Trinitas vote goes to board

A formal vote against the contentious Ridge at Trinitas project, contracts with two labor groups and spending more to get an already overdue general plan update completed are among matters expected to make for a busy Calaveras County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.

At their meeting last week, supervisors on a slim 3-2 vote approved a “motion of intent” to deny the Wallace-area Trinitas golf resort project — considered to be among the most controversial and divisive developments ever proposed in the county.

With that motion, county attorneys and planning staff members were directed to return Tuesday with specific wording on a final vote that the board would neither accept the project’s environmental impact report nor any part of the multi-million-dollar resort and luxury home development proposed by Mike and Michelle Nemee.

Debate over the project has gone on for years and in large part centered on the fact that the Nemees built an 18-hole golf course on their 280 acres starting in 2001 without county permits and on land zoned for agriculture use, not recreation.

They then proposed adding a clubhouse, lodge, restaurant and high-end homes.

The Nemees have said that former county officials had told them the golf course work they were doing was allowable, and that they had first planned for the course to only be used by family and friends, then decided to pursue the larger resort project.

Last week’s vote, which came after several pointed remarks by supervisors regarding the Nemees’ project and how it materialized, left Mike Nemee and his family “truly disappointed,” he said.

“This is a tremendous shock to our family and our supporters — who we can’t thank enough. This is not what we anticipated,” Nemee said in an e-mail.

Supervisors Tuesday will also consider extending contracts with two of the county’s largest employee groups — the 325-member Service Employees’ International Union local chapter and the 55-member Calaveras County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.

Francine Osborn, the county’s human resources director, said her office and the SEIU chapter representatives have met and agreed to extending the group’s existing contract for 18 months. Similarly, the DSA has agreed to a one-year contract extension to run through this year.

No cost-of-living pay increases will be given.

“We don’t really have the money to give,” Osborn said, citing the county’s strained budget and the recession under way that’s hitting employers across the country.

“They were very cooperative, both groups were,” she added regarding the contract extension negotiations.

Supervisors are also to consider extending by a year the contract with Mintier Harnish, the Sacramento consulting firm hired to compile the county’s general plan update — a project that interim Community Development Director Brent Harrington has said was supposed to have been done by now.

But community plans, in varying formats, need to be included in the update and state officials have ordered counties to consider global warming when making planning decisions.

Revamping the community plans as necessary and devising local policies on reducing greenhouse gas emissions will take time and money, Harrington has said.

Given that, he is also asking that supervisors agree to pay Mintier Harnish $789,960 for the plan update rather than the previous price tag of $739,960.