By DAVID ROSS
The days of the Open Range, free from inspectors tellin’ folks to trim their weeds, will soon follow the Old West into oblivion. Valley Center is gettin’ civilized!
The VC fire board Thursday night approved the first reading of a weed abatement ordinance that will open a new chapter of enforcement in what has been a free-wheeling Valley Center. A second and final vote will follow at the August meeting.
NOTE: The complete text of the ordinance will be posted on our website, www.valleycenter.com
Rather than writing an ordinance from scratch, the district is adopting, more or less verbatim, one approved earlier this year by the Board of Supervisors.
Once it becomes law, the board will consider whether or not to retain the private firm that made a presentation last month. Fire Prevention Services, based in El Cajon, contracts with 20 fire agencies to enforce their weed abatement ordinances.
Its services are free to the district. The program is based on cost recovery. Typically, it is cheaper for those who need overgrowths cut to use another private contractor. However, people will often take the path of least resistance, and pay Fire Prevention Services to do the job. This can cost in the thousands or more for large properties. Scofflaws who ignore notices will find that, after 45 days, their weeds are cut and they have a bill to pay.
For years the district has sent courteous notices to property owners requesting them to abate weeds. These notices are usually ignored since they have no teeth.
Some residents, like a couple who appealed to the board for help, have tried letters and pleas with a next door neighbor who refuses to cut back weeds that threaten their house. They can’t get insurance because of the problem, they say. They spoke strongly in favor of a weed abatement ordinance.
“We really need help. We are asking you to help us protect us,” said the couple. “If there is a fire here we will go,” they said.
Attitudes have changed since the disastrous Paradise Fire gutted hundreds of homes in VC. These days folks are more willing to have government tell them to cut back weeds or else!
“It’s a whole turnaround from the last time it was proposed,” Fire Marshal Joy Justis said.
Director Mel Schuler commented: “I’m not opposed to weed abatement, and we heard the presentation before, but what I haven’t heard that much about is the company itself.” He said he has heard complaints about Fire Prevention Services.
The chief of the Deer Springs Fire Protection District, which has used Fire Prevention Services for several years, told the board, “The job is getting done by far more than it has ever has before.”
Justis, who surveyed several districts who use the company, said about half like it and half don’t
Director Dan Thornton commented, “The Paradise fire would probably have been just as intense without weed abatement, but the houses that had adequate clearance would probably have survived.”
Schuler added, “One concern I have about weed abatement is how it is implemented. Is it by complaint? Is it by the loudest person complaining? It needs to be something more than just by complaint.”
At Deer Springs inspectors visited all properties, said Battalion Chief Chuck Maner, who is in charge of all CDF personnel in San Diego County.
Schuler asked how much impact this will have on staff.
“You’ll have complaints and phone calls and people showing up at you board meetings. That will lessen as it is implemented,” said Maner.
Schuler noted that many residents feel it is unfair for them to do weed abatement, when others do not. Some neighborhoods, such as the Yellow Brick Road neighborhood, which was hit first by the Paradise Fire, is surrounded by areas, such as the reservation, that have no weed abatement regulations.
Director Stan Johnson said that the irritations that the company causes will probably be worth it.
“I feel that if it will make our community safe we may have to put up with some undesirable business practices,” he said. “We have to weigh whether the results are what we want rather than are we making friends.”
Schuler added, “If we adopt weed abatement, we need to show how much its going to cost. Do people understand what abatement means? These are questions that people don’t necessarily know.”
“This is not a popular subject,” said Board Pres. Patrick Garcia, “but right now there is no one who is saying it’s a negative. Right now I would think that we would move forward”
Shortly before the board voted to adopt the ordinance, Justis pointed out “We are the only fire district in the county that doesn’t have a weed abatement ordinance.”
Thornton said that as time goes on the district can fine-tune the ordinance based on feedback from the community.
By DAVID ROSS
Valley Center residents are being urged to attend a County workshop July 27 that could have significant and irreversible impact on how Valley Center’s business core looks in the future.
The County Dept. of Planning & Land Use will host the meeting July 27, 6:30 p.m. at VC library community room.
Planning that has already taken place in previous workshops and in the Villages Subcommittee will be recapped (see interview, this page, with Village Subcommittee Chairman Lael Montgomery).
Follow-up workshops in August and September will discuss residential densities in the Village areas and commercial and industrial areas of the Country Town.
Dr. Montgomery stressed the importance of property and business owners participating in the upcoming workshops. “This is where the planning action is! This is the time to make a difference! Your input at these meetings really, really can help shape the future of VC,” she told The Roadrunner.
How Dense?
VC Planning Group Chairman Sandy Smith noted that it’s not a question of whether “smart growth” principles of concentrating higher densities in the center of town will be implemented. The only question is “how dense?”
