History and status of Monterey County trails:
Monterra, Tehama, Hidden Hills, etc.

Part 5: Next Steps Back to index

Fred Watson, PhD
(Copyright (C)). With Mike Weaver and Richard H. Rosenthal

It would be beneficial if the general public had a clearer understanding of all public entitlements associated with private land throughout the county, especially the entitlements relating to trails.
 
As a case study stemming directly from "highest priority" items identified in the Monterey County General Plan, extensive research has been done on trail entitlements in the general area between Jacks Peak, Laureles Grade, Highway 68, and Carmel Valley Road. This area encompasses Monterra, Tehama, Canada Woods, Canada Woods North, York Highlands, Lit Ng, Mesa Hills, and Hidden Hills.
 
The amount of documentation that has been assembled and posted probably exceeds that which any individual staff planner has witnessed on this topic in the course of the planning process surrounding any individual parcel in the area. This deduction arises from having spent several years making cascading Public Records Act requests to identify and digitize (almost) all the relevant documents, and observing from this that clearly the full suite of background information was not already readily identifiable and available in one place.
 
A crucial conclusion of this research is that: (1) a perpetual and geographically continuous set of trail entitlements exists today between Jacks Peak and Laureles Grade, and between the Jacks-Laureles connection and Highway 68, (2) the details of this entitlement are not clearly and accurately known to staff or the public and are therefore not being adequately publicized, enforced, and physically pursued (for an example of this, see the Hawryluk parcel on the Selected Active Permits page).
 
A number of actions should be taken, in the short and longer term:

  1. Concurrence. County staff should informally concur with the assessment presented here. All the necessary documents have been posted. It should take about a week of staff time to concur - perhaps involving two staff members respectively with expertise in mapping and interpreting legal documents. It would be beneficial if this concurrence could be achieved in time to be reported by staff to the BOS on June 23, 2020.
     
  2. The checklist used by planners to review planning applications should be updated to require checks against the information that has been posted here - either directly, or indirectly via equivalent public versions of the posted materials that staff modify or generate themselves.
     
  3. The following is an incomplete list of APNs that either contain publicly entitled trails or are close enough that developments on them could potentially impact trails or be impacted by them. Any application relating to these APNs should include a discussion of how the application will not impair publicly entitled trails and how they might be physically attained in future.

    So far, the list focuses on trails in the region of Monterra, Tehama, Canada Woods North, York Highlands, Lit Ng, and Mesa Hills.
     
    1. APN 259091007000
    2. APN 259091008000
    3. APN 259091017000
    4. APN 259092077000
    5. APN 259092076000
    6. APN 259093011000
    7. APN 259092036000
    8. APN 259111030000
    9. APN 259101093000
    10. APN 259092011000
    11. APN 259101097000
    12. APN 259092032000
    13. APN 259092012000
    14. APN 259092041000
    15. APN 259161015000
    16. APN 259161016000
    17. APN 259161019000
    18. APN 259161031000
    19. APN 259161014000
    20. APN 259161013000
    21. APN 259161012000
    22. APN 259161011000
    23. APN 259161010000
    24. APN 259161009000
    25. APN 259161008000
    26. APN 259092043000
    27. APN 259261046000
    28. APN 259092018000
    29. APN 259261001000
    30. APN 259261002000
    31. APN 259261006000
    32. APN 259261008000
    33. APN 259261010000
    34. APN 259093007000
    35. APN 259261011000
    36. APN 259261027000
    37. APN 259261019000
    38. APN 259261027000
    39. APN 259092052000
    40. APN 259092055000
    41. APN 259261028000
    42. APN 259261021000
    43. APN 259261033000
    44. APN 259266000
    45. APN 259261022000
    46. APN 259261020000
    47. APN 416197003000
    48. APN 416197004000
    49. APN 416193016000
    50. APN 416131038000
    51. APN 259261031000
    52. APN 259261030000
    53. APN 259261032000
    54. APN 259261000000
    55. APN 259231027000
       
  4. Ultimately, a working master map and digital overlay of all existing public trail entitlements should be created by staff (or consultants) covering the entire county. The map should be a living document and layer, assembled and fleshed out over time, starting with the Jacks/Laureles/68/CVR area mentioned earlier. The master map should be publicly available in GIS and PDF formats. It should be added to the planner's checklist as an overlay against which all applications should be checked.

  5. The county's system of notifying the public of pending approvals should be enhanced so that with every communication of applications and pending approvals, a single map is attached that clearly shows the locations of the applications. This system should be designed so that anyone on the planning email notification list can simply open a single PDF, look at the map, and understand from the map whether any applications being addressed are within their personal specific area/s of interest. The map should include a link to a GIS layer with the same information - e.g. a set of place marks that can be opened in Google Maps. The current system requires opening every individual application PDF and flipping through pages in order to find location information. This is cumbersome to the point of obscuring the information from adequate public review since few people have the time and expertise to review all the PDFs for every project in the county.

  6. Entitled trails should be planned, designed, & approved.

  7. Entitled trails should be constructed. The county General Plan identifies several of them as deserving the "highest priority".

Phasing

Obviously, completion of all tasks here could take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the short term, what is needed is concurrence, awareness, and transparency, perhaps boosted by some media coverage. In the medium term, an omnibus codification of the entitlements should be created - a single official document & map summarizing all entitlements. In the longer term actual design & construction should be pursued.