San Marcos’ Annexation Plan Rejected by State Panel : Government: Mayor Thibadeau says the city was “conned” during two years of planning to bring 9 square miles of territory into its sphere.

State officials late Wednesday turned down a request by San Marcos to expand its boundaries, prompting Mayor Lee Thibadeau to complain that the state agency “conned” his city into wasting more than two years planning its future.

San Marcos had asked the state’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees city boundary changes, to add 9 square miles of county territory to its “sphere of influence” for future annexation.

But, after 4 1/2 hours of testimony Wednesday from neighboring residents and government officials, who mostly drubbed the plan, San Marcos limped away with less than 10% of the land it sought.

“San Marcos asks us for one vision of the future, but the people come wanting another,” LAFCO board member Joan Shoemaker said before the 5-1 vote against the plan.

Thibadeau said after the meeting that LAFCO staff members had conned the city into believing the agency wanted a comprehensive boundary plan that would cover the next 10 to 15 years of expected growth, rather than the usual “piecemeal” approach to annexing territory.

San Marcos officials say that so much of the city has been built out that the city needs the power to protect the outlying, undeveloped area as a buffer zone in addition to using some of that land for growth.

But LAFCO staff analyst Dana Smith said that San Marcos already has “three times the amount of land it needs” to handle such growth, an assertion that San Marcos officials dispute.

The city now covers 23 square miles, with an additional 8 square miles targeted for eventual annexation. Wednesday’s proposal would have more than doubled that 8-square-mile sphere of influence.

LAFCO executive officer Jane Merrill bristled at suggestions that her staff encouraged San Marcos to come up with the type of proposal it did. “Nobody was enticed,” she said.

The plan, filed in March but scaled back slightly Wednesday night, asked for about 5,700 acres, most of it in the Twin Oaks Valley area to the north and the Elfin Forest-Harmony Grove area to the south. Smaller parcels were sought to the west and east.

San Marcos officials said they wanted to buffer their city from the “butchered hillsides” and high-density apartments popping up in neighboring cities.

However, some opponents of the plan said they suspected San Marcos would be the one pushing for dense growth. “San Marcos’ goal is to take open space and preserve it--under a 6-inch layer of asphalt,” one Elfin Forest resident told LAFCO board members.

Other opponents included the cities of Escondido, Encinitas and Carlsbad--which stood to lose land now under their spheres of influence--and assorted fire and water agencies.

Based partly on such opposition, LAFCO staff analysts issued a recommendation earlier this month against the plan, saying most of the affected areas had few economic or social ties with San Marcos.

However, San Marcos officials noted that many of the affected residents use San Marcos schools and shopping centers. And the expansion plan was endorsed by a letter from the city of Vista and various landowners and developers south of the city.

San Marcos City Manager Rick Gittings blamed some of the opposition on lingering hard feelings from disputes over the San Marcos trash dump.

“We’re asking you to take a 15-year look into the future,” he told LAFCO.

But, in the end, the only land that LAFCO added to San Marcos’ orbit was about 500 acres south of the city, to be used for expansion of the county trash dump and a pair of city-approved development projects.