Special Notice / Hearing: None__
Vote Required: Majority
To: Honorable Board of Supervisors
From: Steve Monowitz, Director of Planning and Building
Subject: Contribution to conservation easement for property at 2310 Pescadero Creek Road, Pescadero
RECOMMENDATION:
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Adopt a resolution authorizing an agreement with Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) in which the County will contribute $405,000 toward POST's purchase of an agricultural conservation easement to permanently protect the Butano Front Field property, located at 2310 Pescadero Creek Road in Pescadero.
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BACKGROUND:
Fire Station 59, located at 1200 Pescadero Creek Road in Pescadero, serves the Town of Pescadero and the greater South Coast. The station is located in a floodplain and regularly experiences flooding from Butano Creek, and as a result, has degraded conditions, including mold and plumbing backups inside the station. Seasonal flooding across Pescadero Creek Road isolates the station from the center of the Town of Pescadero, potentially delaying the Fire Department's response times to incidents occurring to the east of Butano Creek.
The County plans to build a replacement Fire Station 59 next to Pescadero Middle/High School, located at 350-360 Butano Cutoff, on property owned by the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District ("District"). The County entered into a ground lease with the District in 2023 to build the new fire station on 1.75 acres of the school site.
The District's site contains prime agricultural soils, including on the portion of the site on which the new fire station will be built. The California Coastal Commission requires that the County mitigate for the conversion of these soils by preserving prime agricultural soils nearby on a 2:1 basis, i.e. at least 3.5 acres. This mitigation measure was included in the project's Initial Study / Mitigated Negative Declaration, certified by the Board of Supervisors in 2022, and in its Coastal Development ...
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