Thank you for taking the initiative to rewrite the Agriculture Element of the Lake County 2050 General Plan. Special thanks to Commissioners Field and Rosenthal for undertaking this monumental task. For an agricultural county, a solid Agricultural Element is essential.
While the Board of Supervisors (BoS) continued (on 25 Aug 2026) Community Development Department’s (CDD) request to extend the completion date for the General Plan and Local Area Plans to 6 October 2026, I respectfully suggest that the Commission continue its work on revising or rewriting the Agriculture Element. A potentially important input to the Agriculture Element comes from the Scotts Valley Advisory Council (SVAC).
Scotts Valley Advisory Council’s recommendations on agriculture.
On 30 April 2026, Planning Commissioners were copied on a letter from SVAC to the BoS with recommendations on General Plan and its Local Area Plan. The Commission may find SVAC’s advice on agriculture useful in the rewriting of the General Plan’s Agriculture Element.
Unfortunately, SVAC’s letter was not included among public comments posted for the Commission’s first workshop (13 Aug 2026) on the General Plan and Local Area Plans. For your reference, the SVAC letter is attached.
General Plan / Local Area Plans public comment issues unresolved.
SVAC’s letter raises a concern about the General Plan public comment process. The Council’s recommendations cover flood prevention, wildfire prevention, groundwater and stormwater management, agricultural land preservation, agricultural economics and labor, and local food production and processing.
In response to the letter, CDD listed two comments in the General Plan Comments Inventory and dismissed both. Both comments were dismissed for not having enough detail. One comment recommended using plain English and limiting jargon to help make General Plan and Local Area Plans content understandable and relatable.
At a special SVAC meeting (24 Aug 2026), CDD Director Turner told the Council that General Plan / Local Area Plan public comment was and is expected to focus on a specific part of the General Plan or Local Area Plan. This expectation was not known to the public prior to this meeting. Now, the Council is expected to map its recommendations to specific parts of the General Plan and Local Area Plan. This expectation revealed after the fact is disheartening and discouraging.
Resolution of public comments issues: involve General Plan Advisory Committee.
The disposition of General Plan / Local Area Plans public comments remain an unaddressed issue. More meetings alone, as CDD proposes, will not resolve the issue. To resolve the issue, relevant public comments that have been dismissed by CDD should be reviewed for appropriate inclusion in the General Plan or Local Area Plan. The General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC) can serve this purpose.
In fact, in May 2026, GPAC Chair Denise Rushing requested a meeting to be convened in August 2026 to review General Plan / Local Area Plans public comments that were not included in the final drafts. CDD chose not to schedule this meeting. The meeting itself is not important; ultimately, getting relevant public comment included in the final drafts is key. The Commission’s support in getting relevant public comments into the final drafts would increase public confidence in the General Plan and Local Area Plans.
Thank you for your consideration.
By the way, I will attempt to use eComment for this communication, but the topic applies to a past Planning Commission meeting (13 Aug 2026) and to a Planning Commission meeting that has not been scheduled. As a back up, I am sending this communication to Commissioners’ official email addresses.
Respectfully,
Margaux Kambara
Lake County 2050
General Plan Advisory Committee, Representative
(speaking for myself)
Facilitator, Scotts Valley Advisory Council Ad Hoc Recommendations Committee
(speaking for myself)
c: District 4 Supervisor Brad Rasmussen
Chair Jody Altic, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Secretary Jared Hendricks, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Member-at-Large Joel Cobble, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Member-at-Large Cornelia Sieber-Davis, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Community Development Director Mireya Turner
Clerk to Planning Commission Yolanda Claybon
Attached is the East Region Town Hall (ERTH) cover comment letter on the final draft General Plan and East Lake Area Plan. The complete letter can be seen at:
To: Lake County Planning Commission: Commissioner Zoller, Chair and Commissioners Rosenthal, Chavez, Brown and Field.
8/9/26 – Lake County General and Area Plan Updates
Thank you for considering our comments on the final draft General Plan and East Lake Area Plan.
