shown an unfortunate pattern on issues like this. He seems to want to do the right thing, but he waits too long to decide what action to take, and sometimes his last-minute solutions fall flat. That's what happened with the first Boulder Ridge vote, when he thought he was providing some environmental protection, but the neighbors — and the judge who heard their lawsuit — felt he gave the developers carte blanche.

    This time, he got it right, and that should help him win back some of the environmentalist support he lost last year. But to be truly effective, he needs to start getting it right the first time.

    The county may not be finished with Boulder Ridge. Garcia may sue to contest some of the new conditions. And even if he doesn't, the central question raised by this project remains unresolved: Should golf courses be viewed as a rural use of land?

    They are, based on the county's current rules. Yet they can generate more traffic than homes on the same amount of land would produce. They surely use more water. By these and other measures, they are intense development, and they spawn more building round them. In fact, it's the rare golf course that gets built today without being surrounded by expensive homes.

    Fortunately, the golf course question Is expected to be raised when the county updates Its general plan later this year. That's none too soon: Other courses are being planned on county land, including at least one more in the Almaden Valley. The supervisors need to re-evaluate their golf course policies before any more plans are accepted for the county staff to review.

   After all, nobody wants another political melee like the one Boulder Ridge stirred up. Not the citizens, not development, and surely not the supervisors themselves.
 
 
 
 
 

San Jose Mercury News  January 6, 1997
How the supervisors teed off an Almaden neighborhood
 

    Neighbors of Boulder Ridge thought the Santa Clara County Supervisors finally were on their side.

    The Almaden Valley neighborhood has fought for years to protect the open space that would remain on the ridge after developer Rocke Garcia builds a golf course there. Eventually, the supervisors agreed to require a broad open space easement to prevent further development.   When Garcia  threatened the easement, the county and the neighbors' Coalition to Save Open Space were supposed to defend that requirement in court ---- together.  Or so the neighbors thought.
 
    On Christmas Eve they learned they were wrong.
 
    That morning,  just days before the trial on the golf course plan, attorneys for the coalition got a fax from Garcia's lawyers laying out a tentative agreement  reached between Garcia and the county.

The county no longer would insist on a 97-acre easement, as the supervisors publicly had resolved to do. Instead, the agreement would cover only about half  that area and eliminate the easement entirely, calling the protected land a "preserve" Instead — a term whose legal definition is murky.

To make matters worse, the preserve would be mostly steep slopes and rocky outcroppings, land that couldn't be built on anyway.  The flatter area where neighbors believe Garcia wants to build homes would remain unprotected.

Under the agreement deputy county counseI Jim Lewis would not actively oppose the original 97-acre easement, but he no longer planned to argue for it in court. The Save Open Space lawyers, Jim McManis and Michael Reedy, would be on their own.  "When I saw that thing on the fax machine and read it," said Reedy, "it was like being hit on the head with a 2-by-4."

The agreement was presented to Superior Court Judge John Flaherty to consider at the same time be looked at the 97-acre easement which was the original purpose of the trial last Monday. Fortunately, he refused to consider the settlement.  His decision on the easement is expected shortly.

But as a consequence of the last-minute deal, the golf course neighbors feel betrayed by the county supervisors again.
 
    To understand why, here's a Readers Digest version of the Boulder Ridge Golf Course's convoluted history.

 The county supervisors originally approved Garcia's plan back in 1993 with no significant open-space protection.  Neighbors were convinced the approval was a done deal long before the public hearings, so they organized their coalition and sued the county.  They won the case, forcing the board to reconsider.

The second time around, the board again approved the golf course but added the 97-acre open-space easement, on the motion of Mike Honda, who then represented the Almaden Valley.  This time  Garcia sued, and the coalition joined the county's side of time lawsuit.
 
    This was the suit that the county tried to settle before last week's trial.

     Settlements often are made on the eve of court hearings, and it's legal for public officials to vote on litigation in non-public sessions.  The problem here was that the citizen's coalition, which was a legal intervenor in the case, not told by the county that an agreement was being made.  Coalition lawyers had participated in earlier negotiations and knew talks were continuing, but they thought they had assurances that nothing would be settled without their knowledge.

 
  On top of that, the supervisors approved the tentative settlement without any Almaden Valley representation.  The vote came after  Honda had left for the state Assembly.  The District 1 seat is vacant.

   Honda said last week that there was never a serious discussion of a settlement while he was on the board.  He would have opposed this one.

   "It seems like we're going back to place one,"  he said.

    Renaming board members and attorney Lewis characterize the proposed settlement as a fallback position, which would need to be ratified in a public vote, and which would go into effect only if the judge ruled against the 97-acre easement, as Lewis believed likely.  "We weren't backing off on the easement," said Lewis. "The agreement was not intended to prejudice our position in the lawsuit," said then Supervisor Ron Gonzales.

    But it's amazing anyone could think the agreement would not weaken the case for the easement, especially if the county lawyer was silent in its defense.
 
    The first Boulder Ridge battle in 1993 so outraged Almaden  citizens that they started  a successful movement for county ethics legislation , designed to discourage back-room deals with big donors.  Now some of them suspect this latest deal may be just that.

       Norm Matteoni, Garcia's attorney, emphatically denies it. "Lewis was in a go-between role," he said Thursday.  "We did not contact the board."

    That's plausible to me.  What's hard to understand is how the supervisors could push this through without any Almaden representative, and never think to contact members, of the coalition.  If there was no legal mandate to do so, there certainly were ethical and political reasons.

    Gonzales said Lewis assured the board that the coalition's lawyers were kept informed.   But according
the coalition attorney Reedy, "They never said 'We have the authority to settle,' or 'We have the outline of a settlement."'

    "If I were sitting in the board room, and I noticed that Number 1 seat was vacant, I would make extra sure that someone here knew what was going on,"  said George Bettisworth, a coalition leader.

     To  Lewis' credit, he argued eloquently  for the original  easement last Monday once Flaherty refused to consider the proposed settlement.

     The golf course will have huge environmental impacts.  For one thing, it will pour hundreds of thousands of gallons or water a day on the ridge overlooking San Jose neighborhoods, causing concerns about drainage.  Public officials are simply saying that the golf course is the maximum development this land can handle.  That seems fair to me.

      But it any be a legal stretch.  The judge could  go either way.

      It's always wise to try to settle cases like this out of court,  if you can do it without abandoning your principles.  Litigation costs everyone a fortune.   A settlement  may yet be appropriate, depending on the judge's ruling, to avoid further appeals.

      But why the supervisors decided to undercut their position by proposing a weaker one to Flaherty last week is beyond me.   And doing it without any discussion with Almaden  Valley residents was at best negligence, and at worst, cowardice.

Barbara Vroman is associate editor of the editorial pages.  ####################