Poway to Sue Over Pomerado Road : Transportation: City officials are furious at San Diego’s recent backtracking on plans to reopen the shortcut. They authorize legal action.

Poway City Council members held a 20-minute closed door session Thursday afternoon and emerged to announce they have authorized City Atty. Stephen Eckis to sue the city of San Diego to force reopening of Pomerado Road, a popular shortcut south to San Diego.

The action came on the second anniversary of the closure of Pomerado Road by San Diego.

San Diego annexed several hundred acres through which Pomerado Road runs and announced that the road would be closed for reconstruction to bring it up to city safety standards.

Last month, the Poway council went into executive session to authorize legal action against San Diego, but emerged to announce that the San Diego City Council had voted earlier in the day to reopen the road.

But, on Monday, San Diego council members voted 9 to 0 to keep Pomerado Road closed after receiving a new opinion from City Atty. John Witt and Asst. City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick contradicting earlier advice to the council that such an action could not be defended in court.

Poway Councilwoman Linda Brannon called the San Diego council’s recent action “outrageous” and pointed out that the city of Poway had suffered “impossible traffic congestion for two years” because of the closure, which forces all the city’s southbound traffic onto Poway Road.

Residents of Scripps Ranch, an upper-income San Diego suburb on Pomerado Road, have fought to have Pomerado closed permanently, or at least until another east-west highway is built to link Poway to Interstate 15.

Poway Mayor Don Higginson said Thursday that “it has always been the intention of our city that the road be reopened as soon as it was completed, and apparently that is not going to happen.”

Higginson said the suit will be filed next week.