More on the Emerald Hills Radio Towers Project
By Robert Campbell
At the July 7th City Council hearing on the Emerald Hills Radio Towers project, Henry Foster’s Chief of Staff, Dan Horton entered his version of the Footnote 7 historical timeline into the record as “late arriving materials.” While his timeline begins on September 11, 2019, public records requests and review of City Council hearings have allowed me to plug the gaps and correct the record with missing facts.
The true written record starts on April 16, 2019, when Development Services Department (DSD) Assistant Director Gary Geiler wrote to land use attorney and developer Dennis Dawson, saying, “It was nice meeting with you to go over the potential development… I will continue to discuss with the Planning Department the feasibility of the Rezone on a neighborhood basis… given the current density restrictions.”
The following narrative is fully documented and supported by public records requests, public archives, and verified audio and video recordings.
April – May 2019
Internal Reality: DSD Assistant Director Geiler meets privately with developer attorney Dennis Dawson. They discuss “potential development” and “rezone feasibility” for a “Broadway Site” under current density restrictions. Geiler provides Dawson with municipal codes for RS (Residential-Single) zones and Planned Development Permits to map out a strategy.
Public Action: The First Approvals
September – November 2019
Public Record: The Code Monitoring Team, Community Planners Committee, and Planning Commission review and vote to approve the proposed 12th Code Update (also known as the 2019 Land Development Code Update), which quietly introduces a piece of text known as “Footnote 7.”
Public Action: Council Enacts Footnote 7
Dec 17, 2019 – Jan 7, 2020
Public Record: The San Diego City Council officially approves and adopts the 2019 Land Development Code (LDC) Update. Footnote 7 is legally slipped into the Residential Zones Development Regulations Table, reducing lot minimums from 20,000 to 5,000 square feet specifically in Encanto and Southeastern San Diego.
The Political Connection: Out of the entire city of San Diego, only one single person from the public speaks publicly on the record about this footnote and it is attorney Dennis Dawson who appears to own property in Encanto on RS-1-2 zoned lots and had been secretly meeting with Gary Geiler to coordinate this exact change.
Right before voting to approve the LDC and Footnote 7, then-Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe personally thanks Dennis Dawson by name, along with the YIMBYs, for their work. Orchestrating this legislative session is her then-Chief of Staff, Henry Foster III.
Phase 2: Confirmation of the Secret the zoning loophole that is Footnote 7
April 2020
Internal Reality: Dawson writes to Geiler, panicked that the City’s public zoning website still lists his parcels’ minimum lot size as 20,000 sq. ft. (RS-1-2), despite the council vote he just championed.
Geiler and city staffer David Saborio write back to clarify the workaround: Footnote 7 is a text loophole, not a map layer. It allows the developer to slash lot sizes to 5,000 sq. ft. without changing the base zoning map. To an ordinary citizen looking at the City’s public mapping GIS layers, the land appears as low-density, keeping the developer’s 4x density expansion entirely hidden from the neighborhood.
Here’s an email:
Phase 3: Squeezing Footnote 7 for Maximum Density
March 2021
Internal Reality: Dawson pushes Geiler to maximize the loophole. He asks to not only shrink the lots, but to slash the physical dimensions of the neighborhood to pack more houses closer together. Dawson asks to bypass RS-1-2 rules and use dense RS-1-7 sub-rules.
On March 9, 2021, Geiler officially greenlights the developer’s wishlist, writing: “Yes, I believe the intent was to use those lot dimensions as well.”
Here’s the email:
Approved Dimensional Reductions:
- Lot Width & Frontage: Slashed from 80 ft down to 50 ft.
- Lot Depth: Reduced from 100 ft down to 95 ft.
- Front Setback: Cut from 25 ft down to 15 ft.
- Rear Setback: Cut from 25 ft down to 13 ft.
Phase 4: Modifying the Code for Maximum Potency
April 2021
Internal Reality: Following his private agreement with Dawson, Geiler shifts the focus internally. He writes to city staffer Renee Mezo, directing her to have Footnote 7 officially modified to bake Dawson’s exact dimensions (reduced setbacks, narrower frontages) directly into the rules governing RS-1-2 land. This fundamental rewrite of local zoning laws is executed entirely behind closed doors with zero public notice, community input, or environmental justice review.
Public Action: Codifying the Developer’s Wishlist
Dec 13, 2021 – Jan 11, 2022
Public Record: The City Council approves the 2021 Land Development Code Update. Passed quietly on the Consent Agenda with no public debate, the amendment adds the text Geiler and Dawson concocted: “…and all development regulations of the RS-1-7 zone shall apply to subdivisions.” The loophole is now fully weaponized.
The D4 Staff Briefing
November 7, 2022
Public Record: District 4 office staff (Tiffany Harrison and Eric Henson) meet with community members providing an overview of the land use code and how the development in Emerland Hills is within the code keeping the public narrative contained while the project advances under Footnote 7. How were regular citizens supposed to understand the lengths of complexity the City had gone through to make just their neighborhood different from the rest of the City.
The ‘Institutional Amnesia’ Hearing
November 12, 2024
Public Record: During a City Council session regarding the Klauber Development CEQA Appeal, Planning Director Heidi Vonblum explicitly states that the City does not know the origins or original intent of Footnote 7.
The Hypocrisy: While the Planning Director claims the City’s origins are an untraceable mystery, internal DSD servers hold years of explicit, step-by-step emails between Geiler and Dawson, and public council archives show Montgomery Steppe literally thanking Dawson by name for it in 2019.
The Unanimous Repeal
January 28 – March 2025
Public Record: Facing a wall of community resistance, the San Diego City Council votes unanimously to completely remove Footnote 7 from the Municipal Code.
The Internal Paper Trail Scramble
February 6, 2025
Internal Reality: Sandwiched directly between the first and second council votes to repeal the footnote, Gary Geiler pulls the entire multi-year email chain detailing his collusion with Dawson and forwards it directly to Elyse Lowe (Director of the Development Services Department). This internal flag occurs precisely as public records requests drop and political fallout peaks.
The Bait-and-Switch Approval
July 7, 2026
Public Record: Councilmember Henry Foster III votes to approve the 123-home Radio Towers project. He uses State Law (SB 330 / Housing Crisis Act of 2019) to argue that because the developer submitted applications while Footnote 7 was active, the City is legally required to honor it, completely ignoring that his own department and his own former boss spent years privately fabricating, protecting, and working with this developer using Footnote 7.
The Takeaway
Let’s call Footnote 7 what it actually is: a highly coordinated, map-bypassing zoning hack engineered by City staff and a developer’s attorney to strip Emerald Hills and Encanto of the same land use law enjoyed by wealthy, white communities and quite frankly, the rest of the City. The “mystery” is dead.
So why the cover-up? Follow the money. On February 19th, Dennis Dawson cut an $800 check to Henry Foster, the absolute maximum individual contribution allowed by law.
The City Planning Department and the Council office operate on a single, arrogant assumption that everyday residents won’t look for the truth, won’t request the files, and won’t read the hundreds of pages of backroom emails. They thought you or I wouldn’t notice. But the gaps are plugged, the facts are laid bare, and the truth is finally out.
WOW!!!!! Seems to me, there was/is talk about shady dealings between a couple of sitting Council members, the Dept. of DSD, and Planning Dept. What has a hot dog land use attorney said about this??? And the voters in the County voted for one of the involved council reps, for their Board of Supervisors. SWELL!!!!!