Mayor Filner’s proposed pot shop plan for our community would be very harmful and is bad policy. The Carmel Valley News recently reported that our area could be home to four pot shops. Why on earth would Carmel Valley need four pot shops? We don’t need any. There is a well-funded and powerful pot shop lobby working on behalf of pot shops owners to try and convince locally elected officials that storefronts selling pot are somehow desperately needed — and completely benign to communities. So far the pot shop lobby has been unsuccessful, as all 18 cities in our county wisely prohibit them; but they have found a friend in Mayor Filner.
Apr 25, 2013 | Posted in
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Why has the neighborhood of Del Mar become so overwhelmed by governmental problems?
Apr 25, 2013 | Posted in
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The last issue of this paper ran a letter from a land use planner asking our community to “Give One Paseo a chance.” While I applaud his stated intentions, Mr. Scott would be well advised to (1) do research independent of that provided by his potential client, (2) focus on the real issue rather than brushing it aside, and (3) as a professional in the field, actually propose a creative option that addresses the interests of all parties.
Apr 25, 2013 | Posted in
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As a former city planner in Del Mar and Encinitas for more than 15 years and longtime Carmel Valley resident, I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate numerous projects in terms of their impacts and benefits to our community. Having studied One Paseo carefully, I do have some reservations about the size and scale of the current design. However, I fundamentally believe that our community has way more to lose if this mixed-use, community-serving project is not approved and the land is instead developed as a single use, office-only alternative. I’ve come to this conclusion by assessing the project based on its environmental, economic, and community/social characteristics.
Apr 18, 2013 | Posted in
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City traffic engineers project a “minimal impact” of One Paseo on traffic (Carmel Valley News/Del Mar Times/Solana Beach Sun April 4, 2013). Let’s start by giving them the benefit of the doubt that all their projected numbers are correct. They claim an increase of travel time of 1.5 minutes on top of the current 5.8 minutes eastbound, and an increase of 1.2 minutes on top of the current 6.3 minutes westbound. This is an average 22 percent increase, and will clearly be much higher during peak travel times.
Apr 18, 2013 | Posted in
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Like many in Solana Beach, I was minding my own business last fall when I learned that my routine interactions with local merchants had been criminalized by a ban on plastic bags that can lead to fines and up to six months in prison for a merchant who provides a plastic bag to a customer.
Apr 18, 2013 | Posted in
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If you’re on the freeway driving to Los Angeles and the sign says Tijuana . . . you have to acknowledge your mistake and turn around. Otherwise you end up in Tijuana.
Apr 18, 2013 | Posted in
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The plain fact, obvious to anyone who had to suffer through the traffic presentation [at the March Carmel Valley Community Planning Board meeting] is that these two shills for Kilroy, I mean city traffic engineers, couldn’t or wouldn’t answer simple questions put to them by the board without going into long, rambling repetitive non-responses.
Apr 15, 2013 | Posted in
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The City traffic engineers went on the record March 28 about One Paseo. They stated that with improvements and proposed mitigations the developer has sufficiently addressed the traffic and transportation issues that would result from One Paseo.
Apr 15, 2013 | Posted in
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Upon learning that the developer of One Paseo had made an unsolicited offer to the owner of the Del Mar Highlands Town Center to build a $5 million parking garage for free!…If… the Town Center would relinquish its existing entitlement to build an additional 150,000 square feet of community retail stores. I thought: “Who in his right mind would think Del Mar Highlands Town Center would accept such a preposterous offer?” The value created by building out the 150,000 square feet is at least 10 times greater than the cost of the parking garage. What was Kilroy up to?
Apr 15, 2013 | Posted in
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