Challenge to Fallbrook Density Action Denied

A Superior Court judge Friday dashed efforts by a Fallbrook citizens group to reverse a county land-use decision it says has opened the door for two high-density developments in the rural community.

But leaders of Friends of Rural Lifestyle (FORL), a grass-roots group claiming 5,000 backers, say they will appeal Judge Herbert B. Hoffman’s ruling.

“We’re disappointed,” said Stephen Wheeler, attorney for the group. “We still feel we have a good point.”

Hoffman rejected the group’s arguments that San Diego County planners filed an inadequate notice before a hearing on the change in the regional land-use category for Fallbrook, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors in September.

Under Fallbrook’s old land-use plans, one unit was allowed per acre, but the new change encouraged densities of four units or more per acre.

The organization alleged that many Fallbrook residents were unaware that the change, which opened the way to higher-density developments, would affect them and therefore decided not to attend the hearing.

If more residents had been properly notified of the potential effects of changing the land-use designations, the group argued, they would have flooded the hearing to protest and might have swayed the supervisors.

County officials, however, argued that they filed the required notices and that opponents of the changes had failed to protest the Board of Supervisors’ decision within 120 days as required by law.

After the board’s September approval of the Fallbrook land-use switch, developers of two large projects in Fallbrook filed with the county under the new regulations to dramatically increase the number of dwelling units allowed in the subdivisions.

Presley of San Diego, developer of a housing tract off Gird Road, asked in December that it be allowed to build 1,240 units instead of the 289 originally planned. In November, developers of the Skylake project requested that the subdivision they planned off Olive Hill Road be expanded from 44 units to more than 140.

When residents finally learned in February about the expanded projects and the board’s September decision, they protested the matter before the Board of Supervisors. Friends of Rural Lifestyle filed its lawsuit against the county.

The board reacted by approving a resolution in April that blocked approval of new high-density development in rural sections of Fallbrook. The action, however, did not have any effect on high-density development that the board approved between September and April, opponents of the projects said.

Under pressure from FORL, the supervisors went even further in May, agreeing to a temporary moratorium banning construction of houses on lots of less than one acre, prohibiting new sewers in areas outside downtown Fallbrook, and blocking developers from increasing densities by clustering houses on smaller lots.

Those actions will remain in effect until the county, at the urging of Fallbrook residents, reconsiders the area’s overall land-use category, something that is not expected to be final until late this year.

Leaders of FORL say they are pleased that the county has agreed to reconsider the matter. The group has begun pushing for a plan that would provide for relatively high-density housing in downtown Fallbrook, a transition belt around that area allowing one unit per acre, and two-acre minimum lots in rural sections of the unincorporated community.

Nonetheless, the group is worried that some high-density projects, chief among them the Presley and Skylake developments, have been allowed to slip through the cracks in the meantime.

“We used to be rural and we’re going to be rural again, but in the meantime there’s been a window of opportunity during which developers could file,” said Jack Wireman, co-chairman of FORL.

With that in mind, the group has attempted to block the projects by overturning the Board of Supervisor’s original September decision allowing higher-density subdivisions.

In three separate hearings before Hoffman since last month, the Fallbrook organization has argued that county planners misled residents with the hearing notices, which were mailed to landowners.

“This notice is at best confusing and probably misleading,” Wheeler told the judge Friday.

Wheeler specifically pointed to maps included in the notice indicating that only about one-third of the 56-square-mile Fallbrook planning area would be affected by the changes being proposed.

Bruce Beach, a deputy county counsel, argued that the notice was accurate and residents had more than enough information to determine whether their property would be hit by the proposed planning alterations.

He noted after the hearing, however, that the maps included in the notice packet depicted areas where zoning and other land-use changes were proposed. A map showing the area under consideration for the altered regional land-use category was “omitted by mistake,” he said.

In addition, the board’s decision in September did nothing to force higher-density projects on the area, but rather was “a description of the probable uses” for the area, Beach said after the hearing.

“If anything, my position is this is much ado about nothing,” Beach said.

Hoffman agreed that the notice “substantially complied” with legal requirements. In addition, the judge ruled that FORL failed to demonstrate that it had been subject to “substantial injury” because the land-use changes.

Moreover, Hoffman noted that county officials had worked with the group and other Fallbrook residents to iron out problems, pointing to the moratorium and plans for new hearings on the land-use questions.

“It’s not like they’ve been insensitive to the cries of the people of Fallbrook,” the judge said.

Hoffman passed off as “speculation” the group’s arguments that the Board of Supervisors would not have approved the land-use changes in September had residents been aware of the implications and protested.