Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma

SOS limits urban sprawl

The Safeguard Our San Diego countryside (Yes on SOS) March 2020 Ballot Measure allows citizens to have a voice on sprawl development.

In 2011, a General Plan for the unincorporated county was approved after 13 years of hard work and hundreds of meetings with extensive community and stakeholder input.

The General Plan was – and is – the blueprint for how the county will grow into the future. It is the master plan for regional infrastructure (including roads, transit, schools, water and sewer) that saves taxpayers billions by placing housing where these services are funded. It encourages building more than 60,000 new homes in places that are more cost effective and thereby more affordable than sprawl development. That’s about 180,000 people, about 30,000 more than the City of Escondido.

The Fallbrook Community Planning Group accommodated a 28% growth in housing in the General Plan – growing nearly 4,400 homes from 15,929 in 2010 to 20,387 in 2050. In creating the General Plan, your elected Fallbrook representatives wisely chose to position most of its growth north of SR-76 and east of 1-15 adjacent to Palomar College. Fallbrook did so because SR-76 widening and I-15 interchange improvements accommodates this growth of 6,000 people.

The Bonsall Sponsor Group also rolled up their sleeves and accommodated the growth challenges in the right places in the General Plan.

So why won’t some developers just follow the General Plan? The answer is simple: to maximize private profit at the public’s expense. Sprawl developers buy up land that is zoned for agriculture or open space on the cheap and then get the board of supervisors to change the General Plan to allow them to build lots of high profit margin expensive (in the $ 600,000 + range) houses in remote parts of the county. Taxpayers pay for the roads and other infrastructure in places that aren’t planned or funded.

Since the General Plan was adopted, the board of supervisors has approved five sprawl housing projects through General Plan Amendments (GPA’s). And the Supervisors did not exercise their authority to require any affordable housing in these GPA’s.

The Building Industry Association assertion that changing the General Plan to allow sprawl housing development will solve our housing crisis is untrue. And they’re spending big bucks to sell the myth.

Politicians come and go. Traffic and tax increases last decades.

Yes on SOS prevents sprawl developers from being able to end run the General Plan developed by our local elected Planning Groups just by getting three votes at the board of supervisors.

Trust yourself and weigh in on San Diego’s future growth plans.

Let’s have a choice on what we taxpayers are paying for!

Vote yes on SOS to ensure cost-effective well-planned development now and into the future.

Mark Jackson

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 
Rendered 03/27/2024 08:02