Community character should not be determined by outsiders who wish to invade neighborhoods and vector value from local Olivenhain property owners into their own pockets.

There are NO public benefits to this plan when current residents would be left to weather the negative impacts of this project while developers are made whole for terrible decisions and poor standards.

It appears that the present City Council and the City Planning Department they run do not listen to what the citizens of Encinitas clearly want, but only to the moneyed interests – Developers and Commercializers. Now we have Walmart, ever increasing traffic, less trees, houses with impossibly tiny setbacks from the road, and what looks like a death wish for the rare character of the Encinitas most citizens would fight to preserve – if only there were greater awareness of how the wonderful character of our town is being destroyed.

We really need more citizen awareness right now of how our town is systematically being allowed to be ruined, and being allowed to be turned into another ho-hum suburb of LA by the very people we elect to preserve and cherish our community. We need many more groups like the ‘Save Desert Rose’ group of concerned citizens, working together to save Encinitas.

Citizens’ first opportunity to weigh in on this project was for a map of 16 units in a lot identified for a maximum of 7. This map showed a substandard private road, a firewall, artificial building pads on a lot with documented soil problems, reduced parking spaces, 2-car—not 3 car garages, and tiny lots that do not fit in with our community.

All of these downgrades were allegedly granted (by an agency that points out that they are not the lead agency) in exchange for a 3-year program to clear weeds from the wetlands and to replant if with a few native plants. After 3 years, there will be no obligation to maintain this program, yet community members would be stuck with a dangerous and unfitting project, which in the long term, would prove more injurious to the wetlands than if they simply built in keeping with our current zoning. Carlsbad residents will have their natural view corridor diminished when many mature trees are replaced with views of a hardscape vista of firewalls, roofs, and driveways. The proposed yards are miniscule.

If developers’ purpose were really to restore the wetland area that locals call Hodges Creek, there are many other houses downstream that border on this wetland. We would be willing to work with nonprofits that specialize in this type of project to this disappearing resource. Why didn’t they let us become involved, or at least weigh in on the wetlands restoration plan?

To use an inadequate, temporary, wetlands restoration project as a means to pack on more houses is disingenuous and harmful to our community. Those of us and our children who love these wetlands were never allowed to be part of the solution because the real reason that they got an oral agreement was to develop the property as densely as possible.

The law is designed to serve the people, not for the people to serve what I call loophole lawyers and pro-development politicians.

In an area so sensitive, and with such unique rural characteristics, an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) should be required. Encinitas and other municipalities have been far too quick to hand out negative impact declarations. Precedent requires that the law should be liberally construed to include traffic, habitat and community character and heritage within a legal environmental review, required by CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), not simply shrug these concerns off as being “beneath” evaluation once minimum so-called “mitigation” has been performed.

Precedent also shows that if a negative impact declaration is filed, then the appealants’ time to challenge is extended, with respect to appealing the negative impact declaration. In other words, the time to appeal the decision is longer than if there had been a full EIR, and the determinations of that report were challenged after being approved by the Planning Commission and Council.

I feel the neighbors’ challenge is timely and should be well-received by the Court. I hope they can get a good judge, through Everett Delano, because some of Superior Court judges are very much pro-development, as well, in their rulings, while a few have been objective and have given well considered opinions, not playing favorites with sitting “powers that be,” including the City.