(a) The Legislature hereby finds and declares that:
(1) The agricultural area of Napa County has become extremely important over the last 25 years as a premier winegrape growing region of worldwide importance and should thereby be protected from parcelization.
(2) The county has determined that because of the land’s extraordinary agricultural value as a winegrape production area and the fact that the county’s tourism industry entrusts its significant economic interests to its agricultural and open-space lands, the highest and best use for the agricultural land in the Napa Valley is for agricultural production.
(3) The full potential build-out of parcels not previously recognized in Napa County’s agricultural preserve and watershed areas could devastate the wine industry of California and Napa County.
(4) To adequately protect the value and productivity of the county’s agricultural lands, Napa County needs relief from the Subdivision Map Act’s implied preemption of local ordinances that may require merger of parcels that do not meet current zoning and design and improvement standards as well as the provisions that recognize parcels created prior to, or before, the current Subdivision Map Act.
(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the County of Napa may adopt ordinances to require, as a condition of the issuance of any permit or the grant of any approval necessary to develop any real property which includes in whole or in part an undeveloped substandard parcel, that the undeveloped substandard parcel be merged into any other parcel or parcels that are contiguous to it and were held in common ownership on or after the effective date of this act, whether or not the contiguous parcels are a part of the development application, except as otherwise provided in subdivisions (d) and (e).
(c) For purposes of this section, “undeveloped substandard parcel” means a parcel or parcels that qualify as undeveloped pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 66451.11, are located in areas designated as Agricultural Resource (AR) or Agricultural, Watershed, and Open Space (AWOS) on the General Plan Map of Napa County and are inconsistent with the parcel size established by the general plan and any applicable specific plan.
(d) Any ordinance adopted by the County of Napa pursuant to subdivision (b) shall exempt the following:
(1) Undeveloped substandard parcels for which a conditional or unconditional certificate of compliance has been issued pursuant to subdivision (a) or (b) of Section 66499.35, so long as the application for the certificate of compliance, together with the documentation required by the County of Napa on or before August 1, 1997, to commence the processing of an application, is filed on or before the effective date of this act; provided that this exemption shall not be applicable to conditional certificates of compliance, whenever issued, if the parcels involved were created on or after January 1, 1997, in a manner not in compliance with this division or local ordinances enacted pursuant thereto.
(2) Substandard parcels created by the recordation of a final or parcel map approved by the County of Napa on or after December 29, 1955.
(3) Substandard parcels lawfully created by the recordation of a record of survey prior to February 27, 1969.
(4) Notwithstanding Section 1093 of the Civil Code, property that in the most recently recorded deed, mortgage, patent, deed of trust, contract of sale, or other instrument of conveyance or security document, described by means of a consolidated legal description, whether or not such legal description is comprised of one or more previously existing legal descriptions, provided the owner of same prior to filing an application for development records a document merging any underlying parcel lines that may exist.
(e) Notwithstanding the provisions of subdivision (b), the Board of Supervisors of the County of Napa shall not require merger or condition or deny the issuance of any permit or the grant of any approval necessary to develop any real property in a manner that would constitute a taking of the landowner’s property in violation of the United States and California Constitutions.
(f) Nothing contained in this section shall be construed as affecting the right of the County of Napa, pursuant to the provisions of Article 1.5 (commencing with Section 66451.10) and Article 1.7 (commencing with Section 66451.30), to merge any parcels of land in the unincorporated area of that county, including, but not limited to, any parcels eligible for the exemption as described in subdivision (d) of Section 66451.22.
(Added by Stats. 1997, Ch. 837, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 1998.)
Last modified: October 25, 2018