Santee council holds workshop on MSCP subarea plan; staff and consultants say plan would streamline river, trail and maintenance projects

SANTEE, Calif. — The Santee City Council on Aug. 13 heard a workshop on the city’s draft Subarea Plan for the San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP), a regional habitat-conservation framework staff and a consultant said would give the city regulatory certainty and speed some public works and private development reviews.

City principal environmental planner Marnie Borg and consultant Sean Skaggs summarized the plan, saying it would assemble and manage a 35-year preserve system, allow the city to convey “take” authorization to project proponents, and cover about 2,263 acres of managed preserve at full build-out. “The main purpose of this process is to put the local jurisdiction in the driver's seat,” Skaggs told the council during the presentation.

The plan, staff said, would combine conservation biology, land-use planning and administrative agreements with state and federal wildlife agencies to reduce the need for separate project-by-project consultation with those agencies and to provide a predictable set of minimization and mitigation requirements. Staff described…