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Public comment urges moratorium on new visitor-serving units in Big Sur over disputed cap count
Summary
A public commenter told the Planning Commission the county's visitor-serving unit (VSU) cap in the Big Sur Land Use Plan may have been exceeded due to a faulty Capital Improvement Program (CIP) reference and asked the commission to revisit a 2023 moratorium decision.
During the Feb. 26 public-comment period, Tim Green urged the Monterey County Planning Commission to reconsider the county's VSU (visitor-serving unit) accounting for Big Sur and to re-open a moratorium on new visitor-serving units while the counts are reviewed.
Green told commissioners the Big Sur Land Use Plan counts a baseline of 68 rooms and allows up to 300 new visitor-serving units, for a cap of no more than 468 rooms. He cited two private counts: the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce at 455 VSUs and Keypixer Wilde at 482 VSUs, the latter of which would exceed the cap. Green said the county nonetheless claims an additional 87 VSUs can be built because of an apparent error in the Big Sur Capital Improvement Program (CIP) section that references Table 1 of the land-use plan "but there is no support for it there."
Green asked the commission to "look at this CIP and to inform the next meeting as to whether or not a correction will be made," and requested reconsideration of a prior moratorium referral (item 5, 01/29/2023) if the cap has in fact been exceeded. He argued that exceeding plan limits could sacrifice public access to scenic Highway 1, the policy objective the land-use cap is intended to protect.
Commissioners received Green's written correspondence; no action was taken at the hearing during the public-comment period. The item was recorded for the record and may be referenced in future Planning Commission or Board-level work on Big Sur plan implementation and CIP text.
