Eyewitness account of the public workshop about Leucadia sidewalks:
by Mary "I was there" Fleener
Okay, folks-here it is in a nutshell. If ya'll want anything "creative", go directly to the City Council.
These Public Works guys have been directed to do a specific job and they are just following orders and have a budget assigned to this sidewalk project. They are not PAID to be creative and from what I saw at this workshop, the less they have to think about, the better.
Not that I don't appreciate the time set aside to invite the public to participate; think it's very noble, but these workshops seem to be orchestrated to let people blow off steam because, really, these City employees can't guarantee anything and they cannot make monetary changes in plans. They don't have the authority.
The meeting started at 6:07pm.
There were 21 people in attendance, which is pretty good.
Tom Curriden told us that in Jan. 2006, the City Council had a "Goal Setting" agenda and high priority were the improvements to Leucadia from A Street to La Costa Ave. at a cost of 3.2 million. While we're waiting for THAT to happen, "interim sidewalks" are scheduled for Spring 2007. Tom used the word, "cost effective" twice-the $400,000 is what they are allowed to spend and "We can't stray too far".
Someone asked for a time frame. "Planship", sez Tom. That's a new word for me to decipher. Then the same person asked,"Is anything planned like colored concrete or texture?" Tom said they plan on using grey concrete and since they are "filling in gaps to exisitng improvements", (that's OLD sidewalks to you and me,) they want to avoid a hodgepodge of too many designs. Wouldn't want anyone to get dizzy walking the walk down Leucadia, would we? Different colored concrete and different textures...? How tacky! Ow, my head hurts thinkin' about it!!!
Another person asked, "Will this be done, then torn up when the Streetscape is finally here?"
"That's the way we have to do it", replied Tom, "We have to get the most bang for the buck". He added, "We just don't know how and when the permanent sidewalks will be done. Maybe 2010".
I guess the money is "budgeted" to 2010. Another new word, and another thought: will a lot of us be alive to enjoy this Streetscape by the time it happens?
There were people who own a business voicing their concern about the time frame involved in this project, like if it happens in summer, they'll be, well; SCREWED. A lot of us are living paycheck to paycheck and if the guy at Sub Palace can't sell any food for two weeks, he's in deep doo doo. Tom was giving them vague answers and they weren't buying it. "This would be disastrous if done in the summer", said one man, "We don't expect the "downtown treatment."(A sly reference to downtown Encinitas, I surmised).
The moment I was waiting for was a Leucadia Town Council board member
who wants to use permeable concrete, which I think is great. He's done all this research and there are very sophisticated and fabulous patterns that can be utilized with this material. Plus, it would help the rain water absorb more slowly into the soil, thus helping the flooding problem along Hwy 101. I myself went on Google and found that many cities across the USA have had positive results using this concrete. The response from Tom and his sidekick Roger Somebody was lukewarm, AS USUAL.
WE have permeable concrete walkways and a parking lot at Cottonwood Creek. Roger Somebody was worried though. "We have to maintain it several times a year." Yeah, like sidewalks all over the world don't have to be hosed down and cleaned every couple of weeks if needed? Gimme a break!!!!
Anyway, there were a few more comments and the workshop ended, mercifully, at 6:52pm. I learned a lot of new words!
1. PLANT PALETTE-that means "landscaping"
2. GRADE DIFFERENTIAL-that means the street is higher than the door to a business-or visa versa, right?
3.ADA COMPLIANT-that means we get to have a buncha ugly newspaper stands anywhere to preserve our 1st Amendment Rights.. within code limitations,of course, and without undue influence. Right.
You can't make this stuff up.
Related post: Leucadia!: Discuss Leucadia Sidewalks Tuesday Dec. 12
I hope they construct the sidewalks as soon as possible with some nice aesthetic charater in longer stretches of the new sidewalks. This has been a long time need in Leucadia, and a start in the right direction. Hopefully the sidewalks will last longer than the vegatation planted in the medians.
ReplyDeleteIf they plant vegetation, it should be drought tolerant, as we don't get much rain, and no sprinkler systems exist.
ReplyDeleteI love Mary's report, and her art. Also, her idea of permeable sidewalks sounds good. I wonder about the cost, or if we should aim for these with the permanent "solution," (ha ha) sometime in the next ten years or so?
