Some FCPG members have disappointed me

For the first time in the 22-plus years that I have been chairman, I am disheartened by some on the Fallbrook Community Planning Group (FCPG).

For more than 30 years people in this county worked to implement a Trails Plan. They had been unsuccessful in that endeavor primarily because the Board of Supervisors (BOS) would not indemnify the property owners and the dedication of land was mandatory, not voluntary. Two years ago a Trails Plan was implemented for San Diego County, including Fallbrook, because the BOS reversed themselves and provided for both indemnification and voluntary, not mandatory, land dedication.

Throughout the approval process, those in Fallbrook that most wanted this Trails Plan, including a committee of the FCPG, in meeting after meeting, affirmed that the land dedication would be voluntary, not mandatory. Now we find out they did not mean it. At the April meeting, those same people all but demanded the dedication of land for a pathway (a 10-foot-wide dirt path to be maintained by the county Department of Parks and Recreation) through a new subdivision. The property owner wanted to build a 30-foot-wide landscaped parkway, which the property owners association would maintain, with a four-foot-wide concrete walkway meandering within those 30 feet.

With the barest minimum of votes, the FCPG affirmed that the dedication of property to the Trails Plan is in fact voluntary, not mandatory, by approving the landscaped parkway instead of the dirt path.

Jim Russell

Chair, FCPG