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AMC to send out
‘Mad Men’ in style
Voices raised in song
to benefit Habitat
LIFESTYLES | Page C5
LOCAL NEWS | Page B1
The Modesto Bee
MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2015
modbee.com
$1
How to
preserve
ag land
is topic
RIVERBANK COUNCIL
MAY OPPOSE LAFCO
By Garth Stapley
gstapley@modbee.com
Drought altering
local landscapes
Christopher Winterfeldt cwinterfeldt@modbee.com
HOMEOWNERS MAKE LOW-WATER CHOICES
By Erin Tracy
etracy@modbee.com
Around this time each year, people begin spring gardening, and in this fourth
year of drought, more are landscaping
with water conservation in mind.
Some are making small steps by choosing more drought-tolerant plants such as
native grasses or succulents for decoration, while others are doing complete overhauls – tearing out
lawns in favor of
INSIDE
Water conservation rocks, pavers or bark
and a few low-mainforces a rise in Bay
Area rates. Page B1 tenance plants.
Landscapers and
nurseries have in turn adapted to their
customers’ needs.
At Morris Nursery in Riverbank, the
sale of coastal redwood trees have dropped
dramatically. Manager Dave Provost has
instead been recommending trees such as
ginkgo biloba or Chinese pistache. “It’s the
No. 1 shade tree in our area and doesn’t require a lot of water,” he said.
“We are seeing more people aware that
they need to do something, and we consult
with them on how far they want to go, and
some of them want to go with very little
water,” Provost said. “We started carrying
more and more stuff that requires less wa-
Andy Alfaro aalfaro@modbee.com
ter like the desert-type plants. There are also shrubs that require much less water,
like the manzanita and California lilac.
You can have a lush green landscape with
lots of flowers and still cut back on water.”
Modesto resident Debi Glover started
doing her part about two years ago by capDROUGHT | Back page, A6
At top, Debi Glover of Modesto places a
cobblestone that she made with cement
and terra-cotta. Center, the form that Glover uses to create the stones. Above, Paul
Helem talks with people at the Modesto
Landscapes booth at the Stanislaus County
Home Show at Modesto Centre Plaza on
Friday.
Riverbank leaders will join a larger debate over how much cities should charge
developers when replacing farmland with
homes or businesses.
The Stanislaus Local Agency Formation
Commission, which rules on cities’ requests
when they want to grow, is providing the
stage for discussing farmland preservation.
The commission has asked cities for input,
and the Riverbank City Council will take up
the issue Tuesday.
LAFCO in 2012 adopted rules requiring
that cities have preservation policies such
as permanently preserving farmland in
other locations, or charging fees toward
that end. Other options include voter-approved urban limits.
When Patterson in the fall proposed
charging developers $2,000 an acre, critics
scoffed, saying that amount isn’t nearly
enough. The Central Valley Farmland Trust
says the average going price for conservation easements is $7,100 per acre.
LAFCO, composed of elected leaders
from Stanislaus County and some of its
cities, is considering setting the minimum
at 35 percent of the average price paid in
five comparable land deals, plus a 5 percent
endowment.
Riverbank should oppose that “troubling” idea, says a staff report going before
the City Council on Tuesday. If approved,
the rule could:
_ “Drive up already inflated costs for acquiring conservation easements” and “send
RIVERBANK | Back page, A6
Foreign gifts
to foundation
sap Clinton’s
main strength
By Amy Chozick
The New York Times
MONDAY Q&A
Turlocker advocates bicycling, walking
FIVE YEARS CAR-FREE, BIKE TURLOCK
HEAD WANTS BETTER ROUTES, REPAIRS
By John Holland
jholland@modbee.com
TURLOCK – Elizabeth Claes
bicycled to a meeting Friday at
City Hall, watching for traffic and
pavement hazards.
She spends much of her time
advocating for cyclists and pedestrians as road improvements are
planned in Turlock and the rest of
Stanislaus County.
Claes has plenty of experience:
She and her family decided nearly
five years ago to go car-free. Her
group, Bike Turlock, would like to
see better-connected routes and
pavement repairs, something
that could benefit drivers as well.
Claes, 41, also is on the Citzens
Advisory Committee for the Stanislaus Council of Governments.
She and her husband, John Claes,
have two sons: Jack, 10, and Elliott, 8.
She reflected on the cause for
The Modesto Bee:
How did you come to be a car-free
family?
In the summer of 2010, we
needed a new car, and when we
started looking, we quickly realAndy Alfaro aalfaro@modbee.com
ized that buying a reliable used
car would require me to go back Bicycle advocates Elizabeth Claes and her husband, John, ride down a
to work. Our kids were still young busy Main Street in Turlock on Thursday. She spends much of her time
Q&A | Back page, A6 advocating for cyclists, pedestrians and road improvements.
TODAY’S SCOOP
LOCAL NEWS
“Driving while poor.”
Critics use the phrase to
describe the injustices of
the legal system as it
applies to traffic penalties.
Some say a little-known
policy for paying off a
ticket puts the poor at a
disadvantage, and might
cost them more. Page B1
SPORTS
The Modesto Christian
boys and girls basketball
teams, as a reward for two
Sac-Joaquin Section
championships, were
bused to the Open Division
of the Northern California
Regional tournament,
where they’ll face tough
first-round foes. Page C1
NATION
Access to the polls is
“under siege” by a flurry
of recent state laws, Attorney General Eric Holder
says, and by a 2013 U.S.
Supreme Court decision
that weakened the Voting
Rights Act. He spoke at a
march across the bridge in
Selma, Ala. Page A3
OPINIONS
The California Water
Commission is responsible for divvying up $2.7 billion for water storage
projects and should brace
itself for a high-profile tug
of war. The hard-sell pitches are coming from two
ideologically opposite
camps. Page A5
WORLD
The battery on one of
two underwater beacons
attached to the flight data
and cockpit voice recorders of missing Malaysia
Airline Flight 370 expired
more than a year before
the plane vanished, the
Malaysian government
said. Page A4
MIAMI – It was supposed to be a carefully planned anniversary to mark one of the
most important and widely praised moments in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political
career – and to remind the country, ahead
of a likely 2016 presidential campaign,
about her long record as a champion for the
rights of women and girls.
Instead, as Clinton commemorates her
1995 women’s rights speech in Beijing in
back-to-back events in New York, she finds
herself under attack for her family foundation’s acceptance of millions of dollars in
donations from Middle Eastern countries
known for violence against women and for
denying them many basic freedoms.
This was not how she intended to reintroduce herself to American voters.
Clinton’s glide path to a likely April announcement that she would seek the presidency was built around women’s issues. Advancing women has been her central life’s
work, as she and her admirers say proudly;
she made it a priority as secretary of state
and focused on it as a philanthropist. But
that focus also allowed Clinton, who downplayed her gender in 2008, to frame her secCLINTON | Back page, A6
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