In With the New

A Home Up

Zoning for Housing Justice
“We feel that all residents, all segments of L.A. should be able to enjoy the benefits [of the improvements in downtown],” explains Hurd. “These are the people who have to service you. Why can they not live beside you?”

That kind of economic integration is exactly what proponents say inclusionary housing is all about. 

Alan Mallach, research director of National Housing Institute, defines inclusionary housing as anything that fosters integration of lower-income and market-rate housing and/or uses the “power of the marketplace” to generate resources for affordable housing. And although economic integration is the primary objective of inclusionary zoning, racial integration often becomes a focal point in the deconcentration of poverty as well. 

Proponents of inclusionary housing hope that it will mitigate the effects of poverty by giving lower-income families access to better schools and job opportunities in less economically disadvantaged areas. Inclusionary zoning, the most common type of inclusionary housing program, builds affordable housing requirements into the zoning code. Developers who build in an area governed by inclusionary zoning usually receive a density bonus which allows them to build more units than normally allowed by zoning laws. First tried in 1975 and used frequently throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, inclusionary zoning has experienced a surge in popularity throughout the last decade. 

Will Affordable Housing be Abolished?

In 30 years not a single person has been able to explain why "poor people" -- many without a high school diploma and who self-report to the Census they can't speak English -- are entitled to enjoy the most expensive consumer product in society -- a brand new home or apartment. Or why housing for the poor should cost more than double the housing occupied by most self-supporting renters. After all, the overwhelming majority of people have never lived in an expensive brand-new dwelling unit.

The latest U.S. Census report indicates that 14.8 percent of adults over 25 in San Diego do not have a high school diploma and 15.6 percent cannot speak English well (some of whom are represented by interpreters at affordable housing hearings). If you're not motivated to get an education and can't speak the language, chances are you'll not own a home and may struggle to pay rent.

Even acknowledging the importance of education and speaking English, the majority of low-income households will not be low-income in 10 years as documented in several studies. See: By Our Own Bootstraps, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. (dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar95.html) In a 10-year study 95 percent of the people move up the economic ladder from the bottom quintile. Why should they be entitled to leapfrog years early over those earning their way up the ladder of success? [Do they get to stay in their low income homes if they get a raise?]

The San Diego Housing Federation's Susan Tinsky writes (Union-Tribune, Feb. 27) that "56 percent of renters in San Diego County are unable to afford the $1,324 per month average fair-market rent on a two bedroom apartment." The average rent however, includes Mission Beach, La Jolla and Del Mar. Last October the Census reported the "median" San Diego rent as $1,224, meaning half the rents are less. Also, nearly 70 percent of tenants pay less than $1,499 per month and 146,000 renters (34 percent) pay less than $999 per month. The private unsubsidized market provides substantially more housing for low-income tenants than government programs. However, it's true it's not brand new or among the most expensive apartments in all of San Diego.

Leftcoast Comment

This proposal is so wrong both morally and ethically. To move the affordable units from (4) "for sale" projects into a single "for rent" project on Vulcan, is in the name of greed only.

There is no benefit to the City, we already have an inventory of 138 rental properties available for Low Income families. What we need is affordable "for sale" homes.

There are 4 properties in this deal. All 4 were density bonus projects. They all received 15-20% more units than the zoning allowed. They also received numerous concessions from the zoning code (lower lot size, lower setbacks, private streets, etc.). All these substandard, bloated projects were granted approval because of the "Affordable units". The City could do nothing about it, it's a state law.

So now, the developer strips away the affordable units, confines them all to a 21 unit apartment project on Vulcan North of RCP, and gains 20 new market rate homes for sale. I believe this is a new strategy for development. Bait and Switch at it's best. It truly makes a travesty of the approval process.

There is much more to this story, none of it good or honest. I'll be there next Thursday night to speak, I hope you will also.

Learn from the Pros

The city is offering to shred all of your sensitive documents that you don't want anyone read.

Low Income Dumping Ground

Photo of the Coral Cove Site

From the In Box:

For those of you who don't know Shea Homes has taken over the developments at Saxony Road (Bahlman project), Ashbury (Coral Cove) and Andrew and Sheridan Road (previously Nantucket now Seaside). Their plan is to move all of the affordable units from Saxony and Andrew to a new complex they are building on Vulcan. Some of the affordable units from Coral Cove will be moved there and some will remain in the project at Ashbury. All three of these projects and this change to the density bonus requirements will be discussed on Thursday (date=?) at Planning Commission.

Correction Edit: The location for the low income homes is Vulcan Townhomes.

Flickering question: That was an old greenhouse site. Did the city make them bury their contaminated soil?
From the agenda (click to enlarge):





Create a pdf of the staff report somewhere in here.

