A few of weeks ago, the heads of the city’s planning

department and engineering departments met with key developers and leaders of

the city’s slow-growth faction to discuss changes to the way Tracy wants to

plan for future growth.

On Tuesday night, the City Council is set to discuss some of

those ideas.

Planning director Bill Dean and engineering head Andrew

Malik presided over the meeting with key players that focused on upcoming

changes to the city’s slow growth law, but Tuesday night’s talk “is a

precursor,” Dean said, “an overview to growth management in general.”

It’ll be a month before city planners lay out a proposal about how it is that

building rights will be doled out — a huge issue because there are plans for

far more homes than there are rights to build them under Measure A, the law

that limits the number of new houses to 600 a year once a building moratorium

ends in 2012.

Planners will present to the council changes to what they

think the hierarchy should be when it comes time to build, with a citywide

master plan for roads, water and sewer pipes, and other basic infrastructure

needs, as one of the foundations for all development. The city’s general plan,

its blueprint for growth, is another. There could be changes about when

developers must pay their share of master plans, for instance.

But the council is set to discuss other aspects of growth as

well, including a proposal to bar new subdivision applications for the time

being in what are known as “urban reserves,” pockets of land outside city

limits that are earmarked for growth.

One possible casualty of that new rule is the proposed

Homewood development by the Keenan Land Company, which is not listed by the

City Council as a priority.

Keenan applied to build 638 detached home and another 150 or

so senior apartments, as well as some retail space, on 133 acres east of Corral

Hollow south of Valpico roads.

While planners say they’ll go ahead with The Surland

Company’s Ellis subdivision and possible water park, as well as Tracy’s Hills

planned development southwest of town, no new applications for homes will be

processed in urban reserves.

The council has told planners to move ahead with Tracy Hills

and Ellis and also to explore ways to increase the city’s tax base, so the

Cordes Ranch commercial development west of town and also outside city limits,

will get some attention as well.