Yep, You’re Right to Call It Streetscam

In 2008, the city held workshops to, so they said, get resident input about Leucadia 101 Streetscape. I went to the first two. My impression was the workshops were a sham. The City Council and staff had decided what they wanted to do, and the purpose of the workshops was to convince residents the city had our best interests at heart.

After the workshops, there was a walk through the Leucadia 101 corridor with consultant Dan Burden. He’s “America’s most recognized authority on walkability and bikeability and a pioneer in people-first urban planning.” The city paid him big bucks to tell them what they wanted to hear. He said roundabouts would bring “bigger, grander buildings” to Highway 101. I asked him what the wisdom was of packing four (later five) roundabouts at the north end of the corridor. He wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Then talk of the project died down for a while. Later, I went to an anti-Streetscape meeting at a neighborhood house. People there who had been paying close attention to the proposal called it “Streetscam.” I silently wondered, ‘Do you mean our neighbors the 101 merchants and property owners, and our neighbors the City Council members don’t really have the residents’ best interests at heart? Do you mean there are economic and political motives behind the project? Do you mean it’s not a sincere effort to improve our community? Do you mean it’s really a scam?’ Yes, that’s precisely what the people at the meeting meant, and they were absolutely right.

For many years, City Councils have been in cahoots with the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association to impose Streetscam on a community where the great majority of residents don’t want it. If the council and association respected democracy, they would have the decency to conduct an objective poll to find out what the community does want. They haven’t done that because they’re afraid their scam will be exposed.

The Leucadia 101 Main Street Association is a chamber of commerce in disguise. A brochure they produced in 2014 revealed that only 15 percent of corridor merchants were members. If the association had real value, it would have more members and be self-supporting. The city has been giving the association $30,000 of taxpayer money annually for years. That’s public money to a private group composed of for-profit business and property owners.

The city has produced three drafts of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the project. The EIR was produced by the civil engineering company that designed and is in charge of the project. That’s a glaring conflict of interest. Of course, the company isn’t going to find problems that would prevent the project from going forward. That would scuttle their multi-million dollar contract.

Yet, the company found an unavoidable problem: The reduction of the highway’s four lanes to two narrowed lanes and the placement of six roundabouts in the roadway would further slow emergency response times. Those times had been too slow for years, but the city did nothing about it. Streetscam couldn’t go forward if it further slowed emergency response, so what did the city do? They spent $909,000 of taxpayer money to buy a new vehicle, place it in the north end of the corridor and man it for two years. This, mind you, with a grand fire station on Orpheus Avenue only 1.9 miles from La Costa Avenue via Highway 101.

The city’s gifts to the merchants’ group, its $909,000 expenditure, the millions of other dollars it’s put into the project over the past 10 years and its lack of respect for democracy are measures of its commitment. Regardless of multiple appeals of the Coastal Development Permit the city filed with the California Coastal Commission and regardless of a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit filed to challenge the EIR, the city is going full steam ahead.

The city staff continues to pepper the Coastal Commission staff with studies and documents that are downright deceptive. The City Council, staff and Main Street Association continue to mislead the public.

Yep, you’re right to call it Streetscam.

— Doug Fiske

A Better Leucadia 101 Streetscape Plan

• Two traffic lanes in each direction
• Medians where there are none
• 35 mph speed limit
• Bike lanes in each direction
• Sidewalk on the west side
• No on-street parking on the west side
• Parking between the railroad tracks and 101 for the entire length of the corridor
• Pedestrian-activated crosswalks every one or two blocks
• If those crosswalks are not enough to slow the traffic, put some of them on speed tables.
• No roundabouts
• No tree removal
• Plant and maintain as many new trees as possible.
• Bus stops as described in the final EIR
• At-grade track crossings or, better yet, trench and bridge the tracks.
• See Solana Beach’s 101 corridor for its good and bad points.

You Can’t Fight City Hall

The headline is a cliché because it’s a fact, here in Encinitas and probably everywhere else.

Our fine city has about 240 generously compensated employees. It has a city attorney who’s also well paid. Our City Council has mega-millions of taxpayer dollars to spend as they please. They have the power to issue bonds at will. The bottom line is they overpower the residents and do whatever they want, almost regardless of public input.

Our city government is supposed to be a representative democracy. The people we elect to the City Council are supposed to express the will of the majority. They shouldn’t ignore the minority, but they shouldn’t cater to it.

Candidates make promises like preserving paradise and having deep community roots, but as soon as they’re in office, they flip. They put on a show of representing the majority view, but in the end they serve minority special interests and their own agendas.

The then-City Council was unanimously against Proposition A. The current City Council was unanimously for Measure T. The voters passed Prop A and defeated Measure T. The voters expressed the majority view. The council and the staff it directs rarely do.

We residents elect the council members to represent us. We taxpayers pay dearly for the staff to serve us. We don’t get faithful representation from the council, and the staff conspires to do the opposite of what the majority public wants.

An example of the council and staff not representing the majority is the current Leucadia 101 Streetscape project. The great majority of the residents most affected oppose the project. We’re not against dressing up Leucadia a bit but not the way the plan proposes.

We don’t want one traffic lane in each direction and six dinky little roundabouts, five of them stuffed at the north end. We don’t want a traffic and public safety nightmare, monster buildings lining the west side and more alcohol soaking our neighborhoods. We don’t want the Mom & Pop merchants pushed out, and we don’t want to lose our big old trees, especially the iconic eucalyptus at Leucadia Boulevard.

But never mind that majority public view. The City Council and staff favor the tiny minority of merchants and commercial property owners who are members of the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association. A recent brochure showed that less than 15 percent of corridor merchants are members.

The City Council gives the association $30,000 of taxpayer money every year — public money to a private merchants’ association. On top of that, the council is ignoring the public will and imposing a streetscape project that the majority of corridor residents don’t want.

There are four ways for the public majority to get the City Council and staff to do what we want: 1) a winning ballot proposition, 2) a winning lawsuit, 3) a winning Coastal Commission appeal, 4) an uprising so massive it threatens council members’ reelection. Each of the four takes big energy, money and lots of time. The council and staff know that. They know they can play a long game and in the end do pretty much whatever they want.

— Doug Fiske