“A lot of people think that we have a two acre minimum rule in this town, but the plan as submitted by the County is to go as high as 14.5 units per acre. That’s for what is now open fields,” said Mrs. Smith.
Now that the Board of Supervisors has approved the working copy of General Plan 2020, the action shifts to the hinterlands (that’s us!).
According to Mrs. Smith, “The County only has six months to make some pretty critical decisions, like how to make the circulation network work, what the ‘village’ will look like in terms of commercial, industrial and housing densities, how large the villages will be, and how far their boundaries will go.”
A less autocratic DPLU?
Although the County’s GP2020 modus vivendi has been, in general, to impose its will on community planning groups, Mrs. Smith said that DPLU has agreed in this instance to work with the community on defining the size of the village and the density.
Up to a point, of course.
It would be unrealistic for the community to demand that population densities of the Country Town’s two nodes stay at 500, or even go much below 6,000, according to Mrs. Smith.
However, the County’s goal of sardining 10,000 people into the two nodes is open to negotiation, she said.
“We have a real short opportunity to let them know we want fewer,” she said. “I don’t think the County will go much lower than 6,000, which is still 4,000 less than the working copy they gave us. According to ‘smart growth’ principles, that’s where the density needs to be. Even the Board of Supervisors has bought into that. But to let them put that much into the Country Town is too much.”
The northern “node” won’t accommodate such growth without a sewer, she noted. “But if they make it dense enough to make it profitable for a sewer, then it will happen.”
New Faces
VC will welcome a new County planner to the process, Bob Citrano. He replaces longtime planner Curt Gonzales, who has been assigned the VC plan from the beginning.
Citrano is in charge of circulation (i.e. roads) for the entire county, and is one of the few county planners with an architect’s degree. His expertise will be useful for wrestling with VC’s circulation problems, and with issues involving “the village.”
Accompanying Citrano will be Rosemary Rowan, senior planner, who drew the April working map that is now in play.
Mrs. Smith told The Roadrunner, “I want her [Rowan] to hear from me that it’s not just me that wants the Village less populated and a little smaller.”
In addition to showing up to lend your voice to whatever point of view you espouse, you also have the opportunity to get involved in the process and be appointed to committees.
“We’re always looking for people to get involved,” said Mrs. Smith.
Andy Washburn, vice chairman of the planning group, agrees:
“The GP2020 process is a very long drawn out process that will affect our community literally for decades to come,” he said.
“While it seems time consuming and slow as a turtle, this is our opportunity, our chance, to put onto paper our desires which will impact the decisions of the community.
“The best example of that is the parsing of the words in both the community plan and design guidelines in the recent shopping center debates. No one had any idea when they were writing them how much time would be spent on this phrase or that phrase,” said Washburn.
“Things are finally moving at the DPLU. They are starting to put their stakes in the ground, to say what things are. Rather than equivocating, now they are starting to make statements, so our interaction with staff is particularly important at this time. At later times it will be our interaction with the planning commission,” he said.
Two early birds, Andy Washburn and Don Martin, hit the ground running to file for VC offices last week as the filing period opened to obtain and return papers to the Registrar of Voters. Deadline is Aug. 11.
Washburn, an incumbent on the VC Planning Group, obtained his papers, but has not yet filed them. Martin, who is challenging two incumbents on the VC-Pauma Unified School Board, obtained and filed his papers.
Other seats open on the planning group are held by Mike Morasco, Jim Yerdon, Carol Prime, Don Martin, Frank Shoemaker, Rich Rudolf and Sandy Smith. Any VC resident can run for any of these seats.
On the school board, seats held by incumbents Patrick Simpson and Wendy Zeugschmidt are open. Neither have filed as yet but they are pulling papers this week, according to Supt. Karen Jobe, who talked to them.
On the Valley Center Fire Protection District board the seats of incumbents Patrick Garcia and Stan Johnson are up for grabs. Any registered voter in the district can run for these seats.
The VC Municipal Water District is divided into five divisions. Of those five, Div.1 (held by Robert Polito) and Div. 4, held by Chuck Stone, are open. Only residents of those particular divisions can run. No one has yet pulled papers. Call the VCMWD at 749-1600 if you are unsure what division you are in.
On the VC Parks & Recreation District, the seats held by Ron Lamb and John Scibilia are up for election.
The Yuima Municipal Water District, which serves the Pauma area, has four seats open, in Div. 1 (incumbent is Doug Anderson), 2 (incumbent is Mike Fitzsimmons), 3 (incumbent is John Lyttle) and 5, which is currently vacant. No one has yet pulled seats for these divisions. Call the district at 742-3704, if yo are uncertain which division you are in.