I love the idea of colors, pigment in the concrete. This doesn't have to be expensive, and it can be simple and clean, yet add a bit of diversity, character. And the purpose of making Leucadia walkable would be achieved, too.
It will get irrigation.
ReplyDeleteDrought tolerant looks like the vegetation planted in the six medians. Don’t you just love it? It looks so flowery and flush with life!
Native landscaping is the only answer for an Environmentally sustainable future.
ReplyDeleteI think the city should just wait until 2010 and do the thing right the first time.
ReplyDeleteThe only spot that should be taken care of now is the section between Cadmus and La Especial Norte. Walking past there is really hairy. Maybe make the parking parallel only?
wrong BOB-Less people IS the answer!
ReplyDeleteOr better than native vegatation, is Native Americans. We all better move. The land originally belonged to the lizards and coyotes!
JP- The streetscape wont go in by 2010. The budget only gos to 2010. The streetscape will be implemented in phases and will take up to 50 years to complete. Do you want to live with no sidewalks for 50 years? It takes a City 2 years to build a small amount of sidewalks. How long do you think it will take for them to complete the entire streetscape. My most optimistic opinion is 20 years and thats if council commits to the project which has not happened to date.
ReplyDeleteTry walking in front of Subpalace. The parked cars push you out in the travel lanes. I have almost got flattened there many times. Thats the worst section. I say do it all and more.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing that up. That sucks dogballs.
ReplyDeleteLeucadia is some sort of sidewalk mystery spot vortex. I see sidewalks everywhere, but some reason it can't be in Leucadia.
Maybe we can get Doug Long to volunteer and we can all just start pouring sections of concrete ourselves?
So you want to cut into sub-palace and leucadia liqour business by removing parking they have had in front of their businesses for many years? See precriptive easements if you want to know how these businesses can screw up your sidewalk plans.
ReplyDeleteNews article on the front page of the NCT sums up the competency of the city departments. Or is there some other problem at city hall?
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago the city planning approved a development on Lone Jack Road. One of the requirements was a drainage channel with plants. Putting plants in a drainage area can create a wetlands.
The plants prevented drainage which caused flooding into some of the houses.
The city removed the plants to improve the drainage. Unknown to that city department was that other city departments had required the plants as part of the development.
The developer sued for removal of the plants.
Now the city is suing the developer for designing a drainage channel that can't handle the runoff.
The City's true budget strains are starting to get harder to hide.
ReplyDeletelET'S BUILT SOME NICE SIDEWALKS THAT BENEFIT EVERYONE!
ReplyDeleteRSPB
The best way to get the city to do Leucadia sidewalks is to write them a letter and site a serious sidewalk problem (that the city could get sued over) and the sidewalks will be taken care of. Trust me, we've done this and it works.
ReplyDeletePerscriptive Rights my ass. The public parking is in public right of way and is currently dangerous. The sidewalk improvement will increase business revenues for Subpalace, Leucadia Liquor, and all the other businesses along the stretch. Let the sidewalks prevail and make Leucadia Walkable not a dragstrip for commutors.
ReplyDeleteI have prescriptive easements for my foot in your ASS!
ReplyDeleteTime to heckle the walkers with some thunder!
I hate those little faggot joggers and bikers. Why can they grow some balls and ride a gas powered hog and sound thunderous and cool. First person to join me gets some free KFC and Pac of Marlboro Reds! Don’t worry, I teach you how to look like your smoking them while you actually don’t have to inhale. I look so cool when I do that. Especially, flinging my cig butt at the intersection before I let out a big Easy Rider Roar. Man I’m Hot!
Drought tolerant native landscaping seldom looks as good as it sounds. Low water use(recycled) landscaping might work depending on how practically it is designed. This is our 101 mainstreet not some dead end side street leading to a backpacker's hovel.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the city tried to work with the developer on the lone jack project it is the developer that has the obligation to control any run-off.
The city engineering doesn't require soils testing, hydrology reports, etc. before a project is approved by the Planning Commission. Those are after the fact. The engineering department signs ok on the required conditions. The Planning Commission approves projects without the required signed easements, inadequate sized water treatment areas, insufficent drainage, the list is long.
ReplyDeleteI guess things have slowed down a bit. Stories have sucked on this site lately. Ctrl+TAB back to your porn, losers.
