Sacramento State officials announced Wednesday that they have formalized an agreement to build a branch campus in western Placer County.

The signing of a letter of intent between the school and developer Eli Broad clears the way for the university to start designing its campus and building an academic program, said Alexander Gonzalez, president of California State University, Sacramento.

The CSUS campus is one of two being proposed for fast-growing western Placer County, which now has no four-year university.

Placer County planning director Fred Yeager said the Board of Supervisors could vote "late next year" on the CSUS proposal and one for a private Catholic university. Both schools would be built on farm fields in unincorporated areas of the county.

CSUS officials say they hope to break ground in 2006 and are already working on the curriculum for the new campus.

Ric Brown, vice president for academic affairs at CSUS, said the emphasis at first will be on degrees in education, business and information technology, and computer engineering.

"Some things we already know are in demand, like business," he said. "We know that there are already large numbers of business students driving down Interstate 80."

Last fall, Sacramento State leaders counted at least 4,000 students from the Roseville region who were commuting to the J Street campus.

"That's already getting to the size of a robust, viable campus," Brown said.

Spokesmen for Broad and for developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, who has the other university proposal, said Wednesday that they are confident the board will approve their plans.

At a Tuesday hearing designed to update the supervisors on the proposals, "the majority of the board was supportive," said Steve Capps, a spokesman for Tsakopoulos.

The Tsakopoulos family has proposed donating land to the Christian Brothers order for a school that would be called De La Salle University.

Despite the developers' confidence, significant issues remain with both university proposals.

For instance, Broad's proposed CSUS campus and the nearly 5,000 houses and apartments he seeks to build next door intrude upon a one-mile buffer established by the county to protect its landfill from encroachment.

"This is a major, major problem for me," Supervisor Bill Santucci said in Tuesday's hearing. Other supervisors concurred.

"They pretty much all agreed that it was a serious concern," Yeager said.

County officials had previously urged Broad's group to move the university to the western edge of the property, so it would be farther from the landfill.

Broad's latest informal land-use plan, submitted Monday, eliminated an area of high-density housing and increased the size of the university. Neither the housing nor the university was moved farther from the landfill.

The board asked its planners to examine how other counties handle development near landfills.

The Tsakopoulos site also has critics. Tsakopoulos and his partners have offered to donate 1,100 acres of their land, about 600 of which would be used for the school. The rest would be sold to build about 2,300 houses and apartments, with proceeds going to the Christian Brothers to help fund construction and administration of their new school.

The development would stick out like a peninsula into more than 2,000 acres of open agricultural land owned by Tsakopoulos and his partners.

Its location has raised the suspicions of opponents who say it is designed to open up development in the rest of rural western Placer County.

Supervisors Harriet White and Rex Bloomfield continued to question the location Tuesday.

"What's to stop thousands of homes to be around the De La Salle project?" Bloomfield asked during the meeting. Placer planners had asked the Tsakopoulos team to consider relocating the university, perhaps to an area targeted for annexation to Roseville. That option was rejected.

"I know they've researched all the other potential sites," Capps said of Tsakopoulos and his partners. "This is the only site he feels is feasible to donate."

Tsakopoulos and the Christian Brothers are pressuring the county to act quickly. The group said it needs an answer by June 2005, a time frame that Yeager said is "not realistic" given the complexity of the project and its location in a rural area with no urban services.

Brother George Van Grieken, a representative of the Christian Brothers, said that there's no "line in the sand," but added that the order needs to move quickly.

"There is an opportunity cost in all this," Van Grieken said. "Brothers are involved in projects all over the country."

As Placer County officials weigh the university proposals, surrounding cities have begun complaining that they're not being consulted.

Rocklin City Manager Carlos Urrutia said the City Council is concerned about encroachment on the landfill. Last week, the city of Rocklin adopted a position of neutrality with regard to the university plans.

Urrutia also expressed concern about universities' potential impact on traffic, water supply and development. "The universities aren't just universities," Urrutia said. "They're carrots to develop other land-use entitlements."

Lincoln Mayor Spencer Short said the Lincoln City Council, too, is concerned about the possible impact on the landfill.

"We want to work with the county on this, but the county has not consulted with us and has not been open about their process," Short said. "It's become an adversarial process. We're talking about the three largest cities in Placer County, and we're not being told anything."

Roseville Mayor F.C. "Rocky" Rockholm said he plans to meet with officials from the other cities so they can present a "united front."

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to initiate a formal process for soliciting the cities' input and keeping them updated on the planning process.