Saratoga adopts review process to bypass ‘costly’ fire restrictions

Some home builders can now waive expensive road improvements.

Building a home on Saratoga’s hillside has been made a bit easier.

After new state guidelines thwarted several housing developments from being built in very high fire hazard zones across California, Saratoga adopted a process to bypass some of those restrictions locally.

The process, which city council passed unanimously March 1, calls for a review of housing developments in these zones on a case-by-case basis to waive road improvement requirements.

CalFire added new requirements for housing developments in high fire risk areas to reduce the risk of wildfires spreading. These requirements included installing fire hydrants, prohibiting housing to be built on steep slopes in fire-prone areas and updating and improving roads for first responder access.

In 2021, the high fire risk zones expanded to include the majority of the Saratoga hillside, along with much of Santa Clara County.

That means if someone wanted to build a house in the Saratoga hillside, they would be required to make improvements to the roads around the property for fire safety purposes. That could mean reinforcing long stretches of road to accommodate up to 75,000 pounds of equipment, or building out dead end roads and turnouts.

“These are at best very, very costly and at worst, impossible from an engineering perspective, making the property undevelopable,” town attorney Richard Taylor said.

Saratoga took a page from a similar process that Santa Clara County adopted last year in response to the state’s changes.

The Santa Clara County Fire Department, which is responsible for approving or rejecting these development plans in Saratoga, has seen seven applications since the law extended to include the county in July 2021. Two applications were from Saratoga, one of which was ultimately approved.

“Providing safe ingress and egress for the first responders and the public, while increasing fire resilience in the community, is our obligation and our intent,” Deputy County Fire Chief Hector Astrada said.

Astrada said dead ends and turnouts are needed so that fire engines can back out of roads or turn around easily during an emergency situation.

These restrictions come after several large-scale, destructive wildfires enveloped parts of the state in the past few years, and during the state’s housing shortage.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta released guidelines for developers last October, which include road improvements, installing fire hydrants when necessary and prohibiting housing to be built on steep slopes in fire-prone areas.

Some state lawmakers tried to limit or ban new construction in high risk areas, though most of these attempts failed to become law.

Senate Bill 55 would have banned development of new housing in high fire risk areas, but failed after pushback from the building industry.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 182, which would have mandated more evacuation routes, vegetation management and strict building codes for new developments in high-risk fire areas. He said the bill “creates a loophole for regions to not comply with their housing requirements.”

Several speakers raised concerns about the implications this change would have on commercial residential properties like House Family Vineyards.

“A single-family home application granted an exception would be very different from granting an exception, for example, for a residential commercial entity operating with hundreds of visiting patrons per day, an entity that would create density, traffic and external risk factors far exceeding the fire risk of a single-family home,” hillside resident Nancy Rollett said.

Rollett was part of a group of Saratoga hillside residents who appealed the House Family Vineyards temporary use permit, citing concerns over the heavy traffic, noise and “commercialization” of their neighborhood the winery caused.