Latinos Unidos De Napa v. City of Napa

Affordable housing advocates Latinos Unidos de Napa (plaintiff) filed a petition for writ of mandate against the City of Napa (City), its city manager, and its community development director (defendants) seeking to set aside the City’s approval of revisions to the housing element of its general plan, and related general plan and zoning amendments (the Project), on the ground that an environmental impact report (EIR) for the Project is required. The City had concluded that the Project would not result in any new significant environmental effects that were not identified and mitigated in its 1998 general plan program EIR, and filed a notice of determination (NOD) to that effect with the county clerk. The court dismissed plaintiff’s petition on statute of limitations grounds.

At issue in this appeal is Public Resources Code section 21152, subdivision (c), which requires the county clerk to post the NOD “for a period of 30 days.” 1 We conclude calculation of the 30-day period under this statute is governed by Code of Civil Procedure section 12, which excludes the first day of posting and includes the last. We further conclude the NOD must be *1158 posted for the entire last…