Most Encinitans aren't even aware of the "General Plan" or the update thereof. The Powers that Be hope to keep it that way.
The General Plan is the document that defines whether or not you will have a four-story (or higher) apartment building built in your neighborhood. The "update" that the city is trying to sneak through is a developer's wet dream, removing height and density restrictions left and right and saying "To Hell with gridlock on El Camino Real and Encinitas Boulevard, we're building to the sky!"
The city staff, trying to pull the wool over residents' eyes, hasn't released a concise report of proposed changes to the General Plan. Instead, they've been sending out bullshit marketing pieces long on fluff and short on specifics.
The usual Greens and NIMBYs are obviously opposed to turning Encinitas into Irvine South. But this abomination of a General Plan Update is even drawing opposition from the New Encinitas Network, long thought to be pro-developer. NEN's Mike Andreen via LeucadiaBlog:
The City of Encinitas believes that the residents and business owners of NEW ENCINITAS have 'signed-off' and approve of this new general Plan 2035. We believe 99% of you never heard of this plan and certainly would not approve...
Should you choose to read the elements of the ‘draft’ General Plan 2035 for yourself? Here is a Link:
http://www.encinitas2035.info/Content/10040/DraftGeneralPlanElements.html
Should you choose to express your opinion on any or part of the ‘draft’ General Plan 2035, feel free to contact your elected official.
Mayor: James Bond .......................633-2623 jbond@CityofEncinitas.org
Deputy Mayor: Jerome Stocks ....633-2622 jstocks@CityofEncinitas.org
Council Members: Teresa Barth .....633-2620 tbarth@CityofEncinitas.org
Kristin Gaspar........................633-2624 kgaspar@CityofEncinitas.org
Feel free to call us with any questions; 760 683-4290
If the Leucadia Blog and Mike Andreen agree on this, there's something rotten at City Hall. Please call your elected officials, or better yet, speak up at the meeting.
How many citizens even know that a general plan revision is in the works? Probably one out of a hundred - if that. Special interests usually prevail as a result - thank god for this blog and others like it and the small cadre of activist citizens!
ReplyDeleteI hate it because they used completely invalid methods in what they define as "citizen participation."
ReplyDeleteIn some cases, the answers of 30 attendees at a meeting were used to justify such decisions as a multi-story parking structure at the site of the current Henry's shopping center. In a city of 60,000 residents, this is completely unacceptable, yet the Planning Department boasts of "good turnout" and "citizen participation." In addition, answers on the survey were blended to create a perception that more people supported staff's posititions. Those of us who went to these events and filled out surveys may have done greater damage to ourselves and to our community interests than our neighbors who stayed at home. This a quintessential abuse of testing ethics for any professional field and should be criminal since in addition to being misled and our answers blended, that we now have to pay for this.
This only goes to demonstrate that Pat Murphy and those who he forces to repeat such deceptive garbage are completely incompetent.
I want the 2 million dollars back that was paid to MIG!
Last week, some of the Encinitas planners went to a conference. It is interesting that they claim they have no money for anything, but they can send planners to conferences. This might not be objectionable if they could demonstrate that they learned something, but I see no evidence of that. They are no doubt scoping out other consultants to hire to do their jobs!
Why don’t Pat Murphy and the Planning Department just follow the code of Ethics for their professional society instead of spending money to go to conferences while learning nothing! Applying professional standards and making decisions based upon the code of ethics is free!
http://www.planning.org/ethics/conduct.html
They also are proposing doing away with mid-density development. This is terrible! It will result in much more high-density projects than we have even now. Why is Planning so intent on destroying a beautiful city??
ReplyDeleteI hate this plan and the marketing BS the City is sending us. The plan is 2 years in the making and many residents of New Encinitas are just finding out about it. We are not going to take it. Bringing high-density housing along El Camino Real and Encinitas Blvd, while proposing nothing to relieve the traffic congestion is bad idea. Doing thing while wasting $1.5M with an out-of-town consultant is scandalous.
ReplyDeleteThe city planners are clearly incompetent.
I am worried.
I am a resident of what is now known of "New Encinitas". Due to the lack of representation of New Encinitas at the GPAC and the complete failure of the outreach program, most residents have no clue about the plan still. When they start learning about it, they will get to hate it very fast like I did. They will join the New Encinitas business community which has already shown its profound disdain for the plan. Nothing good can come up with a plan that propose adding 1255 apartment units in a very small area of El Camino Real (from Sprouts to Michael's). A large portion of these apartments will be for extremely low income (about 10%), very low income (15% and low income (20%). The traffic, which is already bad, will get way worse along El Camino Real, public safety will be compromised, our awesome public school will go done the tube.
ReplyDeleteThe city acknowledges the traffic will get worse, and what do they propose: Building biking lanes and more "inviting" walkways, ignoring the thousands of commuters that rely on cars to get to work. Instead of coming up with constructive solutions to improve traffic, they are cramming thousands of new residents in an already very impacted part of town.
Why does the city have to compromise our quality of life to make the numbers dictated by SANDAG and RHNA.
The city is concerned about losing some state grants and be exposed to various potential lawsuits (builders and low-income housing advocacy groups). It makes me sick they can not stand up for what the residents want. They tried so hard to portray their plan as a grandiose vision for the city but they have to come up with so many nice words and marketing schemes to make us believe they really care about our well being. Read the plan, it is laughable.
I can't speak for what the City Council think of the plan. The fit that Jerome Stocks had about the plan was more about the process the city planners had follow to come up with the draft, than really about the actual content of the draft. With a 4-1 pro growth majority in city council, I would not be too surprised to see the plan adopted in some fashion. Hopefully the plan will be reviewed and signed by the 2012 elected city council. I would hope we would get better representation and that our voices will be fairly represented by city council.
Vote out all elected officials!! I have attended several city council meetings attempting to express my concens realated to excessive traffic through my neighborhood. Needless to say, I was treated with arrogance and told to compile a petition from my neighbors before they would consider the topic... talk about skirting the issue!! It happens that I was one of a long line of residents that have brought up the same concerns with similar results. Exercise your power at the voting both and kick them all out!!
ReplyDelete