ReplyDeleteGil, with all due respect, please leave 20th century thinking in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteNative landscaping is part of the solution. I suggest you stay focused, and leave the ecological conversations to those best inclined.
This blog needs more baby seal clubbing post.
ReplyDeleteNice post Gil, flowering plants always look nice!
ReplyDeleteRSPB
Hello? There are native species that flower.
ReplyDeleteI grow a ton of native seedlings bob in my business, toyon, oaks, pines, rhus, populus, calocedrus, ceanthus, cercis, muhlenbergia, penstemon and mimulus, to name a few. Most of them require irrigation to look their best.
ReplyDeleteI'll start to support native landscaping when I see all the homeowners tear up their lawns.
With 70% of our imported water used for landscaping the MWD says this is the #1 waste of water in s Cal. They say it is equal to over 60 inches of rain irrigation per year. Their reports say that most homes can be adequitely watered with only thirty inches per year.
Or are you saying that the landscaping of public land is the real culprit bob. Most of the new public right of way landscaping being installed uses reclaimed water, it's the homeowners who are overwatering.
You read about them bob, I grow them.
Nice Post Gil- Your words are true. Even the trees along HW101 die if they don't get some water. The area is much less vegetated that in the past. I say return to the days of flourishing trees along HW101.
ReplyDeleteGil, what Bob is trying to say is that there are native species of plants that look nice(flower) and require minimun water!!
ReplyDeleteBOB, what Gil is trying to say is that he talks the talk AND walks the walk!!
As the artifcial grasses, such as easy turf, become more affordable, we'll see homeowners placing this in their yards reducing the water usage and saving precious resources!
RSPB
Wow, that seemed like a more balanced comment, bum one. Thank you for looking at both perspectives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm not sure about Gil's "walk," sometimes. I found this comment by Gil to be biased and onesided, showing disdain, engendering separation, instead of encouraging our working together for reconciliation and resolution:
"This is our 101 mainstreet not some dead end side street leading to a backpacker's hovel."
Gil, we, and many others around here, no longer have traditional "lawns." Those are slowly becoming status symbols of ostentatious consumerism and disregard for the reality of water shortage.
Oleanders flower; they are drought tolerant. Same for Bougainvilleas. Any type of planting would need maintenance. Native species should require less maintenance. Our neighbor has a native species front yard and it looks fantastic!
ReplyDeleteLeucadia is not downtown mainstreet, Gil. But you are right, using reclaimed water is good; we do from our kitchen sink and our washing machine, only. It helps with the water bill.
One has to be more aware of what one is "flushing down the drain." Our ocean is where most drains lead, after some treatment. And I don't think garbage disposals are effective, either.
Much food material that is put down the drain could go in yard waste (like potato peels, egg shells, for example), or be put into the trash.
I am very aware of water usage at all my growing locations.
ReplyDeleteIn Joshua tree I grow Hesperaloe, golden barrels, red barrels, vitex angus castus, palo verde, Dasyliron wheelerii and longissima, calocedrus, agave brevifolia, for seed production. I am trying strelitzia juncea, geijera parviflora, and cham. humilis, if the rabbits, ground squirrels, and coyotes don't eat them. I water once every five or six weeks in the winter and every three or four weeks during the summer. I pay more for the meter and 'ready to serve fees' than I do for water, which until two years ago came from 5 wells.
In fallbrook I grow cham humilis, beaucarnia, brahea armata, brahea edulis, cycas revoluta, phoe. robellini, and raphis and water once every eight days in winter and every 4 days in summer. the water cost is $55-210/bill and going up each of the next three years.
In encinitas, where i grow seedlings, i water something every day. The water bill on the enc property is 1500-2200 per bill.
It's not the most expensive overhead item at any location but it is one that i can't survive without.
101 is leucadia's mainstreet and if the council gets off it's _ _ _ and puts some money into infrastructure improvements it will thrive.
i didn't find anything biased, onesided, disdainful, or 20th century in my comments. And I have never found this site to be a mutual admiration society. dr lorri will have to deal with the reconciliation and resolution, i'm not willing to wait till 2010 for something to be done in leucadia. if we put improvement off then the next thing someone is going to tell me is we need a redevelopment district. BS.
You sure like to talk BS, Gil. Your last few posts sound nice, but the one where you are saying native plants sound better than they look is BOGUS. What is the "sound" of a drought tolerant native plant?
