West Park opponents are again accusing Stanislaus County of rushing the project through bureaucratic hoops, but county officials say they’re just following the letter of the law.

At its May 5 meeting, the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors sat as the Stanislaus County Redevelopment Agency and approved by a 4-1 vote a revised preliminary redevelopment plan for the Crows Landing Air Facility, site of the controversial proposed industrial park and inland port.

The document outlines plans for the 1,527-acre air facility, the county-owned portion of the 4,800-acre West Park project. The revisions to the plan include West Park-specific items, including the inland port, and that troubled board chairman and District 5 Supervisor Jim DeMartini.

DeMartini, who cast the lone dissenting vote, took umbrage to the fact that West Park developer Gerry Kamilos’ plans are finding their way into county documents like the redevelopment plan and the airport land use compatibility plan, which was approved early last month.

“It’s almost like the county is trying to incrementally put this through, piece by piece, until the board has no choice but to put (the project) through,” he said last week. “It seems like an effort to rubber stamp this project through, despite the problems with it.”

Meanwhile, public review of the West Park environmental impact report, originally planned for this spring, has been pushed back to early 2010. Keith Boggs, Stanislaus County’s deputy executive officer of economic development and its project manager for West Park, said a recently withdrawn lawsuit by opposition group WS-PACE.org and a recently appealed suit by the city of Patterson have contributed to the delay.

“Attentions have been diverted,” Boggs said. “But that was probably the intention, wasn’t it?”

Boggs said items like the airport land use plan and the redevelopment plan are being modified so they can be included in the West Park EIR, which is already under way.

That has rubbed West Park opponents the wrong way. WS-PACE.org formally requested that the redevelopment plan discussion be tabled until after the release of the draft EIR and questioned why a separate EIR wasn’t being prepared for the redevelopment plan.

But Kirk Ford, the county’s director of planning and community development, said the California Environmental Quality Act actually requires the county to include each piece of the project in the same review.

“If you have a project out there, you’re not allowed to do an environmental review of bits and pieces,” Ford said. “You have to look through the whole big picture.”

Adding to the discomfort of the West Park opposition was the perception that the county was not as active as it should have been in announcing the redevelopment discussion.

Ron Swift, the head of WS-PACE.org, wrote that his group requested it be notified in advance of the redevelopment agency’s meeting at the Airport Land Use Commission meeting on April 2, but it never received notification.

DeMartini complained that he wasn’t personally made aware that the item was going to be on the agenda.

“I had no idea it was coming up,” DeMartini said. “You would think I would know about something like this in my district, but staff goes out of their way not to even tell me it’s coming up? I have a problem with that.”

Ford said because the redevelopment agency portion of the meeting was not a public hearing, it needed only to comply with Brown Act provisions by being placed on the agenda. He said the redevelopment agency is called to action very infrequently — only when specific items require its attention.

Ford also said that although the EIR for the redevelopment agency is being included in the West Park EIR, the agency itself will have to determine whether the review is strong enough to move forward.

“Our hope is that the overall environmental review that’s done for the entire project includes an adequate enough review for us to adopt a redevelopment plan,” he said.

• Contact James Leonard at 892-6187 or james@pattersonirrigator.com.