The Eastern Regional Town Hall (ERTH) is a municipal advisory committee appointed by the Lake County Board of Supervisors. The focus of ERTH is to seek relevant information, perform outreach, participate with and make recommendations on issues and decisions affecting the
residents of the East Region of District 3.
The ERTH region is part of the East Lake Area Plan, representing the communities of Clearlake Oaks, Spring Valley, Glenhaven, Double Eagle Ranch and the Southern border of the District 3 near Sulphur Bank Mine and North Dr areas, over to the Colusa/Yolo county borders.
The East Lake Area Plan is unique in that it covers two of the five districts in Lake County; it also covers the unincorporated areas of District 2.
ERTH devoted the August 5th MAC meeting to discussion of the proposed plan. The council voted unanimously to reject the document as written. This was supported by a majority of the community members present. The concerns include:
ERTH Comments:
• The ERTH public comments letter submitted to CDD on 4/28/26 was not included in the updated plan. This was noted to CDD on 5/11/26 when we received the group notes. It was still not included in the final rewrite and noted to CDD again on 7/24/26. We have attached the comment letter.
Community Outreach:
• CDD agreed to supply a hard copy to the ERTH Council to be made available to the public at the Clearlake Oaks Senior Center for those that do not have internet access or computers, or travelling to the Clearlake Library is too difficult. This was in mid-July and we have still not received it.
• We are also concerned that the North Lake Area Plan - covering our D3 MAC alliance boundaries with CRTH and WRTH - was released after the July MAC meetings while the Planning Commission review is before the August WRTH meeting. This does not give the public time to comment with their Area Councils.
General Plan/Area Plan Format:
• We take issue with the new format in the General Plan. Major countywide elements - such as Land Use, Circulation, Open Space, Conservation/Recreation and Public Facilities - have been reallocated to the Local Area Plans when they should have their own overarching elements in the General Plan. Because these overarching elements have been relegated to the Area Plans, the goals, policies and action plans in all eight area
plans are nearly identical.
• We are concerned about losing historical knowledge found in the current Shoreline Area Plan. We would like the inclusion of historical references, information and descriptive text carried over from the Shoreline Area Plan to the East Lake Plan. Updated baseline information and demographics - some of which can be found in the draft EIR - should be placed in the actual plans. The current draft is missing important features, includes erroneous information which was not updated per request, and does not adequately reflect our communities and desires.
• Numerous goals, policies and action plans located in the East Lake Plan - such as developing a Tree Preservation Ordinance, Land Use and Recreation/Conservation are not something appropriate to a local area plan and should be in the General Plan itself.
The draft plans were scheduled for review in the winter/spring of 2025 which would have given time for public review and comment. This did not happen. As the General Plan/Local Area plans are the constitution for Lake County and will set the direction for the next 25 to 30 years, this
should not be taken lightly. We request the Planning Commission reject the documents as written. We would like the East Lake Plan to receive the modifications/additions requested during public outreach and LAPAC meetings. Until that time, ERTH would prefer to keep the current Shoreline Area Plan.
Attached you will find the ERTH Public Comment letter as well as our marked-up version of the East Lake Plan. Please note, the comments in BLUE are the areas that we requested clarification, addition or deletion. As it is a large file, we only included pages with BLUE comments.
Thank you for your time,
East Region Town Hall (ERTH)
My lakefront property is subject to a 20-foot zoning buffer of RC Resource Conservation for the next General Plan (see page NL-63) intended to “protect the area from development that might further impact the hitch population”. While it seems well intended, it is actually a redundancy that is addressed during the CEQA phase of any planned development.
CEQA reviews are conducted during the Planning phase of development and involve input from multiple county and state agencies as well as the local tribes. Additionally, there is an existing “work window” from October 15th – December 31st to ensure that work is not being done in the lakebed during the hitch spawning season. With this in mind, I oppose the 20-foot Resource Conservation buffer on my property due to the CEQA redundancy as well as for the following reasons:
• My residential property has been historically zoned inaccurately as CR Commercial Resort despite the fact that it hasn’t been part of a resort since 1950. As a property owner, I’m already running into difficulties with the grandfathered “non-conforming” status, because it doesn’t allow me to make any changes to my footprint without first becoming a resort of some sort which requires a Minor Use Permit issued at the sole discretion of Community Development and still doesn’t guarantee I’d be able to make the changes I seek.