Cyclist Fatality

Here are a couple articles.  It happened early in the morning on Sunday.  The driver has since turned himself in...

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/encinitas/article_52c35d8c-2732-50e0-8ca6-e965abfa164d.html

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/encinitas/article_36e74efa-f5d1-521f-84f1-12783ffa948e.html

Cheers
J

Encinitas Managment Watchdog Update

Encinitas Firefighters Union Addresses Misconduct
Steve Meiche

In the absence of Fire Department management taking a leadership role in addressing the acts of gross negligence and misconduct, the President of The Encinitas Firefighters Association met with me to address the misconduct outlined in a blog post last week on the Leucadia Blog.

The president confirmed that all of the accusations were true and clarified a few of the exact details. He stated, “Yes, those incidents did, in fact, happen.”  In additional dialogue, he made it clear that corrective action was taken. The full details and extent of the corrective action were not given.  The union president had no documentation of the investigations, corrective action taken or measures taken to prevent them from happening again. 

In a modern and open government there should be a systematic approach to investigating acts of misconduct or personnel complaints involving public employees, and fire department-sworn personnel in particular.   For Instance, in the City of Los Angeles, the fire department responds to over 300,000 emergency calls per year with 3500 sworn personnel serving 4 million citizens.  In emergency services, accidents and mistakes happen, it's a given.  In LA, all complaints or acts of misconduct are investigated via a standardized process and ultimately documented and reported to an oversight committee. Then, the corrective actions taken are published for the public to read.

As far as the public can figure out, the City of Encinitas has no system to process personnel complaints, and it is possible that the misconduct was never properly investigated, thoroughly documented or properly reported.  I am interested in knowing what disciplinary guidelines were used.  What is the actual investigation process for city employees in Encinitas? 

In December of last year, I tried to file a complaint with the City against the Parks and Recreation Department Manager, for making false and misleading statements and falsifying a department report. Ultimately, his false statements and documents lead the City Council to vote on a revision of a city ordinance. When the evidence of false and misleading reports and statements were presented to the City Manager, City Council and City Attorney, it was ignored and I was told that the city has no system of investigating personnel complaints and that the City Attorney could only investigate at the direction of the City Council.

In researching the City's policy on ethics, I accessed a little known and hidden manual called, “The City’s Administrative Manuals."  I could not find any policy on personnel investigations or disciplinary action.  The only documents I found closely related were Administrative Manual Policy P-25 Code of Ethics and G-26 Public Inquiry Policy.  The Code of Ethics Policy was 23 years old, and the Public Inquiry Policy was 19 years old.  Nether reflected any revisions or updates. Shouldn’t a modern city have updated ethics and public information policy to reflect current trends?

Code of Ethics Policy link-

Public Inquiry Policy link-

At this point, with regard to fire department misconduct, the Fire Chief, City Manager and City Council refuse to acknowledge or comment on the misconduct.  I thank the union president for stepping up to the plate and clarifying some of the issues, although there are many more.  It took leadership for him to step up, and as a professional firefighter myself, I admire it. 

The union president is in a tough position.  In a city that harbors nepotism, cronyism and favoritism in pursuing career advancement, one shouldn't make waves or step on anyone’s toes.  The city firefighters are beginning negotiations for a new contract in July.  I’m sure they are interested in increases in benefits and wages.  As generous as our city is with wages and benefits (City managers as an example) the firefighters are likely to succeed regardless of poor management or department performance.

Oh, I might mention that historically, Encinitas City management receives the same pay and benefit increases as the rank and file. Management says the department has done such a good job we need to give them and ourselves a raise!  The Fire Chief certainly benefits by covering up mismanagement while padding the $170,000 a year pension he will receive for the rest of his life. 

Steve Meiche
Leucadia Resident
Firefighter
Board Member, Encinitas Taxpayers Association

LB NOTE: The Leucadia blog will happily accept and publish submissions from the city council, city administration, or the EFD or the regular peoples.  Put your name on it and it will run.

Developer Thinks Neighbors R Crazy

The Hymettus developer started talking to the press. None of their workers have gotten sick. They don't dress in contamination suits or anything. Burning Question: Why haven't they gotten sick?

The NCTimes also reports that air monitors never detected contamination. Apparently they were on the site the whole time and the county air monitors have been copiously inspecting the site. Burning Question: was that before or after the complaints started?

Now we know why we're not getting responses for more information from the neighbors. They've all clammed up because they think they have a better chance of winning a lawsuit if they don't talk publicly. Burning Question: Does this mean they think they have a limp case?