ReplyDelete*******************
"Drought tolerant native landscaping seldom looks as good as it sounds. [That's your wrongheaded perception, Gil] Low water use(recycled) landscaping might work depending on how practically it is designed. This is our [not really mainstreet, not really yours, Gil] 101 mainstreet not some dead end side street leading to a backpacker's hovel."
*****************
Gil, it's not called "mainstreet" that I know of, in Leucadia. You hang out at Encinitas Cafe, do you not, part of downtown Encinitas? You don't live or work in Leucadia, right? Still, you are welcome to shop here, comment here, to eat here, go to the beaches here.
In that sense, Leucadia does belong to all of us. So do the dead end side streets, of which we are also proud. I don't know what you are talking about when you say "some backpacker's hovel."
Nobody here wants redevelopment, I hope. I think we are all agreed on that. Maybe some of the seedlings you grow in Joshua Tree would be good in this climate, too, INSTEAD of lawns.
Aloes
ReplyDeleteYou can follow the city and call it the North 101 Corridor if you want but unless you count Vulcan or the railroad tracks it is the mainstreet of leucadia.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Gil on this one. Leucadia's main street is HW101. That’s were our retail is and that’s our only hope of maintaining cool home town coastal identity. We have the history of Art and Soul. With all the artists’ shops, Lou’s records, gold coast plaza, Pannikan and much more, we have a great start. Lets build on the coolness and become the most offbeat artsy little coastal town in the history of HW101. Thanks JP for making this conversation happen.
ReplyDeleteWhatever we do, we do not want a redevelopment district. I am so so disappointed that Slingblade got re-elected. He showed his lack of integrity and disrespect for Encinitas by posting the Mega signs all over town. And the BS pieces painting himself as a Coastal advocate. That still boils my blood. That jackass hasn’t even swam in the ocean for over 20 years. You tell see it in his face. Pure bullshit. The worst part is he has no ability to listen to another human being. Everything conclusion he makes, is without considering facts and input from other residents, and I feel his perspective is the LA model.
Gil’s face has the look of being soothed by the ocean. He is winning me over.
I'm with Gil on this one. Leucadia's main street is HW101. That’s were our retail is and that’s our only hope of maintaining cool home town coastal identity. We have the history of Art and Soul. With all the artists’ shops, Lou’s records, gold coast plaza, Pannikan and much more, we have a great start. Lets build on the coolness and become the most offbeat artsy little coastal town in the history of HW101. Thanks JP for making this conversation happen.
ReplyDeleteWhatever we do, we do not want a redevelopment district. I am so so disappointed that Slingblade got re-elected. He showed his lack of integrity and disrespect for Encinitas by posting the Mega signs all over town. And the BS pieces painting himself as a Coastal advocate. That still boils my blood. That jackass hasn’t even swam in the ocean for over 20 years. You tell see it in his face. Pure bullshit. The worst part is he has no ability to listen to another human being. Everything conclusion he makes, is without considering facts and input from other residents, and I feel his perspective is the LA model.
Gil’s face has the look of being soothed by the ocean. He is winning me over.
Unless more people go to the Planning Commission meetings and object to the high density mega buildings being approved, that small town vision of Leucadia will be erased in less than two years. Visualize north 101 with a solid row after row of 4 story buildings from Encinitas Blvd. to La Costa. Three hundred square feet "commercial stores" to meet the city's definition of a mixed use commercial building and million dollar condos on the upper three floors. That is the city's vision of Leucadia.
ReplyDeleteI thought 3 stories is the limit. Is it 4? That seems a bit high.
ReplyDeleteI thought the limit was 26 ft., up to 30 in some areas, such as Olivenhein.
ReplyDeleteThere could be two story mixed use, not three or four. They made an exception for the height limit for the Performing Arts Center that will be built at San Dieguito Academy, I know.
Scare tactics aren't effective, either, because then we can't trust one another's "facts."
The height limits in each specific plan is different from the the height limitations in the municipal code. The north 101 specific plan allows heights up to 33 feet. The planning department may also allow rooftop patios that will also increase height.
ReplyDeleteCombining the 33 feet height with rooftop patios and part of a basement will push the building height to about 4 stories.
Complain, object to the extra building heights.