EAST OF THE LINE: A TALE OF TWO PLANNING GROUPS—FROM LEADERSHIP TO LOST IN THE WILDERNESS

Plus how the County creates its own poster children for “red tape reduction”

By Billie Jo Jannen

February 8, 2012 (San Diego’s East County)--The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is due to vote later this month on a series of initiatives entitled “Red Tape Reduction Task Force Recommendations.” The idea behind it is to make it simpler and cheaper to get projects through the permitting process. The document includes giving staff members rewards for moving projects through faster and shifting more projects to entitlement or ministerial approval.

Also among the suggestions is the elimination of community planning and sponsor groups, or alternatively, imposing term limits and terminating indemnification for members.

The latter would have the effect of making community planners too afraid of personal lawsuits from developers to be the strong advocates their communities need.

The former would leave our far-flung rural communities with no voice at all in the planning process unless individual residents have the luxury to take time off from work and drive 50 miles to a board of supervisors or planning commission meeting in San Diego. Without locally posted planning group agendas, most people wouldn't even learn of projects until it’s too late for them to be heard.

Aside from the irony of labeling community input as “red tape,” the assault on community planners ignores the County’s own responsibility to ensure the viability and usefulness of its community planning bodies in favor of an initiative that is wildly popular with developers of large projects.

But is it really the planning groups that need to change and not the County? Let’s take two contrasting examples of backcountry planning group in action—and in the latter case, “inaction”-- in Boulevard and Campo.

A tale of two planning groups

Boulevard is faced with a landslide of industrial-scale energy projects. At its Feb. 2 meeting alone, it heard eight solar projects, two wind projects, a major use commercial project and two energy infrastructure projects. It formulated comments for four sets of proposed regulations and addressed another eight various issues and reports. One of the items was an anonymous letter slandering planning group members, which was believed to have been circulated by developers, and which the group decided to respond to for the sake of correcting inaccuracies.

The group not only covered everything on the agenda, but did so with project information to all members of the public and planning group. The group formulated coherent responses to everything on the agenda and everyone there to speak got to speak. The group is well-known for its proactive approach to collecting information and doing its homework ahead of time.

In contrast, Campo is currently faced with only one very large project: Star Ranch. This proposal includes 453 homes, a sewer plant and a commercial center. It would permanently change the character of the community and add half-again to its population.

It is the sort of project where community planning bodies have the opportunity to shine as advocates for the community’s wishes and where individual planners have a responsibility to ensure that they get their group recommendations right.

The latest fiasco started with the County mistakenly noticing the public that the scoping meeting for the Star Ranch project would be held at Lake Morena Church, when in fact it was slated for the community center, where the Campo Lake Morena Planning Group customarily meets.

The planning group, apparently unaware that the scoping meeting had already been advertised, put this item on the agenda for late in the evening. The agenda described it as a simple action item and included no language at all to explain that this was a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process to determine the scope and content of the environmental impact report (EIR) for the project.

The “solution” to the County’s noticing error was to attach a sign to the door of the church directing people to the planning group meeting on the other side of town. Given the high winds and rain, I leave it to you to decide if anyone got out of their cars in a dark and deserted parking lot to get close enough to the door to read a sign.

The planning group left County staff members, who were present to hold the scoping meeting, to cool their heels for over an hour after the advertised 7 p.m. start time for the scoping while planners meandered through two other items. This business involved a member voting on a Forest Conservation Initiative zoning motion that included his family’s property -- a very big no-no under state law and county conflict-of-interest policy.

When the discussion finally got around to the biggest project the community is -- or ever has been -- faced with, there was not enough time for community members present to share their suggestions; the planning group cut off comment, literally in mid-sentence, and ended the meeting.

The planning group membership has been completely changed over the past two elections. All but one of its nine members were supported by the Star Ranch developer and his friends. The latter put about $12,000 into the two elections, per Fair Political Practices documents. All but the one independent gave no indication that they had read the Star Ranch plan or had any idea what the scoping meeting should entail.

In fact, the group appeared to be completely in the dark as to what its own role should be in the process and was unprepared to offer any recommendations for the scope and content of the upcoming EIR. The group had to request extra time from planners to look at whatever written community comments were tendered and decide what, if anything, the group wanted to say about the project.

Interestingly, the Boulevard group found time to not only discuss the Star Ranch proposal, but to formulate comments for the scoping process.

On its surface, the story of Campo can be construed as a perfect reason to get rid of planning groups. If all planning groups were this uncaring, I’d be advocating for it myself. But the great majority are more like Boulevard. They are engaged, aware, self-educated and take responsibility for keeping their communities informed.

County responsibility

As easy as it is to blame the planning group members for Campo’s shortcomings, this is shortsighted and ignores the county’s responsibility.

The truth is that the County is perfectly able to ensure that our planning groups perform as they should--without bulldozing the people's rights to be heard.

For instance, the County itself improperly noticed that scoping meeting, gave the planning group no indication of what the meeting was about and continued to be vague  throughout the meeting. Astoundingly, County staffer Kristin Blackson claimed repeatedly that staff members didn’t have to record the public comments made during the scoping meeting.

The Campo group’s mis-noticing of the scoping meeting could have been avoided altogether if the County would create pre-made information sheets for chairmen and provide suggested boilerplate language for different types of project meetings and hearings. New planning group members shouldn’t be left on their own to fumble through important public processes.

The County I-1 policy requires County staff to provide training for new planning group members, but the County didn’t even hold a planning group training in 2011, according to Boulevard Chairman Donna Tisdale, so is in violation of its own policy. The County shouldn’t ignore its own policy and untrained people shouldn’t be allowed to vote if they don’t know what they’re doing.

The planning groups are all instructed to create their own standing rules. This has resulted in some bizarre rulemaking and considerable infighting in the past. Why do we not have consistent standing rules that apply to all the groups?

Moreover, if we can put limits on how many terms a supervisor can serve, the County should be just as able to make rules on campaign donations so that developers can’t outspend residents to influence how these representatives operate. In fact, THAT initiative ought to be applied to the supervisors too.

The Campo group was a vigorous community representative only five years ago -- and could be again with future elections or better training and information. But it will never get the chance if the “red tape” reduction provisions are adopted.

It’s true that changes should be made so that community advisory groups operate better, but the abolition or disempowerment of community planning bodies is not among them. Local planning and sponsor groups are not "red tape," regardless of what the developers might think. They are an absolute necessity for ethical governance of the backcountry and their loss would be a loss to us all.

Billie Jo Jannen is a property owner and resident of Campo for 24 years, has written and edited rural news for 25 years. Her children and grandchildren also live in Campo. Reach her via email at jannen@inbox.com.