High-profile housing legislation to allow mid-rise apartment construction near mass transit across California advanced in a state Senate committee Wednesday after two lawmakers reached an agreement that would limit its effect on smaller counties and along the coast, but eliminate zoning that allows for only single-family homes in much of the state.UPDATE: One amendment exempts coastal cities of less than 50,000 people from most of the bill's upzoning provisions. Encinitas' population is about 63,000.
Under changes to Senate Bill 50, communities in Los Angeles, San Francisco and 13 other counties with populations larger than 600,000 would have to allow four- to five-story apartment buildings near rail lines, and smaller apartments and townhomes in wealthy neighborhoods near job centers.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Here comes the density
LA Times:
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Encinitas $100,000 pension club membership rises to 25; Mark Muir still king
Full list of Encinitas pensions here, via Transparent California. Our old friend Masih Maher is collecting $66,575 a year for life now after working just 22 years.
Encinitas' pensions remain severely underfunded despite skyrocketing annual contributions and all-time high stock markets. The problem has been exacerbated by recent council actions like the 2018 firefighter pension spike.
Monday, April 22, 2019
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Quail Gardens to host totally non-Easter "Spring Egg Hunt" with totally non-Easter "Spring Bunny"
From the Inbox, one satirist's take:
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Encinitas This Week
April 15-21
Spring Party with Bunny
Visits with our big, gentle bunny, real bunnies and small animals, as well as spring crafts and more await children ages 2-6. At 12:30 pm, our ever- popular parade through the garden occurs, along with a stuffed bunny hunt, with each child receiving one to take home! The more aggressive children will each receive one of the small animals to kill and gut on the site, and a small beeswax treated paper bag to take home their kill, and a souvenir pocket knife.
Saturday, April 20, 10am-1pm. San Diego Botanic Garden, 230 Quail Gardens Drive. $15, $18. $25 (with knife) Info
Thursday, April 18, 2019
City caught hiding documents, maintains aggressive destruction policy; Blakespear refuses comment
Voice of San Diego:
In January, Donald McPherson, an Encinitas property owner and retiree, requested copies of communications between the Portofino development team and city officials. But according to the lawsuit he filed last week in San Diego County Superior Court, the city made two missteps. It produced records for a different hotel project, and the ones related to the Portofino inexplicably ended at May 2018.
City officials insisted that no further correspondence existed, but McPherson and his attorney, Felix Tinkov, who specializes in public records law, found that explanation odd. (Disclosure: Tinkov also represents Voice of San Diego in public records disputes.) The hotel designs had been reintroduced in September 2018 after an 18-month delay gave the owner more time to negotiate with his unhappy neighbors, according to the Coast News.
Those designs are going before the city’s planning commission Thursday and included in the hundreds of pages of documents for the meeting are communications dated late 2018 and early 2019 — which McPherson had requested but never received.
Tinkov told all this to a judge Monday. They agreed to talk privately outside the courtroom and report back in a few weeks.
Although it wasn’t their intention at the outset, McPherson and Tinkov are now taking aim at something much bigger than the Portofino. They’re targeting a policy in Encinitas that gives officials the authority to delete emails within 30 days, arguing that it obstructs the ability of regular folks to know what their government is doing.
“It seems to be the norm around here, but it’s wrong,” Tinkov said. “I told them, ‘You guys have been playing with fire for years.’”
Encinitas City Attorney Glenn Sabine and Mayor Catherine Blakespear both declined my requests for interviews.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
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