• A Resource Conservation overlay of any kind will only further restrict my property rights not to mention potentially lower my property value and future resale potential.
• Zoning decisions seem to be vague in terms of interpretation depending on who is reviewing them which results in challenges for property owners trying to navigate the system. Adding Resource Conservation to this will only serve to further confuse the situation. For example, the starting point of the 20-foot buffer zone is not clearly stated. Does it begin at the property line, the water line, or at zero Rumsey? If it isn’t specifically stated, it is open to interpretation.
• We are already good stewards of our land. We enrolled in the primrose eradication program offered by Lakebed Management after taking ownership of our property in 2024, and although that program seems to have dissolved, we spend countless hours pulling the primrose by hand to ensure that it doesn’t continue to spread. We clean our beach of the debris littered by fisherman/boaters (hooks, fishing line, cans, wrappers, etc.) to ensure the safety and well-being of the wildlife that utilize our beach. We are additionally in the process of removing water intensive non-native vegetation from our property in favor of drought resistant native plants that are beneficial to our pollinators. We garden organically, and we use chickens and guinea pigs for weed eradication to remain fire safe. In short, we do what we can to preserve our land for the future.
• Although the RC Resource Conservation buffer is listed in the proposed General Plan, we have not received any formal notification. If we didn’t spend the time to keep ourselves informed on the actions of the Lake County government, we may never have known this was coming. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover it until after the public input period closed. I’ve observed a General Plan meeting, and at that meeting, it was stated that it is not cost effective for Community Development to notify property owners by mail and that notifications were planned for the Public Notice section of the Lake County Record Bee. While this is allowable in circumstances where in excess of 1,000 landowners are to be notified, it hardly seems adequate since the Record Bee’s circulation is not actively disclosed, and the County has no measurable way to verify readership of the impacted local property owners.
I would like the Planning Commission to request additional time to review the proposed General Plan, to direct Community Development to notify each lakefront property owner in writing that their properties will be subject to a 20-foot Resource Conservation buffer zone, and to reopen public input to allow property owners additional time to voice their opinions.
Dear Board of Supervisors:
I appreciate the tremendous amount of work that County staff, consultants, GPAC members, Local Area Plan committees, community organizations, and individual residents have invested in the General Plan 2050 process.
I have participated in this process for several years and have reviewed not only the draft documents but also many of the public comments that have been submitted. After reading the most recent public comment packet, I believe there is one overriding message that deserves careful consideration:
Please do not rush the final stages of this process.
The comments submitted by residents are thoughtful, detailed, and often remarkably specific. They identify issues ranging from community boundaries and missing communities to road safety, evacuation, groundwater, geothermal development, natural-resource protection, dark skies, tribal terminology, agriculture, noise, lighting, and compatibility with existing neighborhoods.
These are not simply objections to individual words or sentences. Collectively, they raise a larger question: Does the final General Plan accurately reflect the communities, environmental resources, infrastructure limitations, and conditions that actually exist in Lake County?
The comments concerning High Valley are a good example. They raise questions about road width and condition, emergency access, evacuation, Eastlake School, groundwater, agricultural and residential compatibility, and whether the proposed Special Study Area language is strong enough to ensure these issues will actually be addressed. Those comments also ask the County to identify responsible departments, timelines, funding, and implementation mechanisms rather than simply identifying desirable future actions.
Other comments raise equally important countywide concerns.
The East Region Town Hall has asked that the Plan better incorporate watershed-scale planning, sensitive-resource protection, Clear Lake restoration, oak and heritage-tree protection, geothermal safeguards, and existing work already being undertaken through the Blue Ribbon Committee and other programs.
I have previously raised similar concerns about the structure of the General Plan itself. Important subjects that historically received countywide treatment—including Land Use, Circulation, Open Space, Conservation and Recreation, and Environmental Justice—should not become fragmented among Local Area Plans in ways that create inconsistent standards from one community to another. I have also asked that the Plan better integrate ongoing Clear Lake restoration and monitoring work and provide measurable, enforceable environmental protections.
