S.D. Council Revokes Plan to Reopen Pomerado Road

Pomerado Road, closed for two years for widening and improvements, will not be reopened as the San Diego City Council had voted in executive session last month. The same council voted unanimously Monday not to reopen the road until public hearings are held and a full environmental impact report is done on the road’s effect on Scripps Ranch.

Poway Councilman Bob Emery said Monday night that the Poway City Council “has no choice but to instruct our city attorney to file the lawsuit” that Emery said had been put on hold when the San Diego City Council voted to open the highway.

Emery said the action will be taken at a council workshop Thursday afternoon, “although it is my opinion that we have already given our city attorney that authority.”

Poway officials argued Monday that San Diego has no legal right to keep the road barricaded now that construction has been completed, bringing it up to city road standards.

“The San Diego Council has be ill-served by their city attorney,” Poway Councilman Jan Goldsmith said. “The law has not changed, and our city attorney is very firm in his opinion. I cannot believe that the (San Diego) city attorney could flip-flop at this point. We had an agreement with them. We even passed legislation restricting truck traffic on the road so as not to impact Scripps Ranch.” San Diego Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt, who represents the Scripps Ranch area where many residents oppose the reopening, sought the delay Monday.

The winding two-lane road, which runs from Rancho Bernardo south through Poway and Scripps Ranch, was once a stagecoach route and later U.S. 395, the main highway between Riverside and San Diego before Interstate 15 was built.

The road was a well-traveled shortcut south to I-15 and San Diego until two years ago, when San Diego annexed a large tract on which the road ran and closed it for improvements.

At Monday’s hearing, Scripps Ranch activist Bob Dingeman argued: “It’s incomprehensible to me that the City Council could hold a closed session on a matter of this importance. We deserved to be heard by the City Council before (it) took action.”

Pomerado Road, which runs through the center of Scripps Ranch, was closed Nov. 8, 1988, by San Diego City Council action after the city determined that the newly annexed roadway was not up to city safety standards. Since then, Scripps Ranch residents have sought to enforce provisions in their community plan requiring another direct route from Poway to I-15 to be completed before Pomerado Road is reopened to traffic. They oppose the reopening because of the extra traffic it would bring through their community.

Council members questioned the conflicting legal advice that caused them first, in closed session, to agree to reopen Pomerado Road, and then Monday to vote to delay any action until after an environmental assessment of the impact of the reopening is made and public hearings held.

The flip-flop in the council’s actions on Pomerado Road apparently stemmed from differing advice it received from the city attorney’s office at the closed session Oct. 16 and at Monday’s council session about whether the city of Poway has the legal right to force the road’s reopening. At the closed session, the city attorney’s office advised the council members that they had no choice but to reopen the road or face a lawsuit that they could not win.

At Monday’s meeting, Curtis Fitzpatrick, assistant San Diego city attorney, told the council that the legal right to keep the road closed is “a close call.”

Fitzpatrick said after the Monday meeting that neither he nor City Atty. John Witt had been present at the closed-door session last month, but would not say which city attorney gave the council members a conflicting legal opinion at the earlier session.

“What’s being said here today was not said in closed session,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor said. “The council relied on that advice (to reopen the road) and acted accordingly” at the executive session Oct. 16. “This makes us look like we don’t know what we’re doing. Maybe that’s because when you get three attorneys in a room, you get three different opinions.”

Councilman Bruce Henderson concurred.

“In closed session, we were definitely (told) that we had no legal way of defending against Poway’s position” that San Diego was required to reopen the road at the conclusion of its reconstruction, he said. “On the other hand, if we have a possible defense, that’s great. If we don’t have to open it, let’s not open it.”