In the Pauma Municipal Water District, Divs. 2 & 3 no candidates have pulled papers. Rancher and incumbent Yoneo Kariya has pulled papers for Div. 4.
The Internet is a good source for current information on who has filed or pulled papers. You can get daily updates by logging onto www.sdvote.com
Or call the Registrar of Voters at (858) 694-3405.
Lael Montgomery is chairman of the Villages Subcommittee of the VC Planning Group. We interviewed her recently to find out what the committee does.
Q: Take us through how the Villages Subcommittee began.
A: I spent time in the summer of 1998 in Greece and was really enamored of the villages across the countryside, much like New England. I came back from that trip thinking that we have an opportunity to create a community oriented village when Valley Center's core develops. That was before I got involved in land planning.
I carried those images. Then I got involved in General Plan 2020 in the summer of 2001, and then I began learning a lot about how GP2020 planning worked at the County and the idea came of having a finer grain plan for our village areas that should be part of GP2020.
That idea grew out of the early planning in the land use subgroup of GP2020. A lot of people came to that group because they were concerned about the planning of the country town.
A lot of people came with those kinds of issues and questions, like 'What are we going to do when the moratorium is lifted?' A lot of questions that came up in the land use subgroup were concerned with planning the commercial, residential and industrial sections of the country town. Then, it looked like people in our own community ought to do something about that. We convinced the County to have a villages workshop.
We had the workshop last June. In the fall the Planning Group decided to form a villages subcommittee and made me the chair. Our first meeting was in November.
Q: What is its main task?
A: Generally to come up with an integrated plan for the village areas. The rationale behind that is the idea that, with the moratorium lifted, as different properties are developed—the same issues come up over and over with each project. Mainly they involve roads, and how roads should relate to land uses. The planning group decided that we need to look at the north and south village areas as a whole and resolve these issues as a whole before we are deluged with proposals for developing individual parcels.
Q: What has the subcommittee done so far?
A: Early on in the group we decided it would be a good thing to approach these questions from a professional point of view.
The idea was to have our early meetings be educational so all of the members of the committee, and regular attendees, would be on the same page, using the same vocabulary, the same basic concepts. We would understand one another.
John Ruggieri came to the process at our earliest meetings. He taught us what the main issues were in designing a town center. We were up at 20,000 feet, at a very very abstract level.
Q: How much community participation has there been?
A: We’ve had a really good turnout. We have ten people on the subcommittee: Myself, John Ruggieri, Jesse Hutchings. Bill Bohorquez, Robert Hancock, Rich Rudolf, Craig Johnson, Karl Ulle and Sandy Smith. Mel Schuler was a member at the early meetings, too. Usually we have about 30 people. It varies. New people and people who come intermittently. It has been a pretty good cross section of land owners. Curious residents. Business people. Planning group members drop in and out. Some people have said, “Gosh, there are people in this room who haven’t been in the same room in 20 years.” I’ve had a really good feeling about who has come. It’s a good mix of perspectives.
Q: How are decisions taken?
A: We haven’t really made decisions at this point. We are still in the information gathering mode.
Q: In the past the County has encouraged committees similar to yours to operate and then ignored the results. What leads you to believe that won’t happen again?
A: I’m an eternal optimist. The other part of it is that the County (DPLU and DPW) has been very encouraging. They’ve been encouraging and collaborative, so far. The Villages idea was the County’s idea but they have gone along with the process we’ve designed. Volunteers have put a lot of time, expertise and effort into it. Early on, we really led the process with the County folks are showing up, contributing information and in other ways supporting community involvement in the outcome. The County focus now on accelerating this process was always the intention, as I understand it, because Villages planning is integral to the larger GP 2020 project.
My experience with the County has been unlike some who have worked with them. I’ve found that when Valley Center comes to them with a fairly unified idea, a preference, they are pretty helpful, and they are willing to listen. A good example is the Valley Center Road k-rail and putting it back in when the community asked them to. I guess that’s why I'm optimistic. I guess optimism is a benefit of new people coming into the process all the time, isn't it?
Q: Although your committee has achieved the most notoriety for its interest in the proposed shopping center, it’s actually concerned with a larger area than that, isn’t it?
A: Right. We are looking at the area inside the Village boundaries, which is an established GP2020 designation. Land use designations are Commercial, Industrial and all Village Residential, everything inside the “redline” (which indicates that the area is still to be refined) on the April 2004 map. That’s the area we are concerned with. The Village boundaries are not firm. In fact, this entire area is still fluid. That'’ something we will be talking about at the July 27 meeting.
Q: Will the boundaries probably be larger than the current Country Town nodes?
