UPDATE: I have just learned that SB743 DOES apply to Marin. It supersedes prior legislation which before limited this CEQA streamlining to counties with more than 400,000.
Apologies for any confusion. Lobbying is occurring so strongly and interpretation of these matters has become fast and fluid.
---
Some good news. Thanks to some excellent insight from the Larkspur City Manager Dan Schwarz I have learned that Senate Bill 743 cannot be applied to any of Marin. This is because of an important technicality - SB 743 specifically applies to "infill opportunity zones".
This term is defined as follows by California Government Code, here in section 65088.1(g):
"Infill opportunity zone" means a specific area designated by a city or county, pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 65088.4, zoned for new compact residential or mixed use development within one-third mile of a site with an existing or future rail transit station, a ferry terminal served by either a bus or rail transit service, an intersection of at least two major bus routes, or within 300 feet of a bus rapid transit corridor, in counties with a population over 400,000. The mixed use development zoning shall consist of three or more land uses that facilitate significant human interaction in close proximity, with residential use as the primary land use supported by other land uses such as office, hotel, health care, hospital, entertainment, restaurant, retail, and service uses. The transit service shall have maximum scheduled headways of 15 minutes for at least 5 hours per day. A qualifying future rail station shall have broken ground on construction of the station and programmed operational funds to provide maximum scheduled headways of 15 minutes for at least 5 hours per day."
Furthermore in exchanges with Dave Edmondson he established that any ability to disregard or bypass traffic review was dependent on the California state department of planning introducing a new methodology for measuring traffic impact to replace the current "Level of Service" approach.
The LOS approach is perceived to be overly car-centric.
Bottom line: While SB 743 may be effectively used in Sonoma, Alameda and elsewhere because our population is only 288,000 it does not apply to Marin.