The public comments also demonstrate why another careful review is worthwhile. Residents have identified incorrect or inconsistent place names, potentially missing communities, mapping questions, dark-sky issues, tribal terminology, and other matters that may appear small individually but are important in a document intended to guide Lake County for decades.
I am not asking that every public comment be accepted.
I am asking that significant comments receive a clear disposition: accepted, partially accepted, deferred, or declined—with enough explanation for the public and decision-makers to understand why.
Before adoption, I respectfully request that the County:
1. Complete a careful reconciliation of substantive public comments and GPAC/Local Area Plan recommendations.
2. Clearly identify which recommendations were accepted, modified, deferred, or declined.
3. Explain the reasoning for significant recommendations that were declined.
4. Correct remaining inconsistencies, mapping problems, editing errors, community descriptions, and terminology.
5. Clearly identify responsible departments, implementation measures, and anticipated timelines for important General Plan actions.
6. Provide the Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, and public with a clean final version and sufficient time to understand what changed before adoption.
This is not a criticism of the enormous amount of work already completed. In fact, it is precisely because so much work has gone into this process that I believe we should take the time necessary to finish it well. We have spent years working on this. Taking a few more weeks or months to make sure we get it right is insignificant compared with the decades these plans will govern Lake County. The General Plan will outlast the current Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, County staff, committees, and many of us who participated in creating it. Future residents and decision-makers will rely upon what we adopt today. We have an opportunity to leave them a document that is clear, accurate, internally consistent, responsive to its communities, protective of Lake County's extraordinary natural resources, and—most importantly—implementable.
Please give the public's work, and the County's work, the time it deserves. Thank you for your consideration and for the many years of work that have brought Lake County this far. Respectfully, Donna Mackiewicz, Lake County Resident
Dear Chair Zoller and Commissioners,
Thank you for taking the initiative to rewrite the Agriculture Element of the Lake County 2050 General Plan. Special thanks to Commissioners Field and Rosenthal for undertaking this monumental task. For an agricultural county, a solid Agricultural Element is essential.
While the Board of Supervisors (BoS) continued (on 25 Aug 2026) Community Development Department’s (CDD) request to extend the completion date for the General Plan and Local Area Plans to 6 October 2026, I respectfully suggest that the Commission continue its work on revising or rewriting the Agriculture Element. A potentially important input to the Agriculture Element comes from the Scotts Valley Advisory Council (SVAC).
Scotts Valley Advisory Council’s recommendations on agriculture.
On 30 April 2026, Planning Commissioners were copied on a letter from SVAC to the BoS with recommendations on General Plan and its Local Area Plan. The Commission may find SVAC’s advice on agriculture useful in the rewriting of the General Plan’s Agriculture Element.
Unfortunately, SVAC’s letter was not included among public comments posted for the Commission’s first workshop (13 Aug 2026) on the General Plan and Local Area Plans. For your reference, the SVAC letter is attached.
General Plan / Local Area Plans public comment issues unresolved.
SVAC’s letter raises a concern about the General Plan public comment process. The Council’s recommendations cover flood prevention, wildfire prevention, groundwater and stormwater management, agricultural land preservation, agricultural economics and labor, and local food production and processing.
In response to the letter, CDD listed two comments in the General Plan Comments Inventory and dismissed both. Both comments were dismissed for not having enough detail. One comment recommended using plain English and limiting jargon to help make General Plan and Local Area Plans content understandable and relatable.
At a special SVAC meeting (24 Aug 2026), CDD Director Turner told the Council that General Plan / Local Area Plan public comment was and is expected to focus on a specific part of the General Plan or Local Area Plan. This expectation was not known to the public prior to this meeting. Now, the Council is expected to map its recommendations to specific parts of the General Plan and Local Area Plan. This expectation revealed after the fact is disheartening and discouraging.
Resolution of public comments issues: involve General Plan Advisory Committee.
