Trail Meeting Goes Back to Drawing Board in Search of Map

A scheduled decision by the Board of Supervisors on whether to create a countywide system of riding and hiking trails was detoured Tuesday when board members learned there was no adequate map of the existing system to guide them in deciding whether developers should be forced to complete the missing links.

County staff presented several maps showing the potential trails system, which has been discussed by the county board since 1972, but supervisors rejected the diagrams as “wish lists” that fail to specify what trails now exist and how much land is needed to provide the missing links.

About 30 speakers voiced opinions on whether the trails system is “just a public subsidy for rich horse owners” or “a precious resource that we could save for our grandchildren,” only to be told by board members that there was not enough concrete evidence of the cost of acquiring and maintaining a regional trails system.

Anti-trails advocate Barbara Hutchinson pronounced herself “thoroughly disgusted” with the lack of a map showing the dedicated trails in the county system.

“Where is this map that you have been promising us?” asked Hutchinson, who heads a property rights group called Worried Homeowners, Organized and Angry, (WHOA). “How can you act on this matter when you don’t even know where (the trails system) is going to go?”

The board ordered the county staff to present a specific trail system map within 90 days and circulate a proposed county policy on acquiring a trails system to the dozens of local community planning groups for their comments. Supervisors also directed the chief administrative officer to convene a workshop for review of the county’s regional trails policies by proponents and opponents of the trail dedication plan.

A Fallbrook resident who espoused a plan for preserving open space in the county’s rural areas shook his head in disgust at the supervisors’ decision to delay action. “If we keep going at the rate we are going, the whole county is going to be paved over,” he said.