By Bonnie Kutch
Dear Councilman Kent Lee:
On behalf of UC PEEPS, I want to thank you for meeting with us last Wednesday morning to address our questions and concerns. We appreciate your honest responses, but still disagree with many of your statements.
Regarding the enormous density you support being added to University City, you’re saying that building more housing will help rents and home prices come down. Is that not penalizing homeowners whose homes are their primary source of financial security? Homeowners, like me, who have worked hard for many decades so they can afford to live here and remain secure in their retirement years?
Any amount of new development — even 5-10% of the proposed 31,500 housing units — would in time overburden our community, which is already built out. We simply don’t have the traffic grid and other infrastructure to support it. It seems disingenuous for the City to keep repeating the line that development will be slow to come and that we shouldn’t worry about it in our lifetimes. But what about our youth? What about someone like 17-year-old Michael Kozma who hopes to return to UC after college to raise a family?
In response to your answer about the lack of infrastructure, we believe the solution to ensuring a community has adequate infrastructure to support and serve the community longterm is responsible planning, as many other U.S. cities have done in their general plans and what our master-planned communities here have incorporated in years past. Instead, the City intends to dump a lot of density into our neighborhoods and hope that it works out. The “City of Villages” Master Plan, which was skillfully guided by our former Urban Planner, was adopted around 2002. I personally believe it was a grave mistake for the City to veer of course from that and eliminate the City Urban Planner position altogether.
Regarding schools, we’re unsure why you would say that’s the school’s responsibility. First, the District did indeed engage with the City to outline what it needs in UC, requesting that the City work with the District to ensure there would be a school somewhere around La Jolla Village Drive and Genesee Avenue. A responsible Plan Update would include a future site for a school based on discussions with the District.
The park and recreation deficit is a huge concern for UC residents, as you know. For you and Heidi VonBlum to essentially admit that San Diego cannot possibly meet its own Parks Master Plan guidelines is admitting that you don’t care about the quality of life for UC residents. For both children and adults, having enough large areas for outdoor recreational opportunities and recreation centers is vital to people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Regarding adequate fire and police coverage, currently having a shortage, but not showing possible future sites for more stations, is a blatant omission that could cost lives. Does that not concern you?
We were given a glimmer of hope by your statements at the LU&H Committee meeting that you want the City to explore their proposal to reduce Governor Drive to two lanes. It’s clear to us you recognize this represents south UC residents’ biggest worry, and that following through on such a proposal would not only backfire, but possibly be deadly in the event of an emergency evacuation. The proposal also ignores that idling cars stuck in traffic along the road every day would emit a considerable amount of carbon emissions, which goes against the City’s Climate Action Plan.
We strongly disagree with your decision to accept unreasonable height and density zoning levels at the south UC shopping centers. Responsible planning calls for new development to be in scale and character with the surrounding neighborhood; the thought of having 100-foot-tall buildings in the middle of a suburban, single-family neighborhood is ghastly. More, such density would add even further to the traffic congestion on Governor Drive. We believe you would be doing a great injustice to UC by going along with the City’s proposed zoning.
Last, we’d like to say that your not supporting the Community Preferred Plan, which still accepts a considerable amount of density, feels disrespectful. The City’s UC Plan Update is a deceitful plan that ignores the reasonable input from residents of a community that is willing to accept its fair share of density based on current, not years-old, data.
Thank you again for taking the time to meet with us. UC PEEPS represents thousands of residents here in UC who are merely calling for responsible growth and more thoughtful planning. We hope you will consider our input and sentiments before you cast your final vote on this poorly conceived and injurious Plan Update when the full City Council meets in July.
We’re asking you to please stand up for your constituents in University City.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Kutch
Founding Member, UC Neighbors for Responsible Growth, a.k.a. UC PEEPS