The disposition of General Plan / Local Area Plans public comments remain an unaddressed issue. More meetings alone, as CDD proposes, will not resolve the issue. To resolve the issue, relevant public comments that have been dismissed by CDD should be reviewed for appropriate inclusion in the General Plan or Local Area Plan. The General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC) can serve this purpose.
In fact, in May 2026, GPAC Chair Denise Rushing requested a meeting to be convened in August 2026 to review General Plan / Local Area Plans public comments that were not included in the final drafts. CDD chose not to schedule this meeting. The meeting itself is not important; ultimately, getting relevant public comment included in the final drafts is key. The Commission’s support in getting relevant public comments into the final drafts would increase public confidence in the General Plan and Local Area Plans.
Thank you for your consideration.
By the way, I will attempt to use eComment for this communication, but the topic applies to a past Planning Commission meeting (13 Aug 2026) and to a Planning Commission meeting that has not been scheduled. As a back up, I am sending this communication to Commissioners’ official email addresses.
Respectfully,
Margaux Kambara
Lake County 2050
General Plan Advisory Committee, Representative
(speaking for myself)
Facilitator, Scotts Valley Advisory Council Ad Hoc Recommendations Committee
(speaking for myself)
c: District 4 Supervisor Brad Rasmussen
Chair Jody Altic, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Secretary Jared Hendricks, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Member-at-Large Joel Cobble, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Member-at-Large Cornelia Sieber-Davis, Scotts Valley Advisory Council
Community Development Director Mireya Turner
Clerk to Planning Commission Yolanda Claybon
Attached is the East Region Town Hall (ERTH) cover comment letter on the final draft General Plan and East Lake Area Plan. The complete letter can be seen at:
https://lakeerthca.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/final-draft-east-lake-plan-study-areas-markups-pc-opt.pdf
To: Lake County Planning Commission: Commissioner Zoller, Chair and Commissioners Rosenthal, Chavez, Brown and Field.
8/9/26 – Lake County General and Area Plan Updates
Thank you for considering our comments on the final draft General Plan and East Lake Area Plan.
The Eastern Regional Town Hall (ERTH) is a municipal advisory committee appointed by the Lake County Board of Supervisors. The focus of ERTH is to seek relevant information, perform outreach, participate with and make recommendations on issues and decisions affecting the
residents of the East Region of District 3.
The ERTH region is part of the East Lake Area Plan, representing the communities of Clearlake Oaks, Spring Valley, Glenhaven, Double Eagle Ranch and the Southern border of the District 3 near Sulphur Bank Mine and North Dr areas, over to the Colusa/Yolo county borders.
The East Lake Area Plan is unique in that it covers two of the five districts in Lake County; it also covers the unincorporated areas of District 2.
ERTH devoted the August 5th MAC meeting to discussion of the proposed plan. The council voted unanimously to reject the document as written. This was supported by a majority of the community members present. The concerns include:
ERTH Comments:
• The ERTH public comments letter submitted to CDD on 4/28/26 was not included in the updated plan. This was noted to CDD on 5/11/26 when we received the group notes. It was still not included in the final rewrite and noted to CDD again on 7/24/26. We have attached the comment letter.
Community Outreach:
• CDD agreed to supply a hard copy to the ERTH Council to be made available to the public at the Clearlake Oaks Senior Center for those that do not have internet access or computers, or travelling to the Clearlake Library is too difficult. This was in mid-July and we have still not received it.
• We are also concerned that the North Lake Area Plan - covering our D3 MAC alliance boundaries with CRTH and WRTH - was released after the July MAC meetings while the Planning Commission review is before the August WRTH meeting. This does not give the public time to comment with their Area Councils.
General Plan/Area Plan Format:
• We take issue with the new format in the General Plan. Major countywide elements - such as Land Use, Circulation, Open Space, Conservation/Recreation and Public Facilities - have been reallocated to the Local Area Plans when they should have their own overarching elements in the General Plan. Because these overarching elements have been relegated to the Area Plans, the goals, policies and action plans in all eight area
plans are nearly identical.
