Advisory committee forms subcommittee to review RBLP scoring and recommend updates

The Tulare County advisory committee voted to form a subcommittee to review the county's RBLP scoring methodology and recommend updates, committee members said. The subcommittee will meet every other month for roughly six months and report back to the full committee before any formal changes are proposed to the planning commission or board.

Why it matters: the RBLP scoring (a county land-evaluation/scoring tool referenced during the meeting) informs decisions about which lands are prioritized for conservation or considered for development; committee members said the current scoring understates some factors, particularly water, and needs reweighting to reflect current conditions.

Staff and committee members said the scoring tool has not been updated to reflect recent changes and that modernized data sources and scoring methods could improve the consistency and defensibility of the RBLP. A committee member described the current scoring as "out of date," saying "water is very little of a score," and urged technical revisions. The Farm Bureau and other stakeholders said they have raised similar concerns in the past.

The committee established a subcommittee composed of committee members Ian, Ron, Justin and the committee chair (as announced at the meeting). Meetings will be subject to the Brown Act, agendized and open to the public, and the group is expected to return recommendations to the advisory committee. Staff said the subcommittee will meet on alternating months, with a proposed six-month work period; the first meeting was scheduled for Dec. 18 at 3 p.m. in the transcript discussion.

Members asked whether changes to the RBLP would require a general-plan amendment; staff replied that altering the RBLP would be treated as a general-plan amendment and would follow planning-commission and board hearings. Staff and members also discussed whether the county has the technical capacity to apply a more rigorous scoring tool and said they prefer to avoid requiring consultants for routine project reviews.

The committee recorded the subcommittee formation as a favorable action item and confirmed meeting dates and membership; staff said the subcommittee would report its findings to the advisory committee and, if appropriate, support a planning-commission process and subsequent board action.