A: Probably. Of course, boundary issues are connected to density issues, and there is a lot of information yet to be digested. These are big questions with a lot of different facets not the least of which: What do proposed densities look like? What do they mean? The County has drawn a line around an area that they have determined should have village level densities. We have yet to factor-in a lot of critical details -- constraints, natural breaks in the landscape, the relationship between residential density in the Village, in the market area and sustainable commercial area, whether industrial area is adequate, circulation, and so forth.
Q: How does the Villages Subcommittee's role differ from that of the Design Review Board?
A: In a lot of ways. One way they differ is that the design review board is reactive in the sense that it responds to plans put before it. The villages subcommittee is proactively involved with the County to look beyond the borders of a particular project to the big picture. We are looking at the whole and the design review is always looking at a part of that whole.
The DRB is also generally, usually, looking at a single building. Most projects presented are more modest —not land use and circulation plans for the entire area, not even site plans but more usually architectural details on individual buildings.
Q: But in your meetings the subject of whether something meets the design guidelines does come up, doesn’t it?
A: Actually no. Because this is part of the GP 2020 project. We are not working with the current community plan or design guidelines. And we are not focusing anywhere near that level of detail. We're working with a BIG IDEA, a VISION for Valley Center and how this VISION translates into issues — at the general plan level —of circulation and land use and how the two are connected. Sometimes we discuss about things at a finer-grained level, such as architectural styles, very generally, as we did in a recent Visual Preference Study, to help formulate the larger picture.
Q: Do the design guidelines explicitly state how streets should be laid out in a village?
A: The guidelines address site plan issues. But, again, our current Design Guidelines are concerned with details of current projects. The Villages Subcommittee is working at a much more general level to develop a VISION for the future. Once a VISION has been developed, finer-grained details follow. The Design Guidelines will be re-written in conjunction with the new Community Plan in order to bring forth the VISION that we are working together to develop right now.
This is really a tremendously important moment for Valley Center!
Q: What is the foundation for your concept for a village?
A: I grew up in New England. I come from a town about 30 miles west of Boston where the town core is quite densely built, really—even though the shops, churches, library, town hall and in-village homes cover a relatively small area, less than half mile square—and the countryside is the countryside. New England towns look something like Julian, Ojai or Fallbrook. They have a relatively small, contained core with larger parcels around. And they are separated by countryside. If you watch the Boston marathon which starts very near where I grew up—you can have a tour of town centers in central Massachusetts.
Q: Would it be accurate to say that the “village” would look like nothing that currently exists in Valley Center?
A: Well, if you mean different from open fields, yes. The built environment looks different from the natural environment. The fact that we had a moratorium for 18 years that prevented any extensive commercial development gives us an opportunity to do something more small town like than we might have done 20 years ago.
Q: Speaking philosophically, what do you hope to see the subcommittee accomplish?
A: I hope very much that we can come up with a plan for the heart of our town, I mean that in full sense of the word, that we all love. I hope for a plan that will bring the community together, a place where we can gather, a place that encourages us to get out of our cars and walk around and have a Coke. A central plaza.
Q: It appears to the casual observer that your committee doesn’t take into account whether your suggestions are economically feasible or not. Is that unfair?
A: Well, it’s jumping the gun. The Villages Subcommittee is working at the conceptual level—at the General Plan level. I’m not sure how we would use economics at this point other than, perhaps, to determine, for instance, how much commercial square footage our projected 2020 population can support. Numbers like these are quite standard the development industry; we use them as tools. Obviously, circulation and land use planning is connected eventually to town building.
Q: Sounds almost like what you’ve been doing is brainstorming.
A: Kind of like brainstorming, but more than that. Whenever you do a research project, at one point you are in expand mode, gathering all the information you can. Then you go into contract mode and figure out what's possible and what isn’t from different sets of criteria that you’ve established.
Specifically, we’ve been bringing the perspective of a professional planner to citizen planners —not just planning group members. Everybody who is interested in how Valley Center grows is welcome to come to meetings and participate. This is a very open process. There is a subcommittee, yes. But at our meetings everybody participates in an open forum kind of arrangement.
The leadership of the subcommittee has intended to bring professional expertise together with ideas and preferences that we community folks express. It really expands the possibilities when leading the discussion is someone who really knows what the options are. One thing I have really appreciated about our work, so far, is that John Ruggieri and the County staff have brought knowledge of the discipline to the community and the group brings knowledge of the community, their own visions for what the community ought to be like, and what is in their hearts.
This is an iterative process.
Q. Any products, so far?
A. So far, we have results of the June 2003 Community Workshop which identified opportunities and challenges. We have the results of a Visual Preference Survey that we did last fall. And we have three models for possible circulation and land use patterns that were presented a few months ago to the Planning Group. The next steps will review these and build on them.
Everybody in Valley Center who would like to hear about progress so far, and about plans for workshops to continue the process on a faster track —come to the meeting on July 27!
The Valley Roadrunner
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