• We are concerned about losing historical knowledge found in the current Shoreline Area Plan. We would like the inclusion of historical references, information and descriptive text carried over from the Shoreline Area Plan to the East Lake Plan. Updated baseline information and demographics - some of which can be found in the draft EIR - should be placed in the actual plans. The current draft is missing important features, includes erroneous information which was not updated per request, and does not adequately reflect our communities and desires.
• Numerous goals, policies and action plans located in the East Lake Plan - such as developing a Tree Preservation Ordinance, Land Use and Recreation/Conservation are not something appropriate to a local area plan and should be in the General Plan itself.
The draft plans were scheduled for review in the winter/spring of 2025 which would have given time for public review and comment. This did not happen. As the General Plan/Local Area plans are the constitution for Lake County and will set the direction for the next 25 to 30 years, this
should not be taken lightly. We request the Planning Commission reject the documents as written. We would like the East Lake Plan to receive the modifications/additions requested during public outreach and LAPAC meetings. Until that time, ERTH would prefer to keep the current Shoreline Area Plan.
Attached you will find the ERTH Public Comment letter as well as our marked-up version of the East Lake Plan. Please note, the comments in BLUE are the areas that we requested clarification, addition or deletion. As it is a large file, we only included pages with BLUE comments.
Thank you for your time,
East Region Town Hall (ERTH)
Esteemed Commissioners,
My lakefront property is subject to a 20-foot zoning buffer of RC Resource Conservation for the next General Plan (see page NL-63) intended to “protect the area from development that might further impact the hitch population”. While it seems well intended, it is actually a redundancy that is addressed during the CEQA phase of any planned development.
CEQA reviews are conducted during the Planning phase of development and involve input from multiple county and state agencies as well as the local tribes. Additionally, there is an existing “work window” from October 15th – December 31st to ensure that work is not being done in the lakebed during the hitch spawning season. With this in mind, I oppose the 20-foot Resource Conservation buffer on my property due to the CEQA redundancy as well as for the following reasons:
• My residential property has been historically zoned inaccurately as CR Commercial Resort despite the fact that it hasn’t been part of a resort since 1950. As a property owner, I’m already running into difficulties with the grandfathered “non-conforming” status, because it doesn’t allow me to make any changes to my footprint without first becoming a resort of some sort which requires a Minor Use Permit issued at the sole discretion of Community Development and still doesn’t guarantee I’d be able to make the changes I seek.
• A Resource Conservation overlay of any kind will only further restrict my property rights not to mention potentially lower my property value and future resale potential.
• Zoning decisions seem to be vague in terms of interpretation depending on who is reviewing them which results in challenges for property owners trying to navigate the system. Adding Resource Conservation to this will only serve to further confuse the situation. For example, the starting point of the 20-foot buffer zone is not clearly stated. Does it begin at the property line, the water line, or at zero Rumsey? If it isn’t specifically stated, it is open to interpretation.
• We are already good stewards of our land. We enrolled in the primrose eradication program offered by Lakebed Management after taking ownership of our property in 2024, and although that program seems to have dissolved, we spend countless hours pulling the primrose by hand to ensure that it doesn’t continue to spread. We clean our beach of the debris littered by fisherman/boaters (hooks, fishing line, cans, wrappers, etc.) to ensure the safety and well-being of the wildlife that utilize our beach. We are additionally in the process of removing water intensive non-native vegetation from our property in favor of drought resistant native plants that are beneficial to our pollinators. We garden organically, and we use chickens and guinea pigs for weed eradication to remain fire safe. In short, we do what we can to preserve our land for the future.
• Although the RC Resource Conservation buffer is listed in the proposed General Plan, we have not received any formal notification. If we didn’t spend the time to keep ourselves informed on the actions of the Lake County government, we may never have known this was coming. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover it until after the public input period closed. I’ve observed a General Plan meeting, and at that meeting, it was stated that it is not cost effective for Community Development to notify property owners by mail and that notifications were planned for the Public Notice section of the Lake County Record Bee. While this is allowable in circumstances where in excess of 1,000 landowners are to be notified, it hardly seems adequate since the Record Bee’s circulation is not actively disclosed, and the County has no measurable way to verify readership of the impacted local property owners.
