San Dieguito, Solana Beach to Vote June 3 on Cityhood

Despite threats and pleas from opposing property owners, San Diego County supervisors refused Wednesday to delay an election on the incorporation of the four-community San Dieguito area.

However, they did agree to a procedure that may allow developers to secure project permits before any new city governments take over.

Supervisors also approved without opposition a cityhood vote for the Solana Beach area.

Both incorporation issues will appear on the June 3 primary ballot. If voters approve, Solana Beach will become a city on July 1 and San Dieguito (which includes Encinitas, Leucadia, Cardiff and Olivenhain) will be incorporated on Oct. 1.

Attorney David Mulliken, representing a newly formed group called Citizens for an Informed Choice, said that the group filed on Tuesday a lawsuit that seeks to block or postpone the San Dieguito incorporation vote. He asked the supervisors to delay action until after the suit is heard March 12 in Superior Court.

Mulliken claimed that the Local Agency Formation Commission had acted precipitously, without considering the economic, environmental or political impacts, in approving the incorporation boundaries.

He said incorporation of the four communities would create “an isolated island” of unincorporated land between the San Dieguito area and the city of San Diego, and asked that the county delay action to allow for a more complete study of what effect it will have on the the entire North Coast region.

If supervisors had delayed Wednesday’s approval of the San Dieguito incorporation vote, the election could not have been held until November, according to the county registrar of voters.

Proponents of San Dieguito incorporation countered that a delay would cost the future city $10,000 a day in lost revenues, and criticized the CIC as a “last-minute organization” which had not participated in the months of hearings and debates that have been held on the cityhood issue.

Supervisors, however, did not follow the advice of county planners who recommended that land-use and general plan hearings be delayed until after the June 3 vote, which would allow any new city governments to take part in planning decisions.

At the urging of Board Chairman Paul Eckert, supervisors unanimously ordered county planning officials to “discourage” any new requests for general plan amendments in the San Dieguito area. But the board took no action on a staff recommendation that would have postponed a May hearing on general plan changes.

The board voted to urge the state Coastal Commission to rehear in May three controversial developments that were turned down by commissioners Dec. 17, waiving a required 6-month waiting period.

County planner Richard Empey said that coastal commissioners turned down the three projects on the basis of “faulty traffic data” contained in an unreleased county traffic study that was later withdrawn. The study indicated that Encinitas Boulevard and other major San Dieguito traffic arteries would be severely congested if the three projects and other already approved developments were constructed.

Empey proposed that a third county traffic study be made and presented to the Coastal Commission at its May meeting. He said that “interested property owners” had pledged to pay for the costs of the new study.

Gerald Steel, representing the San Dieguito Community Planning Group, pointed out that the county already has produced two “flawed” traffic studies for the San Dieguito area and “I have no faith that a third study would be any better.”

Steel called the board’s action “irresponsible” in proposing to send a traffic study to the commission before it had been reviewed by county supervisors and subjected to public hearings.