Hiring Hall to Continue at Same Site--for Now

The Encinitas hiring hall for documented workers has a new six-month lease on life--thanks to a unanimous but acrimonious vote Monday night by a community advisory board.

The New Encinitas Community Advisory Board voted to allow the hiring hall to continue operating at its present site along El Camino Real near Olivenhain Road--over the objections of several residents at the meeting.

“We did the right thing,” Chairwoman Anne Patton said Tuesday, “but not without some real acrimony.”

Last month, the Encinitas City Council voted to earmark $34,150 to continue operation of the embattled hiring hall for an additional six months. However, the hall’s temporary land-use permit expires in September, and city officials could have been sent looking for a new site if the vote had been reversed.

“We’re really happy with the outcome,” said Gloria Carranza, the city’s transients issues coordinator. “We see it as a six-month lease on life.”

Carranza, who attended the meeting, said the 9-month-old hiring hall has consistently landed jobs for 53% of the average 53 documented migrant workers who daily use its services.

But it continually has come under fire from residents who say it is too close to their thriving new communities; from city officials who question its success, and from migrant advocates, who say it excludes hundreds and perhaps thousands of undocumented workers who also have trouble locating work.

The city is reviewing several “light industrial use” sites within its limits where it might move the hall, a portable mobile home that now is driven to the rural stretch of El Camino Real each morning.

One of the two sites is reportedly a building on Westlake Drive near City Hall, which sits along congested Encinitas Boulevard, within sight of Interstate 5.

Patton said the present site--despite the objections of residents who included one advisory board member--is best for the time being. “We have people who are worried that this is going to become a permanent thing,” she said.

“One board member said he was tired of all this type of migrant stuff being dumped on New Encinitas. And two other residents spoke out against the hall, saying migrants who go there use their yards as a walkway and a bathroom,” Patton said.

“There’s just a lot of NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard) on this board.”

Patton said the debate lasted for more than 40 minutes until member Greg Grajek approved the lease extension in the 3-0 vote. One member of the five-member board was absent and another could not vote on the issue because he lives within 300 yards of the area in question.

“For now, this is the right place for that hall,” Patton said. “Right now, there are few other alternatives in Encinitas. We’re mostly built out. So, for this kind of use, we’re really limited.”

But if the City Council later votes to extend funding for the hall for another six months, Patton and the other members of the New Encinitas Community Advisory Board are going to have another tough decision on their hands.

“If it comes up again in another six months, I can’t say how I’ll vote,” Patton said. “I only know how I feel about it right now.”