I would like the Planning Commission to request additional time to review the proposed General Plan, to direct Community Development to notify each lakefront property owner in writing that their properties will be subject to a 20-foot Resource Conservation buffer zone, and to reopen public input to allow property owners additional time to voice their opinions.
Respectfully,
Alicia Russell
APN 031-072-17
Dear Board of Supervisors:
I appreciate the tremendous amount of work that County staff, consultants, GPAC members, Local Area Plan committees, community organizations, and individual residents have invested in the General Plan 2050 process.
I have participated in this process for several years and have reviewed not only the draft documents but also many of the public comments that have been submitted. After reading the most recent public comment packet, I believe there is one overriding message that deserves careful consideration:
Please do not rush the final stages of this process.
The comments submitted by residents are thoughtful, detailed, and often remarkably specific. They identify issues ranging from community boundaries and missing communities to road safety, evacuation, groundwater, geothermal development, natural-resource protection, dark skies, tribal terminology, agriculture, noise, lighting, and compatibility with existing neighborhoods.
These are not simply objections to individual words or sentences. Collectively, they raise a larger question: Does the final General Plan accurately reflect the communities, environmental resources, infrastructure limitations, and conditions that actually exist in Lake County?
The comments concerning High Valley are a good example. They raise questions about road width and condition, emergency access, evacuation, Eastlake School, groundwater, agricultural and residential compatibility, and whether the proposed Special Study Area language is strong enough to ensure these issues will actually be addressed. Those comments also ask the County to identify responsible departments, timelines, funding, and implementation mechanisms rather than simply identifying desirable future actions.
Other comments raise equally important countywide concerns.
The East Region Town Hall has asked that the Plan better incorporate watershed-scale planning, sensitive-resource protection, Clear Lake restoration, oak and heritage-tree protection, geothermal safeguards, and existing work already being undertaken through the Blue Ribbon Committee and other programs.
I have previously raised similar concerns about the structure of the General Plan itself. Important subjects that historically received countywide treatment—including Land Use, Circulation, Open Space, Conservation and Recreation, and Environmental Justice—should not become fragmented among Local Area Plans in ways that create inconsistent standards from one community to another. I have also asked that the Plan better integrate ongoing Clear Lake restoration and monitoring work and provide measurable, enforceable environmental protections.
The public comments also demonstrate why another careful review is worthwhile. Residents have identified incorrect or inconsistent place names, potentially missing communities, mapping questions, dark-sky issues, tribal terminology, and other matters that may appear small individually but are important in a document intended to guide Lake County for decades.
I am not asking that every public comment be accepted.
I am asking that significant comments receive a clear disposition: accepted, partially accepted, deferred, or declined—with enough explanation for the public and decision-makers to understand why.
Before adoption, I respectfully request that the County:
1. Complete a careful reconciliation of substantive public comments and GPAC/Local Area Plan recommendations.
2. Clearly identify which recommendations were accepted, modified, deferred, or declined.
3. Explain the reasoning for significant recommendations that were declined.
4. Correct remaining inconsistencies, mapping problems, editing errors, community descriptions, and terminology.
5. Clearly identify responsible departments, implementation measures, and anticipated timelines for important General Plan actions.
6. Provide the Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, and public with a clean final version and sufficient time to understand what changed before adoption.
This is not a criticism of the enormous amount of work already completed. In fact, it is precisely because so much work has gone into this process that I believe we should take the time necessary to finish it well. We have spent years working on this. Taking a few more weeks or months to make sure we get it right is insignificant compared with the decades these plans will govern Lake County. The General Plan will outlast the current Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, County staff, committees, and many of us who participated in creating it. Future residents and decision-makers will rely upon what we adopt today. We have an opportunity to leave them a document that is clear, accurate, internally consistent, responsive to its communities, protective of Lake County's extraordinary natural resources, and—most importantly—implementable.
Please give the public's work, and the County's work, the time it deserves. Thank you for your consideration and for the many years of work that have brought Lake County this far. Respectfully, Donna Mackiewicz, Lake County Resident