Andrea Schlageter, the chair of the OB Planning Board, has just been selected to lead the influential Community Planners Committee, a group that represents San Diego’s four dozen neighborhood planning groups at City Hall.
At 30, Schlageter is the youngest person ever to lead the CPC, the first woman this century to have the post and only the second renter. The chair of the CPC has been held almost exclusively this century by middle-aged white men who are homeowners from affluent neighborhoods. She’s also a local, having graduated from Point Loma High School in 2009.
In May, Schlegeter and Barry Schultz, a long-time, community-oriented land-use attorney, tied 14-14 in a vote to become the new CPC chair. Since then, Schultz was named National City’s interim city attorney and dropped out.
Every neighborhood planning committee has a seat on the CPC. Usually, the neighborhood panel member is the chair of the local planning committee. And the group of members select the over-all chair. The CPC makes recommendations to the City Council and Mayor on housing policies, development regulations and rules for providing parks, libraries, fire stations and other amenities to neighborhoods.
Sunday’s San Diego U-T simply gushed about Schlageter’s “meteoric” rise as a community leader in a front-page article, and, as reporter David Garrick saw it, “A powerful new voice”, which “could soon shake up San Diego’s escalating war between the ‘build-baby-build’ crowd and single-family homeowners frustrated that massive new housing projects are damaging neighborhood character and quality of life.”
Throughout Garrick’s piece, Andrea is described as a “moderate” and part NIMBY and part YIMBY.
Despite Schlageter’s leadership of the OB Planning Board as it has navigated through the churning waters of ADUs, granny flats, short-term rentals, and high level attacks against the concept of local planning committees, she is apparently seen by San Diego’s establishment as someone who can steer the boat, moderate and mitigate the demands from grassroots groups and residents as the city presses communities to live up to the mayor’s agenda.
Yet, they may be in for a surprise.
For the balance of this article, please go here.
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Finally, a champion for and from the neighborhoods. CONGATULATIONS to ANDREA
She is definitely not an enabler for the club that runs city hall (like the UT is). They will soon learn that once they get past the irrelevant identity politics.
Aleluya! A voice for some of us. Let’s build a band wagon, everyone jumping on it shall be forever a Schlagateer! March Schlagateers March!
And some call the OB Rag biased!
There are so many things to respond to in this David Garrick piece at the U-T – and I don’t have the time.
But just one. Garrick’s entire narrative sees Andrea as a renter who will stand up to the single-family homeowners and assumes that only home-owners are concerned with the loss of community character and quality of life.
Tell that to OBceans, 70% of whom rent. It was renters in the 1970s that forced the city to accede to a local community planning board for OB, which formed because the unbridled construction of apartments was destroying OB’s character and harming its quality of life.
Today’s renters understand how short-term rentals have swallowed up invaluable long-term rental housing stock and have caused sky-rocketing rents. Andrea also understands that.
What else to expect from Garrick? He’s the guy who in his first paragraph writing about ‘Homes for All of Us’ wrote, “San Diego approved Tuesday a sweeping package of housing incentives and regulation changes that aim to spur construction of more housing units *while also helping the city avoid dramatic changes to neighborhood character*.” The last phrase was a completely gratuitous opinion that was completely contradicted by everything he wrote after it. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2022-02-08/san-diego-oks-large-package-of-housing-incentives-including-accessory-units/
Either he needs a better editor or the U-T needs a better reporter.
Still, residents/taxpayers/communities would do well to keep their eyes on the ball.
With Andrea now burdened with new responsibilities, I’m assuming the vice-chair, Kevin Hastings, will have to pick up much of the running of the OB Planning Board.