Until the City completes the processes on the City's General Plan, we will continue to use the Riverside County General Plan. Menifee is currently developing its first General Plan in accordance with California State Law (Government Code §65360). Our current schedule is projecting approval and adoption of the General Plan in late summer, 2013.

What is a General Plan?
California State law requires each city and county to adopt a comprehensive, long-term General Plan. The general plan represents the community’s view of its future; it is a blueprint for a city’s or county’s growth and development. City councils, boards of supervisors, and planning commissions use the goals and policies of the general plan as a basis on which to make their land use decisions.

The general plan is considered “comprehensive” since it covers the territory within the boundaries of the adopting jurisdiction and any areas outside of its boundaries that relate to its planning activities (i.e., its Planning Area). It is also comprehensive in that it addresses a wide variety of issues that characterize a city or county. These issues range from the physical development of the jurisdiction, such as general locations, timing, and extent of land uses and supporting infrastructure, to social concerns such as those identified in the housing element of a general plan.

The general plan is considered “long-term” since it looks 20 years or further into the future. Individual jurisdictions determine a time horizon that serves their individual needs. Menifee has selected the year 2030 as its planning horizon. The general plan projects conditions and needs into the future as a basis for determining long-term objectives and policies and shorter-term decision making, budgeting and prioritization of implementation programs.

Throughout this horizon period, new information often becomes available and the needs and values of a community may change. To adjust to these dynamics, general plans are reviewed and revised periodically.

The Vision and Values statements were created by the community to help focus the work of the General Plan. Community members were asked to share their vision and values with us to help craft the attached documents.

Draft Land Use Map
The City’s Draft Land Use Map has been reviewed and approved by the City Council. The Draft Map defines the parameters of the Environmental Impact Report and allows the entire General Plan to be prepared. The City Council also adopted an Alternative Land Use Map to be studied as part of the EIR, based on requests from local property owners. The definitions of the Land Use Categories can be viewed here.

Prior to adoption, the public will have opportunities to comment on the General Plan at public hearings before the Planning Commission and the City Council.

To see the proposed changes in land use designations from the County General Plan, click here.

Housing Element
The City’s first Draft Housing Element has been reviewed and approved by the City Council. The Housing Element will be part of the entire General Plan to be heard at public hearings before the Planning Commission and the City Council in summer, 2013. The public will have an opportunity to once again comment on the content of this document.

The Housing Element is intended to be a community’s plan for how to accommodate the housing needs of its residents today and those who will come to the community in the future. It is not a manifesto that shows where the City will build affordable housing. It also does not promise that the City will build affordable housing, nor does the state require the City itself to provide affordable housing.
The housing element typically contains several sections:
• An introduction setting for the planning context
• An assessment of housing needs based on population, household, economic, special need, and housing characteristics and trends in the community
• An assessment of potential governmental, market, and environmental constraints to the development, maintenance, and improvement of housing
• An inventory of parcels that are adequate for accommodating housing that is affordable to all income levels in a community
• Evaluation of progress and accomplishments made based on commitments in the prior housing element
• A series of goals, policies, and programs to promote the production, maintenance, and improvement of housing for all economic segments of a community

The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) is often the most difficult requirement of the Housing Element. Every five to eight years, the Southern California Association of Government issues an estimate of housing need numbers for every local government in southern California. These are the number of housing units, by affordability level, that need to be accommodated in a city. Cities are not required to build these housing units, but rather provide underlying zoning and development standards that are deemed appropriate by state law for facilitating housing that is affordable to low, moderate, and above moderate income households. For the 2008– 2014 planning period, the City is required to show capacity to accommodate 2,734 new housing units. This is broken out to units for:
• 648 very low income households
• 448 low income households
• 506 moderate income households
• 1,132 above moderate income households
These numbers mean that more than half of all of the new housing Menifee is projected to need to provide by 2014 are for moderate and above moderate income families.

Download a brochure on the City of Menifee General Plan

View the process for creating the General Plan 

What does the proposed, new General Plan look like?
The next step in the General Plan process will be preparing the EIR. The Scoping meeting for the EIR will be held on August 2, 2012. This meeting is open to the public, and all will be invited to provide comments and suggestion for issues of concern to be addressed in the EIR process.

Planning Area Boundary
The Planning Area Boundary is the total Area of Interest inside and outside of the City that may impact or be impacted by the ultimate build-out of the City.

Download a map of the Planning Area Boundary

Download a map of existing Land Use Map for Menifee

Community Profile
The Community Profile is the baseline analysis of existing conditions in the City.  The document will be used by decision makers to formula policy questions and to direct analysis of issues of importance to the Community.

Download the Menifee Community Profile (this is a large file and may take time to download depending upon your Internet connection)