After two years of legal back-and-forth, the Monterey County Superior Court has ruled that Monterey Peninsula Unified’s environmental review of its high school stadium project is complete and legally compliant.
But despite the latest ruling in the case of Preserving the Peace v. Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, the project remains at a standstill due to additional litigation.
Preserving the Peach and Taxpayers for MPUSD have filed an appeal of the ruling, said Molly Erickson, the attorney who represents the two groups. “My clients look forward to the appellate ruling on the merits.”
In a press release, the school district said, “Unfortunately the litigation on this matter continues to drag on … MPUSD must therefore continue to fight to defend the Stadium Improvements Project with hopes of one day soon breaking ground and proceeding with the great benefits for MPUSD students and the community that the project will bring.”
The district’s Dan Albert Stadium renovation was proposed in 2019. Budgeted for an estimated $12 million, the project consists of creating a lower softball and multi-use field, a multi-purpose weight room, added visitor bleachers, a new press box, improved accessible seating and stadium lights.
Like any project undertaken by a public agency, the California Environmental Quality Act required the district to identify and evaluate any potential environmental impacts that the project may have. Any impacts deemed “significant” – meaning they could potentially cause a “substantial adverse change in the physical environment” – required the district to offer methods and alternatives to mitigate impacts.
The district’s Governing Board certified the 2,000-page final Environmental Impact Report on July 27, 2021. The report included legally binding mitigation measures addressing areas of residents’ concern, including: prohibiting use of the fields on Sundays, prohibiting lighted use of the fields on weekends, turning off the stadium lights by 8 p.m. except for five nights a year, prohibiting non-district use of the fields after 6 p.m., limiting the public address system to only necessary announcements and only using the lights from October – March.
But despite the district’s proposed mitigation measures, the project quickly ground to a halt after multiple lawsuits were filed, including the Preserving the Peace case – initially filed Aug. 27, 2021 – which complained that the project violated CEQA and local laws and that the renovations would cause significant environmental damage, light pollution and disruption to residential areas.
In December, the court ruled in favor of the district on four of the five causes of action but also concluded that the district should conduct additional CEQA analysis or prepare clarifying language for seven specific categories related to the project including pedestrian safety, traffic, parking and signage.
In response, the district filed a motion to clarify and reconsider the seven categories the court had found to be insufficient.
In June, Judge Thomas Wills of Monterey County Superior Court reversed his prior ruling on five of the seven categories he had previously found to be insufficient. The only two remaining issues include clarification of the environmental report’s conclusion regarding parking supply and demand and addition of a verification process related to the noise mitigation measure adopted by the district.
The district’s Board of Education re-certified an Environmental Impact Report for the project on July 25, addressing the remaining two issues and satisfying the court’s judgement.
The latest ruling confirms that the district has complied with CEQA in analyzing the potential impacts from the proposed project.
“The court’s latest ruling is an important next-step to allow MPUSD to complete these necessary improvements for student safety,” said Monterey High Principal Tom Newton. “Once complete, Monterey High School soccer programs will no longer have to end practices and games due to darkness, girls’ softball will no longer have to travel to Jacks Park for practices and games, and students will have the opportunity to play in front of a home crowd instead of traveling off-campus to Monterey Peninsula College for football games.”
But an appeal by the plaintiffs and two other lawsuits related to the project continue to delay the district’s plans to break ground on the project. One of those lawsuits – Taxpayers for MPUSD Accountability vs. Division of State Architect, et al. – argues the California State Architect had violated the law in approving the plans for the project. A hearing is scheduled for that case Nov. 9.
“We aren’t across the finish line yet but we feel strongly that we’ve done everything within the law,” said PK Diffenbaugh, the district’s superintendent. “While the plaintiffs can and have been successful in delaying the project and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, ultimately their attempts to stop the project will be futile. But It’s still going to take some time.”
Diffenbaugh said the district is unable to seek legal fees against the plaintiffs and the case against Preserving the Peace has cost taxpayers “hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight these baseless claims.”
“It’s disappointing for me that neighbors can’t see the greater good and compromise on behalf of the community,” Diffenbaugh said.
The district is also in the planning stages for a field project at Marina High School, which Diffenbaugh said is currently going through the division of state architects and the Environmental Impact Review process.
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