Woodside decides town is not a mountain lion habitat, after all

Facing a lawsuit, national attention and a warning from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the Woodside Town Council on Sunday backpedaled on its recent move to ban all housing projects under a new state housing law.

As of Monday, Feb. 7, all applications for California’s new split-lot law, Senate Bill 9, will be accepted in Woodside, said Deputy Town Attorney Kai Ruess. SB 9 allows homeowners to split up single-family lots to build up to four residential units, but the town froze applications two weeks ago, citing a loophole that exempts habitats for protected species like mountain lions.

Ruess made the announcement in a report out of a closed session meeting on Sunday, Feb. 6, after the council discussed a potential lawsuit by Californians for Homeownership, a nonprofit that focuses on local governments that limit housing development.

Starting on Jan. 25, as first reported by The Almanac, the town put an indefinite hold on all housing projects under SB 9 because of a clause in the law that prohibits development in areas identified as habitats for protected species. The move followed a council study session on the same day, when the council discussed the mountain lion clause, but did not formally vote on it, according to Interim Town Clerk Melissa Cardinale.

“When the issue was raised at the Jan. 25, 2022, council meeting, the town had not yet received guidance on this question from state authorities,” Ruess said. “As a result, the town paused acceptance of SB 9 applications while town staff continued to study and determine the answer to that question.”

In the two weeks since the meeting, town staff heard from the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife on how to identify habitat, he said. “The Department of Fish and Wildlife advised that the entire Town of Woodside cannot be considered habitat. As such, the Town Council has directed staff to immediately begin accepting SB 9 applications.”

Mountain lions are a protected species because they are a candidate for the California Endangered Species Act and Woodside, in “its entirety,” lies within a mountain lion habitat, according to the town. The California Fish and Game Commission planned to release a decision on the animals’ status in November, but the agency has yet to make that determination.

There were no housing applications submitted to the town under SB 9 before project applications were halted, according to Bryant.

On Jan. 11, the Town Council passed an ordinance that caps the size of units allowed under SB 9 to 800 square feet. Woodside also prohibited basements under SB 9 units and excluded development in areas at high risk of wildfires.

Ruess noted that “any interim statements made by any individual member of the town council represent personal views that do not represent the collective views of the Town Council.

“The town of Woodside has consistently exceeded state mandated low- and moderate-income housing commitments, and the town council remained focused on doing its part to alleviate the regional shortfall in affordable housing,” he said.

Lawsuit and state attorney general’s message to the town

Matthew Gelfand, legal counsel for Californians for Homeownership, emailed the town on Feb. 2, threatening a lawsuit and called staff’s finding “absurd” that every single residential parcel in the town qualifies as mountain lion habitat. He wrote that it also violated SB 330, which prohibits local governments from putting up new barriers to housing production.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned town officials on Feb. 6, that the effort to declare the town a mountain lion habitat is an attempt to avoid complying with state law.

“There is no valid basis to claim that the entirety of Woodside is a habitat for mountain lions,” his office wrote to the town. “Habitat is land that has the capacity to support that species, including providing food and shelter. Land that is already developed — with, for example, a single-family home — is not, by definition, habitat.”

In a press release, the Attorney General’s office said the mountain lion habitat claim is contrary to the law and contrary to efforts to alleviate the state’s affordable housing issues.

In Woodside small homes are currently listed for sale on Zillow at $1 million and up; a 1-bedroom apartment rent is about $2,500 a month.

Swift response and national scrutiny

The council’s decision garnered national and international attention, with The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Guardian jumping on the story after The Almanac published it.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, known for his housing advocacy, weighed in on Twitter, saying: “Can’t wait for the lawsuit against Woodside for this brazen violation of state law.”

Former Woodside mayor Daniel Yost, who served on the council from 2015 to 2020 and has lived in town for 19 years, told The Almanac “no one should believe for a second this (decision) is driven by mountain lion concerns.”

“In my years in that I served on council, I never heard even a slight mention of preserving the mountain lion habitat,” he said. “I heard about a fair share of concerns about housing; that’s what is driving this. … What I love about Woodside is we’re creative problem solvers. We haven’t hid behind cats as an excuse to take away residents’ rights to modify or expand their housing (in the past).”

Yost noted that the “excellent” Woodside Elementary School’s enrollment figures are declining because families can’t afford to move to town.

The TK-8 grade public school has 365 students. Enrollment is down almost 11% from the 2018-19 school year, according to Almanac reporting this past fall.

“We trust that communities will find a way to balance protecting sensitive habitat with providing needed housing,” said Cydney Bieber, a public affairs specialist for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which has acquired and preserved more than 65,000 acres of open space in the region, in an email last week.

Last week, two residents in neighboring Portola Valley asked the Town Council to take similar action as Woodside in a Feb. 1 letter to town officials.

Los Altos Hills Mayor George Tyson said in an email that he has not heard from any residents wishing to emulate Woodside’s action, and the council has not met to discuss it.

Debate over local land use control initiative

At the January meeting when the mountain lion clause was discussed, Town Council members also considered supporting a ballot initiative that calls for more control over local land use.

The proposed constitutional amendment, from a group called Our Neighborhood Voices, noted that the majority of the state’s land planning efforts “take away the authority of local jurisdictions to determine for themselves the land use policies and practices that best suit each city and instead imposes ‘one-size fits-all’ mandates that do not take into account the unique needs and challenges faced by local jurisdictions.”

“What state laws are going to be preempted by this initiative?” Councilman Ned Fluet asked of staff and the rest of the council. After the meeting, he said that he is concerned the initiative could have environmental and civil rights implications if towns became exempt from laws like the California Environmental Quality Act, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, or local safety elements.

“Before we say as a council we support something, we should at least have an idea of what this initiative would do and not do,” he said. “I would hate not to know the full effect. The biggest takeaway is there are a lot of questions out there on this initiative.”

Town Manager Kevin Bryant acknowledged that language for a proposed town resolution was pulled from Our Neighborhood Voices’ website. Fluet noted that “it’s inappropriate to not tell the public language is from the group that is proposing the initiative.”

Mayor Dick Brown, who said he has been gathering signatures for the initiative, pulled the item from the agenda after Fluet’s comments.

Three residents submitted letters in support of the measure.

The town is in the midst of updating its housing element, a mandatory statewide process to accommodate housing growth, and is being asked to zone for a significant number of new units. Woodside is tasked with zoning for 328 units between 2023 and 2031 under the state’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, up from 62 during the previous cycle.

The housing element has prompted pushback from some residents and town officials, who object to changes to the “rural character” of their towns and fear that building more homes could increase wildfire risk in a region that is already at a heightened risk for fires.

Green Foothills, a nonprofit organization that works to protect open space, farmland and natural resources in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, warned the council that the ballot initiative could result in “rampant environmentally harmful development across the state of California — a result directly contrary to the spirit of this initiative.”

“The ‘Our Neighborhood Voices’ initiative could be a blank check to developers,” wrote Alice Kaufman, legislative advocacy director for Green Foothills, in a Jan. 25 letter to the town.

“This initiative, while intended to establish local control over land use and planning matters, unfortunately contains extremely broad and vague language that could be interpreted by courts to allow preemption of every single state law that restricts development for purposes of environmental protection or health and safety. … In addition, giving a city council the ability to override state laws restricting development would give a wealthy developer a powerful incentive to pour money into local elections in order to get a pro-development city council.”

— Bay City News Service contributed to this report.

Email Staff Writer Angela Swartz at aswartz@almanacnews.com.