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Wood steps down as FCPG chair

Delaney to chair CPG until Sept. 20 election

Joe Naiman

Village News Reporter

Fallbrook Community Planning Group chair Jack Wood announced his resignation from the planning group, so Eileen Delaney will serve as the planning group chair until at least the Sept. 20 planning group meeting.

Wood announced his resignation during the July 19 planning group meeting. He will be leaving the community planning area and his resignation will be effective Aug. 1.

"It's going to be a loss for me personally, but we've got some good people coming up," Wood said.

"I'm going to miss Jack terribly. He was a man of integrity," Delaney said. "I consider Jack a friend, and I'm going to miss him very much."

Wood and his wife, Joyce, will be moving to the Meadowbrook Retirement Village in north Escondido. "This all came about very quickly," Wood said.

The Woods have been on the Meadowbrook waiting list since 2015. "It's a long waiting list," Wood said.

Meadowbrook totals approximately 25 acres and includes single-family dwellings, multi-family units, and a nursing home. "We did not want to live in the apartment complex. We wanted to live in a single-family dwelling," Wood said.

A single-family unit became available the week prior to the July 19 meeting. "We had to make a decision at that point," Wood said.

Wood and his wife opted not to decline and revert to the end of the waiting list. "We didn't want to wait 10 years," he said.

A community planning group member must live within the boundaries of the community planning area. Wood is also active in the Fallbrook Rotary Club and with the Sheriff's Department volunteer program, and Fallbrook residence is not required for those. "I may stay active in Fallbrook Rotary and I may stay active in the volunteer Sheriff's as well, but that's still to be determined," Wood said.

Wood and his wife have been married for 66 years and are originally from western Illinois. They moved to California in 1979 when Wood became the vice president of sales for Kwikset.

"When my wife and I moved to California we didn't know that much about California," Wood said. "We started taking side trips out on weekends."

One of those trips was in the mid-1980s. "We just by accident drove into Fallbrook," Wood said.

Wood and his wife decided to make their home in Fallbrook after Wood retired, and they began looking for properties. They purchased a lot in 1986.

Ilco-Unican is the key manufacturer and supplier for Kwikset locks. Wood retired from Kwikset in 1992 but then became the vice president of sales and marketing for Ilco-Unican. He commuted to North Carolina for two years before retiring from Ilco-Unican in 1994.

Construction on Wood's Fallbrook house began in 1995 and was completed in 1996, so Wood and his wife moved from Huntington Beach to Fallbrook in 1996. Wood started his own company and became a manufacturer's representative for Ilco-Unican and two other manufacturers, and he retired for the third time in 1999.

Harry Christiansen was on the Fallbrook Community Planning Group from 1993 to 2012. He told Wood that Wood's background in management would be beneficial to the planning group. "He was a tremendous guy, a fantastic mentor to me," Wood said of Christiansen.

Delaney and Wood were both initially elected to the planning group in 2002. "I had never run for elected office, so that was a whole new unique experience," Wood said. "It was a year or so before I didn't make a quick snap decision."

Wood was not re-elected in 2006 but ran in 2008 and earned enough votes to receive a seat, and he was re-elected in 2012, 2016, and 2020. He took over as the chair of the planning group's Land Use Committee after Christiansen retired, and Wood also served on the planning group's Circulation Committee and Design Review Committee.

Christiansen had also been the first vice-chair of the planning group, and Wood took over that position after Christiansen's retirement. Wood chaired meetings when planning group chair Jim Russell was out of town and was also the acting chair when Russell was hospitalized prior to Russell's January 2020 passing.

The planning group bylaws state that if the chair dies, resigns, or is incapacitated, the first vice-chair becomes chair for up to 60 days and an election must be called to determine the new chair. At the planning group meeting three days after Russell's death, Wood was elected as the new chair and Delaney was elected as the first vice-chair.

Delaney will thus chair the planning group's Aug. 16 and Sept. 20 meetings. She will be eligible to run for chair for the remainder of the term.

"My goal is to educate and offer as much communication to members and the public as possible," Delaney said.

"We have an obligation to the residents of Fallbrook to do what is in their best interests," Delaney said. "We have to make our determinations based on zoning ordinance and design guidelines and regulations."

Delaney and her husband, Phil, moved from Orange County to Fallbrook in 1995. She currently chairs the planning group's land use and design review committees.

"I definitely feel there's always more to learn," Delaney said.

"I think the great accomplishment is being able to retain the rural character of this community," Wood said of his years on the planning group board. "I think that being able to maintain that has probably been the greatest accomplishment."

Fallbrook reminded Wood of western Illinois. "We've got a little bit of a haven here that hopefully will continue to be maintained," he said.

 

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