As the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District approaches the 50th Anniversary of its 1972 creation by Santa Clara County voters, it is doing so as a more mature organization, thanks to a decade of work by former General Manager Steve Abbors.
Abbors retired as general manager Dec. 31 due to a serious illness of his wife, Carlene — who developed a type of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, that affects her ability to speak, as opposed to a different type that affects muscle control.
Abbors had planned to retire May 1 but moved the date forward to “be her voice” and “to spend every minute with her that I can.”
The couple first met in the fourth grade, and now have two grown daughters, Roseanna, 35, who does geographic coordination for the Alameda County Fire District, and Alison, 38, a farmer on the San Mateo County coast who is planning to move to the University of California, Berkeley.
The district, commonly known by its shorthand abbreviation MROSD, occupied Abbors’ attention for a decade, and its Board of Directors has launched a search for his replacement.
The district currently is overseen by Acting General Manager Ana Motaño Luis, the district’s former planning manager and assistant general manager, with degrees in geology from Stanford University and in regional/urban planning from San Jose State University. She is an applicant for permanent manager, with Abbors’ encouragement.
The district initially was formed only in Santa Clara County after San Mateo County officials rebuffed the concept of a two-county district. Several years after its creation, open-space advocates launched a petition drive in south San Mateo County that forced the proposed annexation to a public vote, bypassing the then strongly pro-development board.
The annexation was narrowly approved, and the district now covers much of both counties.
Abbors inherited the sprawling district from two prior general managers: Herb Grench and Craig Britton, who was land-acquisitions manager under Grench.
He also inherited a district that was heavily focused on land acquisition, a policy adopted early on due to the belief that land prices would continue to rise in the Bay Area generally and specifically in the Midpeninsula. That early policy emerged from a day-long board/staff/public retreat at the foothills home of the late environmentalist Lois Hogle. It enabled the district to acquire nearly 70,000 acres of now permanently dedicated land, before prices became stratospheric.
Yet a decade ago, approximately half the district’s lands were closed to the public due to inadequate budget available to develop facilities, parking lots, trails and signage.
There were complaints about closed lands.
Abbors changed that, balancing acquisition with expanded access, building on his 37 years of land-oriented work.
He worked as a naturalist for the East Bay Regional Park District from 1971 to 1984.
But he wanted to get more involved in land management, and moved to the East Bay Municipal Utility District to head up creation of its master plan. EBMUD is the second-largest water district in California, with 2,000 employees.
“It was a great experience,” he recalled, noting he helped implement an integrated-pest-management plan.
“I’d heard about Midpen — that’s what we called it in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said in a phone interview last week. One day he looked on the MROSD website, prompted by a staff member who worked for a former intern of Abbors who then worked at the Silicon Valley Open Space Authority (an agency inspired by the MROSD).
“I noticed Craig was leaving, and literally at the last minute on a Friday afternoon, I decided, ‘What the heck, I’ll fill out an application.’
“It turned out that the particular experiences I’d had were apparently what the board was looking for.”
He noted that the website emphasized land acquisition, reflecting the aggressive early policy that included use of eminent domain — which made some landowners suspicious and even hostile. Others saw the district as a place to donate and preserve land they loved.
“Now it’s virtually all willing sellers,” Abbors noted of the more relaxed acquisition approach.
Abbors’ role at the district reflected a broader view: “I have a deep belief that we need to manage the life-support system for the planet. That’s a bedrock value of mine, and I want to be sure we’re always heading in that direction.”
The district’s current mission has three legs: to purchase, to restore and to provide access.
“Half the land when I got there was not opened,” he recalled. Both staff and board members were strongly oriented toward acquisition, so Abbors’ initial challenge was how to change and broaden attitudes. And he wasn’t quite sure how to do it.
He started with initiating a “Strategic Plan” process to help board members move past their fallback acquisition mode.
He then broadened the process to engage the public in a “Vision Plan,” to help define the kind of access that was desired and needed, including access for Coho salmon and habitat for redwood trees.
The district held five large public meetings in which participants could actually vote individually on small voting devices.
The “very engaged” board membersobserved the voting, and began to realize the extent of public support for the three-legged balanced approach.
The next question for the public was, “Are you willing to pay for it?” Abbors said, noting the district had acquired substantial debt to acquire lands. About $300 million would be needed to provide access.
An election in June 2014, funded by the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), squeaked past the two-thirds approval needed for a bond measure, with a bare 66.96 approval.
“It was a game changer,” Abbors said. It enabled the adding of planning, engineering and financial staff that made opening the lands possible — such as a current major project on Mt. Umunhum south of Los Gatos.
The district is now a rounded-out, fully functional government entity, a mature organization that should be footnoted historically as Abbors’ Legacy.
Former Weekly Editor Jay Thorwaldson can be e-mailed at jaythor@well.com.