So Is The General Plan Update

Commentary:
By Uvaldo Martinez

   Anyone who buys or sells property in San Diego will remember the last time this same Board of Supervisors dealt with anything as vast as the proposal to overhaul county land use plans.

   It was in the late 90’s: Environmentalists promised they would never bother landowners in San Diego ever again if only the Board of Supervisors would set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of land for rare birds and bushes.

   They called it “no surprises.” Landowners could plan to use their property without worrying about constant legal challenges from environmentalists.

   One after another, environmentalists trudged to the microphone and begged the Board of Supervisors to make San Diego a center of biological diversity. “No surprises,” they promised over and over and over.

   The County Supervisors — all of whom are still there — took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Soon, major portions of San Diego County were put off limits to the people who owned the property.

   All without paying for it, of course. But landowners could make up for it in other places, they were told, because they could now use their property without all the expensive legal delays.

   We now know it was all a lie: The ink was still wet on the new law when these same environmentalists started suing landowners for planning to use their property in places where the new law said they had every right to do so.

   Surprise.

   Now they are back: Many of the same characters are preparing for the next act in this farce: They want to rewrite San Diego zoning laws. Again. This time, they say we need to cluster our residents in high rise condos near freeways and buses — all to save us from the threat of what people could do with property they saved and invested for.

   And if we do that, property owners can save a lot of money because they will not have to worry about expensive legal challenges and delays.

   Yes, they say that with a straight face. Surprise.

   This time, one of their main targets is San Diego farmers, many of whom are located along the I-15 corridor in North County.

   Over the last ten years, the price of San Diego water has gone up dramatically while the foreign imports has slashed prices for crops just as sharply. The only thing keeping many of these farmers alive is the value of their land. This down zoning will take away even that by removing a farmer’s right to use their land for something else — as farmers always have.

   These new laws against farmers expose San Diego planners for what they really are: Not planners but regulators — social engineers.

   As planners, this department was supposed to be funded with money collected from landowners in processing fees.

   Instead, these regulators spent $16 million and almost a decade preparing this 1000-page plan whose major rationale for existence today is that we spent so much money and so much time on it, we now have to pass it. No matter what is in it.

   It is a double whammy:  Destroy the private sector by gutting property values, then raise taxes to pay to for the very department that did the damage because it is not receiving enough application fees to cover its costs.

   Underpinning this new plan is the fact that all of us are going to have give up our cars and start using the bus, the trolley, and at some point old shopping carts, I suppose, if we want to get around.

   Surprise.