Adopt resolution to summarily vacate a portion of County Road 96 located on APN 025-350-025. (No general fund impact) (Lindbo/Riddiough)

The Yolo Habitat Conservancy (YHC) is working with the Department of Community Services, Natural Resources Division, to enroll a Yolo County owned parcel (APN 025-350-025) into a Habitat Conservation Plan/Natural Community Conservation Plan (HCP/NCCP) conservation easement. YHC is currently implementing the Yolo HCP/NCCP and the Local Conservation Strategy. The Yolo HCP/NCCP provides for the conservation of covered species and protects regional biodiversity by protecting, restoring, enhancing, and managing covered species habitat and important natural communities across Yolo County, including landscapes that support covered species. As part of this program, the Conservancy acquires conservation easements on lands within Yolo County from willing landowners that include conservation and management conditions consistent with the biological goals and objectives of the Yolo HCP/NCCP.  
 
The primary Conservation Values of the Easement Area are: 

 
The Easement Area contributes to the Yolo HCP/NCCP conservation strategy by contributing to the establishment of a corridor comprised of patches of woody and herbaceous riparian vegetation within the Cache Creek floodplain, protecting land containing valley foothill riparian natural community along Lower Cache Creek and prioritizing the establishment of elderberry shrubs on land that is adjacent to lands that have had documented occurrences of valley elderberry longhorn beetle, to provide for population expansion.  Before the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will approve the creation of the easement, an unused road easement for County Road 96 on the west side of the parcel must be removed from the chain of title.  The Yolo Habitat Conservancy has requested that the County vacate the eastern 25 feet of the total 50-foot right-of-way width for the length of the subject parcel.

See Attachment A for a Vicinity Map, and Attachment B for a Location Map with an aerial view of the subject parcel, also known as the “Rodgers Site,” with the proposed County Road 96 vacation area (denoted within orange dashed lines).  The location is approximately two miles west of the City of Woodland, at the northern terminus of CR 96, where it meets Cache Creek. 

A road right-of-way was granted to Yolo County as described in Book 35 of Deeds at Page 396, recorded October 23, 1883, in the Yolo County Records.  The right-of-way extended from State Route 16 on the south, to Cache Creek on the north.  A portion of this road right-of-way has been improved and maintained for public road use as County Road 96.  However, the subject right-of-way, approximately ½-mile north of County Road 20, was never constructed or used for street or highway purposes.

The subject road right-of-way is no longer necessary, as the county-maintained portion of County Road 96 ends approximately ¼-mile south of the subject parcel.  Public access to Cache Creek is being shifted to the west.  If the subject right-of-way is vacated by the County, the twenty-five-foot right-of-way width remaining for County Road 96, in addition to a 35-foot-wide easement being dedicated by the property owner on the east side of APN 025-350-038, would be sufficient for the County’s operation and maintenance of the road for public creek access going forward.  The property owner previously installed this gravel road extension to Cache Creek for public access as a condition of approval for the operation of its former onsite gravel mine.  See Attachment B to view the current gravel road on the aerial within the new 35-foot easement.

The California Streets and Highways Code Section 8334 allows the Board of Supervisors to summarily vacate “an excess right-of-way of a street or highway not required for street or highway purposes.”  See Attachment C for the resolution to vacate this road right-of-way.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Yolo Habitat Conservancy
County Counsel has reviewed and approved the resolution as to form.