Urgent Meeting
Tonight – June 2nd at 6pm
at Dog Beach Dog Wash
4933 Voltaire
An urgent meeting has been called for tonight, June 2nd, by OB planners in order to formulate a response to how the San Diego Planning Commission dealt with the OB Plan Update last week.
The planners also also putting together a presentation for the City Council, which is scheduled to review the Plan on June 30th.
The meeting is open to any OBcean, and will be held at 6pm at the Dog Beach Dog Wash, 4933 Voltaire Street.
Tonight’s important get together is being called by the Co-Chairs of the sub-committee on the Plan Update. Members of this group have been working with City staff – some for years – in preparing the Update.
What has upset local planners is that the Planning Commmission at last Thursday’s hearing, questioned and criticized language in the Plan that City staff and City Attorneys insisted be placed in it. Planning Board members and the sub-committee – at the City’s insistence – had agreed to change language around the issue of variances, watering down some text that some thought implied that variances were not in conformity with the Plan.
Yet, at the Planning Commission hearing, the Commissioners wanted to strike the very language the City wanted in. And they voted a modification to that language in question.
OB planners also now believe that the Planning Commission is preparing the ground to attempt to get rid of OB’s very low FAR in certain coastal areas. FAR stands for “floor area ratio” and it has been a tool by OB planners to restrict those neighborhoods of the community near the beach from acquiring large, 3 story houses out of character with the immediate blocks.
Yet, recently, City staff have been granting variances to property owners to allow them to get around 0.7 FAR and build larger single-family houses than allowed by the OB Community Plan (formally called the OB Precise Plan).
It appears the Commission is signalling to City staff and property owners at OB’s beach zones that they’ll be granting even more variances for houses out of bulk and scale with the Plan.
Since the Plan Update is going before the City Council on June 30th, OB planners also want to organize a campaign to inform the Council of the Plan’s value and set the stage for a successful presentation later this month.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Beware of the precedent set by big-business opponents of the Barrio Logan plan, now on the ballot as Props B & C. If big money can take down one community’s well-thought out plan, it can take down other communities’ plans as well.
IMO the planning commission acted on behalf of ALL residents of Ocean Beach, not one group that wants to set their own standards.
The properties on the North side of WPL cost much more than the south side BECAUSE OF THE VIEW. Get over it ! call it gentrification, call it ugly, but at the end of the day call it another project gone forward anyway.
It’s a good thing the O.B. planning board has no clout at the planning commission.
You’d be much happier in La Jolla, you don’t really fit in with OB.
By “set their own standards”, I’m hoping you mean pushing the City to enforce to their own Land Development Code fair and equally. If these projects were compliant with the code that everyone has to follow, they would not need variances. These homeowners are perfectly entitled to apply for these variances, but the City is obligated to grant them only after certain findings are met. In my own personal opinion, they have been nowhere close to doing that.
obracer – The FAR – floor area ratio was set by the people of OB back in 1976. For you to call this “set their own standards” is totally ignorant of your own community’s history and shows absolutely no respect for a victory gained in the Seventies by your neighbors. I don’t know where you live, but if the Plan Commission had their way, they’d probably do away with the 30 foot height limit and then any view you ever had obracer would be gone. Get to know your own community’s history. Quit speaking out of ignorance.
^ This.
As soon as today’s election is over, I’ll be posting an update of this new … what shall I call it? … mini-squabble with the Planning Commission? or crisis in OB planning? or ….
Since the primary opponent is an attorney, maybe it’s time to bring a gun to the gun fight and not an angry mob with clubs.
Seems to me Stebbins has been winning because he knows what pertinent issues to raise and what not to confuse the judge with.