Leucadians Sail for Leukemia

Ahoy Again –
Rob Murphy and I will be racing again this year in the 2011 Border Run. Here’s our photo from last year ->
We are racing again this year to help raise money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (LLS) in their fight against cancer. We feel great about being able to participate in this charity regatta so look for us out on the ocean April 9th!

Please donate any amount (it's 100% tax deductible!) by going to the Leukemia Lymphoma donation page. Activate this link by holding down your Ctrl key while clicking: http://sdhi.theborderrun.llsevent.org/ (but if that link does not work please copy and paste as we really need your help).

If you have already given, THANK-YOU!!

Just put our boat name USA 56792 on the donation form. With your help, our team can be a part of the fundraising effort to help the many who have this deadly disease.

Please forward this email to family and friends for their help too. For your generous effort, you are invited to join us at the Send Off party at the Harborside Pavilion in Newport Beach and the Trophy Party at the Southwestern Yacht Club in San Diego. Live bands and fun for all! Go to www.TheBorderRun.org for all the party details.

Thanks and good sailing!

Walter

Floodgate-gate

Gary Murphy has passed the torch after 16 years of advocating, speaking out, working with staff and council, and conceiving and implementing plans. Now that he's figured out how downtown Leucadia's sources of blight all lead back to one point, it will take a different personality to get the torch across the finish line. He says Leucadia's flooding and political intrigue are all tied to one geographic spot. That spot is the gate valve underneath a manhole cover across from RCP Block and Brick.


Gary says that on December 21, 2010 the gate valve was closed during that day's storm. There was no flooding of Leucadia 101. Once the gate was opened, the Leucadia 101 corridor flooded. So it looks like the 101 corridor's flooding is determined by a human decision to open or close the gate. According to Gary the original design for the nuisance drain didn't include this gate valve, because it wasn't conceived to drain the area upstream of the gate valve. There was also a human decision to draw all that extra water north, rather than south toward Cottonwood Creek.

So, if Gary is right that the person in charge of the gate valve is in charge of Leucadia' flooding it has huge ramifications. Remember that the redevelopment district was all predicated on Leucadia having a serious flooding problem. Blight. Who has been in charge of the gate valve? It all lands on Phil Cotton.

According to Gary, the city is also pumping water over the bluff at Beacons during storms using a water discharge permit that requires a situation to be declared an emergency by the Fire Chief. It is only legal to pump if there is an emergency. How does that jive if the city is making the 101 flooding happen?

Are we to believe that Gary is off-base and he is full of crazy talk? That is how a lot of citizens have been painted and like with other citizens, it was only later discovered that they were saying the exact same thing the city's own high-paid consultants were telling the city. Did we pay millions for crazy talk reports?

Here is an excerpt from a document which was not widely distributed, which coincides with Gary's conclusions. Gary had a "bingo" moment when he read the city's hydrologist's statement that said:

Although the orifice plates enhance the performance of the existing storm drain system, runoff still ponds in the sump areas during storms, resulting in potential inundation of streets and other properties. The City addressed the extent of flooding on Vulcan Avenue near Union Street with the installation of a sluice gate/orifice plate in the storm drain system. The orifice plate serves to restrict flows from crossing under the NCTD right-of-way during the storm event, and the sluice gate can be opened to expedite drainage of the stored water after the storm when the downstream facility is no longer overtaxed.

The city's hydrologists/engineers expect the gate valve to be left closed until after the storm passes.


Photo of the downstream facility being overtaxed. Gary says the city's very directed practice has been to leave the gate open during storms.

Gary leaves us with a number of questions:
Why hasn't the city been following the advice of its own high-paid experts, and thus flooding the 101 corridor?
Who knew about this practice and how far up did the approval go?
What does/did the city have to gain by flooding Leucadia 101?

See Also: Phil Cotton has authority to fix Leucadia's flooding.

I'm sending the city manager an email so he can give his side to all this. Given that we can't find a response to the Coast News editorial and city management's recent history of obfuscation, delay, and ducking questions we might have to wait a while. We'll keep track of how long it takes.

City Playbook No Surprise

A Leucadia Blog double agent has turned over the City of Encinitas P.R. playbook. It is most important document at city hall, because its the only document actually followed by management. Page 3 deals with how to deal with sensitive issues.

Duck
Don't say anything. The problem will go away most of the time if you just don't say anything about the problem. Definitely, don't talk to the press. This works 95% of the time.

Deflect
Make the problem into a wedge issue that is only tangentially related to the problem. The public will get confused and will only follow the easy sound bites. Watch out for the reporters who keep their eye on the ball. Call their bosses and complain. Just wear them out.

Detonate
If citizens keep bringing up the problem, continue to ignore the issue but disparage the citizens. The public won't even listen to the message if they don't like messenger. Encinitas residents know they can trust elected officials and city staff more than citizens with nothing better to do. Try to recruit and befriend a few political hit men that you use for this task.

