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Murrieta workshop outlines general-plan cleanup, CEQA timeline and outreach
Summary
City planners and consultant RIC Engineering presented a 'general plan elements' cleanup to align zoning and land-use maps, update safety and noise elements to reflect state law and recent development, and convert some parcels to open space; staff will draft documents, prepare an EIR addendum and return to commissions for action.
Murrieta City staff and consultants held a public workshop to present a proposed cleanup of the city's general plan elements, a process staff said is driven by recent state legislation and multiple development approvals since the 2020 general plan.
City Planner Carl Steele opened the meeting and introduced Brooke Peterson, lead consultant from RIC Engineering, who gave an overview of the project's scope: updates to the land-use element for zoning consistency, alignment of the circulation network (including truck-route designations), revisions to the safety element to reflect evacuation-route requirements, adjustments to the noise element, and changes to recreation and open-space designations. Peterson said the city will also initiate a Climate Action Plan update and perform environmental review; staff will prepare an EIR addendum to the 2020 EIR before taking drafts to the planning commission and City Council.
"A lot of state law regulations require some updates," Peterson said, listing AB 08/21 and AB 98 as examples of bills the cleanup will reflect. She described a process of background research, drafting, outreach (including boards in the back of the room and stakeholder roundtables), and CEQA compliance prior to hearings.
Steele emphasized the cleanup is largely an alignment exercise. "It's not allowing additional multifamily development," he said, describing the rezoning work as "cleanup" to match zoning to existing built projects. Staff pointed to targeted changes such as converting some existing commercial/office parcels to multifamily or mixed-use and designating certain acquired parcels as open space to support regional habitat linkages.
On open space, Peterson said an acquisition strategy by the RCA could result in preserving up to "500 acres" of habitat, and the cleanup would convert city-owned or RCA-acquired parcels to open-space designations to reflect those acquisitions. She said changes to the circulation element could include downgrading some roadway capacities depending on traffic-model results and explicitly designating truck routes as required by AB 98.
Staff also noted safety-element revisions required by CAL FIRE guidance, including evacuation-route exhibits and updated fire-hazard severity map information; flood- and extreme-heat planning items will also be incorporated. On the noise element, Steele said the general-plan noise work focuses on ongoing noise sources such as highways and major corridors and on recalculating noise contours where roadways change, not on regulating occasional concert events at the amphitheater.
Peterson and Steele invited public feedback: boards at the back of the room allow attendees to review maps and provide detailed questions, and comment cards are being accepted for several weeks. Staff said they expect to hold additional public workshops before the planning commission and City Council review and that the Climate Action Plan update will hold a separate workshop when it is drafted.
The workshop concluded with staff staying to meet attendees at the display boards and to gather written comments before drafting the formal elements for CEQA review.
