LOCAL ELECTIONS / ENCINITAS CITY COUNCIL : Development Issue Resurfaces in Encinitas

Candidates vying for City Council seats throughout North County are having trouble hanging their campaigns on one issue that neatly divides voters, but in Encinitas they’re coming close.

Six years after the city incorporated with a longing for more local control over land use, developer phobia is back.

Although years were spent crafting a general plan that protected the character of the town’s languid beach communities along with its canyons and wetlands, mistrust of city government is so rampant that some say that very plan is being sold out.

“We have a jewel of a general plan, but we could watch it all go down the toilet,” said Robert Macfarlane, who spearheaded the Community Alliance for Residents of Encinitas (CARE) to focus the election on specific issues. “The word we want to get out is that there are two choices on Nov. 3: the developer slate and the pro-resident slate.”

If Macfarlane’s group--a coalition of local business, labor and environmentalists--gets that word out, it may come as a relief to voters who are faced with 14 candidates--only one of them an incumbent--for only three open council seats.

One candidate--Brad Roth--has already dropped out of the race at CARE’s urging and endorsed three candidates that Macfarlane says were endorsed by a host of community organizations. He predicts more candidates may drop out before Tuesday to strengthen the trio’s chances of victory.

Development, however, is not the only issue driving the election, which is peppered by acrimonious discontent with city staff members.

Many of the candidates are political novices offering an antidote to what they describe as bureaucratic big spenders and a council that tends to over-legislate. Quite a few have called for a loosening of the restrictive permitting process for local business.

A call for a stronger tax base and a plan to stem Encinitas’ nascent gang problem have also proved to be issues for campaigners.

But perhaps the most sensitive issue is how Encinitas will grow, and whether the city, hungry for a stronger tax base, will sell out its identity as a quiet beach town to developers.

The issue is so touchy, many candidates are hedging on it, refusing to take a stand on some of the key development dramas now being played out.

At the heart of the fracas is a plan by Home Depot to build on 55 wetland acres in Leucadia. The Atlanta-based discount outlet recently sent voters a special eight-page promotion booklet describing the project as a done deal and insisting that any environmental damage to the wetlands will be countered by habitat restoration elsewhere--namely for the gnatcatcher.

The mailer was inserted into a voter guide sent out by the Chamber of Commerce, which backs the Home Depot deal, enraging some local citizens.

Another major development project, now in the formative stage, may bring a big regional shopping mall to Encinitas. Macfarlane said fears of a developer takeover have grown into foreboding predictions that Encinitas might even become . . . the next Orange County.

“We are standing on the edge right now. This is the turning point for Encinitas,” said candidate Sheila Cameron, one of three endorsed by Macfarlane’s group, along with Adam Birnbaum and Chris Kirkorowizc. “We need to get the right people in right now or the city will be destroyed--gridlocked with traffic and clogged with commercial business beyond belief. We need a quality growth plan.”

For-lease signs dot the Encinitas business landscape, and the quest for new business has become a major campaign issue for many of the candidates.

But they differ on whether Encinitas needs tenants like Home Depot and other major chains, or should cater to tourists with smaller businesses that amplify the small beach town flavor many were drawn to when they put down roots in the community.

When Encinitas incorporated, community advisory boards were set up throughout town to ensure that residents would have a say in government and that local ambience would be protected. Community character has been a catch phrase ever since.

But even the community advisory boards have lost some of their powers recently, and that has highlighted the disenchantment felt by many residents, who think the current City Council doesn’t listen to their concerns.

The mistrust stems in part from the purchase of a costly new City Hall that is infested with termites and needs a new roof, a council vote to spend more than $100,000 to furnish its new complex, and an initial move by the city manager to allow several homeowners to build a boulder barrier on the beach to protect their cliff-top homes.

The riprap issue, which recently attracted hundreds of residents to the council chambers, typifies an Encinitas mood of suspicion with the city’s direction. Even though the unstable cliffs represent a danger to homeowners and beach-goers alike, many perceived the city manager’s move as an attempt to favor wealthy landowners over the masses of beach-goers and a threat to the city’s character.

But all that anger and discontent has been hyped, says Gail Hano, the one council member running to keep her seat.

“It has been overplayed. There are some deep-seated concerns, and they should not be looked at lightly, but we have the same problems that . . . other cities have,” she said. A heightened police presence is on her list if she wins another term, she said.

“We don’t need people that have an ax to grind. And we shouldn’t be looking for people who have a vendetta against the city,” Hano said of the election. “You hear people say that they’re not being heard, but is it that they didn’t get their own way?”

Hano, Roy Hewitt, a deputy attorney general, and Chuck Du Vivier, a planning commissioner and contractor, are expected to spend the most on their campaigns and have been labeled by some voters as the pro-development slate.

Du Vivier says the city needs to face the fact that all the parks and services voters are craving will have to financed somehow--and new business is a good place to start.

“Encinitas has matured to the point where citizens can sit down and make a list of services they expect, put a price tag on it, and say, OK, where are those revenues going to come from?” Du Vivier said.

“There has been no direction. Yes, traffic may increase (with commercial development), but what does it do for you? Does that give you the money for more parks? Does it give you money to pave the streets?” Du Vivier said.

Philosophically, Du Vivier said, he supports the Home Depot project, as long as the final environmental impact report shows that there won’t be negative environmental consequences.

Retired Pacific Bell manager James Bond, also vying for a seat, says he’s trying hard to stay away from the negative, and focus instead on the future.

ENCINITAS City Council

14 Candidates--Vote for Three

Adam Birnbaum, land-use planner

James Bond, retired executive

Sheila S. Cameron, human resources specialist

Sally Corral Cowen, medical assistant, homemaker

Chuck du Vivier, planning commissioner, contractor

David Potter Duff, law professor

John George, grocery clerk

Gail Hano, incumbent

August Henderson, business consultant

Roy W. Hewitt, deputy attorney general

Christopher Kirkorowicz, research scientist

Tom McCabe, architect

Brad Roth, engineer

Dane Stitts, teacher