Deny
Just lie. 90% of the time no one will notice, care or remember. The press won't follow the story for long if you get caught and the public won't remember. How many times did Dalager misrepresent the library and Hall park projects? Don't remember. You see the point.

Toxic Soils Not Funny

Parkwood Ave is adjacent to the toxic soils ground zero.

Here is what the neighbors along Parkwood are saying.

Several families have evacuated their homes. This is a big commitment and not done lightly. One person became seriously ill, several others developed lesions, and at least two others complained of feeling ill.

We got this almost two weeks ago from J. McGill:

We have had to move out of our home on the advice of Poison Control, my children’s pediatrician and a toxicology specialist.  All of our neighbors who were home at the time of the grading have been affected as well but we have not gotten answers from the developer, City Ventures, their environmental consultants, Stantec, the City of Encinitas, the SD County of Environmental Health or SD County of Air Pollution Control.  The standard response is that there is no data that indicates that we should be affected and suggest that we are just worried because of the health advisory sign posted at the front of the development.  That is not the case.  We are following up with our toxicologist this week and are looking to get our property tested as I fear it was contaminated with Dieldrin (found in high concentrations in various parts of the property) and possibly other pesticides that blew over during the grading process. 

So, you still think all these folks are hysterical? There was a plan in place that was approved by the county and the city. How could they get sick?

The builder was not watering all the soil that was being moved and the neighbors say the site was a dust bowl, with clouds of dust visibly drifting off-site, according to the neighbors. Well, so far we have not been able to get photos of this dust bowl, but the neighbors say the evacuees took photos. We're working on getting a photo.  



QUESTION. Who was responsible to ensure the contractor was following the rules? It is a pain to find certain documents on the city's website, so we looked at the Hall park EIR for an answer (click to enlarge):

 ANSWER. Looks like the city.


The city and developer should hold a public meeting to tell the neighbors what has happened, and if there is a reason to act, what the plan of response will be.

That's not likely to happen. The city turned a blind eye to the contamination of the Hall property, until the neighbors paid for an independent environmental assessment. Dalager and Stocks were strongly dismissive of the soils contamination. Worse, the city didn't do its homework or adequately disclose to the public all the problems with the Hall park before they bonded and overpaid for the property. There is one major public relations reason to blow off Parkwood residents.

Thou Shall Discuss Numbers in Public

The LA Times is serious about open government. They have a decent hub for public documents here.

From the LA Times:

Since the pub­lic cor­rup­tion scan­dal broke last sum­mer in the city of Bell, hun­dreds of read­ers have voiced con­cerns to The Times about po­ten­tial prob­lems at the gov­ern­ment agen­cies in their com­munit­ies. The Times en­cour­ages read­ers to share gov­ern­ment re­cords you con­sider news­worthy or in­ter­est­ing. Send us doc­u­ments and a Times staffer will re­view them and post them to this site, which also in­cludes files ob­tained by our re­port­ers.

Notice how the times says, SINCE the story broke in the city of Bell concerns have poured in. The same thing happened at the Attorney General's Office. According to public affairs officer the AG was sent over 1000 complaints. Apparently, the public did not believe the AG (or the LA Times) were that interested or motivated to investigate possible problems. Investigations take much more effort than printing press releases of celebrities and politicians.

The elected officials and, increasingly, the public servant corps are happiest when the public is absolutely ignorant of what is happening in government.

What the LA Times is doing is great, but you can't share public records if the city keeps the records a secret (ex roads report,  applications, disciplinary reports).

The times does remind us about:

Cit­izens keep an eye out for per­son­nel eval­u­ations con­duc­ted in closed ses­sions. Jen­kins said fre­quent or on­go­ing eval­u­ation of a top staff mem­ber, such as a city man­ager, would be un­usu­al. New­ton said that any time a body moves to make an ap­point­ment or to hire a new em­ploy­ee, there must be a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of that per­son’s com­pens­a­tion. “There has to be an open and pub­lic dis­cus­sion about com­pens­a­tion,” he said.

Leucadia to Council: We expect to hear a healthy dialogue on staff compensation in the coming months, otherwise we are going to wonder if the real deal had been worked out at some backyard BBQ. That would be against the law.

Hidden Leucadia

More Woosies Avoiding the Press

Complaints of illness spread across Leucadia.

Channel 7 is running coverage of the Hymettus development. Watch the crack reporting here. 

If you were a middle aged two-bit divorced male developer would you return her calls? All this concern about toxic dust sounded totally koo-koo until the developer started running for cover and hiding from the press.

Leucadia was home to dozens of greenhouse operations.