Torrey Pines Board Bitterly Split Over Elections

As members of the community jeered and shouted, the chairwoman of the Torrey Pines Community Planning Board and her supporters abruptly stormed out of a meeting Thursday night, preventing a vote on a plan to revamp the board.

Without a quorum, the remaining members of the board and the angry audience were left to contemplate the future of the advisory group to the San Diego City Council. The planning committee has been rendered almost completely non-functional by bitter disputes.

“This is very unusual,” San Diego Principal Planner Mike Stang said Friday. “It is also unfortunate because it is not allowing us to do our jobs.”

The special meeting was held Thursday night to discuss the possibility of staging special elections to replace some members of the board, which represents the area from Via de la Valle Road to Sorrento Valley west of Interstate 5. A group of dissident board members had charged that some members were improperly elected, prompting a city investigation.

In a report presented to the group Thursday night, representatives of the city Planning Department and the city attorney’s office announced that they could not determine if the planning group has held regular elections since 1986. As a result, the terms of 14 members of the 19-member board were judged to have expired.

Coupled with two existing vacancies, 16 seats on the 19-member board could be put up for election, the report concluded.

Although the report emphasized that the board had tremendous latitude to deal with the situation, the Planning Department recommended that the board prepare a phased election, staging a special vote as soon as possible to fill six seats and putting the remaining 10 spots up for grabs in the regularly scheduled March election.

There appeared to be support for the Planning Department’s recommendations, but several members of the community and board members called for all 19 spots to be put up for reelection. The city’s report did not find any improprieties in the reelection last year of Chairwoman Opal Trueblood and her ally, Therese Tanalski, the main targets of the dissidents’ anger.

The city’s investigation concluded that the election last March “basically followed” city guidelines, Stang said.

“I was extremely offended that they would allow Opal and Therese to stay on the board,” said board member Shirley Smith, who circulated the petition calling for the special meeting. “What the public wants is for Opal Trueblood to be gone.”

During the Thursday meeting, tempers often flared. Several times, Trueblood cut off members of the audience or board members by saying they were out of order, drawing jeers from the audience.

When it appeared that board members would force a vote on the proposal to replace all 19 members, Trueblood announced that she was not feeling well and was “not going to be party to this” and walked out, followed by several other board members.

Trueblood said on the way out the door that she was not going to allow the board to be “railroaded” into a forced resignation.

On Friday, Trueblood said that she had been suffering from the flu all week. She also acknowledged that, with several members of the board out of town, she did not want six dissident members to dissolve the entire group.

“There are too many important things the group has to address,” she said.

For several months, newer board members have been clashing with older, more entrenched members. Detractors say Trueblood, who has been on the board since 1985, has turned the board into her personal lobbying group, which is primarily made up of people living in the Del Mar Terrace area. The older members are often accused of having lost touch with the community, and of making it extremely difficult for neighbors to make simple changes on their properties.

But Trueblood and her supporters counter that efforts to include more residents have been unsuccessful, and that it is impossible to find people willing to put the time and energy into the board.

The next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 10. Several of Trueblood’s supporters appeared willing to back the compromise recommended by the Planning Department, which would put 16 seats up for reelection.

Stang said the Planning Department could not stop the board from calling for all members to resign but that it was not the Planning Department’s preference.

“We feel it would be chaotic and traumatic,” he said.

If the situation is not resolved, any member of the community board could take the dispute to the City Council, but the council is traditionally hesitant to involve itself in the planning groups.

“The community planning groups are supposed to be independent,” said Norma Damashek, an aide to Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, whose district includes the area covered by the Torrey Pines Planning Group.

“Abbe feels it is important that community groups remain independent and that the council not step in, take sides, negotiate or operate as a parent.”