Take action
Why should we give the 5 members of the Del Mar City Council more power over our lives?If the proposed Village Specific Plan IS VOTED into effect in November, the result will be just that! And the Council will be able to make any future amendments to the Plan WITHOUT OUR BEING ABLE TO VOTE AGAIN, except for increasing the FAR, the building heights, or adding a new use, neither of which is likely.
Recent examples show that the Council has a proclivity for doing whatever they want, knowing that, in most cases, legal challenges will not be affordable!
Adoption of the Sidewalk Café ordinance, setting forth the usual regs classified as Zoning Regs by State Law, as a subdivision of the Building Construction Title rather than the Zoning Title. This eliminated the State Law requirement for public hearing before, and recommendation of the Planning Commission PRIOR TO COUNCIL ADOPTION. LESS PUBLIC INPUT!
The recent approval of “Valet Parking Plans” for the addition of two new restaurant/bars, in spite of such plans not being provided for in the adopted Municipal Code.
Developers under the existing codes have more choices in what their development will be and look like than under the inflexible Specific Plan. All it takes for action is to increase the FAR to a reasonable amount!
Ralph Peck,
Del Mar
Cheap shot
What a cheap shot front-page photo. The Coast News is so anti business that they mock the opening of a new business that hired 250 new employees by inserting a woman holding a anti Wall Mart sign who did not want to be identified and who wanted a movie theater that would maybe hire 15 employees and generate less than 1 percent of the tax revenue expected from Wall Mart store.
Or did The Coast News use this cheap shot to show their contempt for non-union companies. People are out of work and 250 jobs were created. Your editorial staff should be ashamed.
Don Thor,
Solana Beach
What is ‘consensus’?
With respect to Andrew Audet’s video presentation of Peder Norby’s process in facilitating the Cardiff Specific Plan, I’m grateful we could view it. More information encourages better decisions. Peder Norby, in his oral communication and his emails to Council, which are public documents, seemingly trivializes the majority vote, the opinion held by much MORE than a simple majority of private citizens voting, which voting body also included parties associated with development interests. Norby’s discounting the majority vote has been terribly disappointing, and is seen as deceptive.
The appearance of misrepresentation results when opinion, often politicized, takes the place of verifiable facts. This practice leads to “massaging the data” by and to Council through paid consultants or contractors’ “tweaking” the facts, to fit conclusions desired by those in favor of increased density, through upzoning. We can all see the “slant” of the opinion: “There was no consensus,” versus the FACT: “The vote to restrict mixed use passed by a majority of 6-5.”
ALL media and most individuals edit video presentations for focus, and for brevity. Also Encinitas City Council, itself, counts consensus as 3 out of 5 Council members concurring, when a formal vote is not taken.
Clearly, there is disagreement on the word consensus, which constitutes a reason why many are questioning Norby’s objectivity or effectiveness as a facilitator for the new general plan workshops. Public discussion of the Norby contract was previously disallowed when Mayor Jerome Stocks improperly tabled the 5/9/12 agenda item. With the exception of Norby himself and Mira Mesa political hatchet-man Ken Moser, members of the public, through oral communications, have continued to express concerns about Norby’s contract being renewed, Regardless, Norby would be wise to avoid the word “consensus” in the future, simply stating there WAS agreement on restricting mixed use, by a 6-5 majority.
Lynn Marr,
Leucadia
Save open space
“SOS for Open Space” wasn’t originated by Preserve Calavera and our 14 co-sponsor organizations. Carlsbad residents of 24 years ago had the same concerns as we do today about preserving our natural lands. Newspaper stories of that time show a compromise to avoid a ballot measure that would have required a two-thirds vote to develop any land designated as open space (SOS, Council Back Open Space Plan 7/27/88).
That was before most of Calavera Hills, Aviara and La Costa were built. Now those once rolling hillsides are covered with hundreds of homes. We lose touch with our natural heritage when it is gone, or when it is put behind a fence so no one can even see it (like the waterfall at Box Canyon.) We can learn from the mistakes of the past. We can preserve the best of what we still have left. But we need Mayor Hall and the Carlsbad City Council to answer our S.O.S call, not with platitudes and another workshop, but by committing existing reserve funds to open space acquisition — and then making it happen.
Diane Nygaard,
Preserve Calavera
