SANTA CRUZ — The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors has one more meeting before taking a month-long summer recess and the agenda will feature a number of big-ticket items. Though the meeting itself begins at 9 a.m.
Tuesday inside board chambers at 701 Ocean St. room 525 in Santa Cruz, the board is scheduled to hold a public hearing at 1:30 p.m.
related to proposed regulations for low-impact camping in unincorporated regions. The ordinance, requested by the board last November, seeks to make it easier for residents to establish Low-Impact Camping Areas, or LICAs, to increase access to the outdoors, encourage land stewardship and preservation and boost transient occupancy tax totals collected by the county. Property owners in the unincorporated area, according to state law, currently have to apply for several permits and go through the California Environmental Quality Act to establish a low-impact camp site on their land.
The local ordinance seeks to streamline that process to provide more camping opportunities for residents and visitors that may otherwise have trouble booking a reservation at popular county and state parks. Ordinance provisions, which exclude state and county parks, apply to sites that are 5 acres or more within eligible county zones, limit the number of guests, tents and consecutive or annual stays and also define setback distances and prohibit open campfires, among other things. But the ordinance proved controversial among members of the public and cou.
