Alliance For Intelligent Planning Prevails Over Wildomar City Hall in….

RIVERSIDE SUPERIOR COURT

On Friday, February 20, 2015, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gloria Trask agreed with the Alliance for Intelligent Planning (a group of concerned citizens), that the recently-approved Housing Element portion of the City of Wildomar General Plan was improperly converting tax revenue-producing commercial property into high-density residential property in order to accommodate out-of-town developers in their quest for “cheap dirt.”

As a result of the ruling, numerous development projects will have to be re-evaluated by the City Staff, Planning Commission, and the Wildomar City Council to determine if the projects can go forward in the context of the Courts ruling.

At issue, as the current philosophy of the Wildomar City Council and their Planning Commissioners, to approve nearly any residential project that comes before the various aforementioned bodies, in order to generate one-time development fees and revenue for the City of Wildomar.

Unfortunately, said philosophy will ultimately reduce Wildomar to a  non-rural bedroom community of multi-family apartment projects, lacking sufficient tax revenues to provide the necessary and basic infrastructure, such as police and fire and road maintenance.

 While there are other and additional implications  to the Court’s ruling, suffice it to say that  your city’s forefathers and foremothers have been reckless  in moving forward with the Housing Element without adequately  considering well-informed opposition  that was certain to result in litigation.

 And, in this case, successful litigation.

 Now the City Staff, City Councilmembers  and their Planning Commissioners  will have to  actively address the legitimate concerns of the successful litigants. 

Comments can be made to zakturango@excite.com.

The Real Document….

…DUMPING IN WILDOMAR

Once again, elected and appointed officials on the City Council/Planning Commission (hereinafter the “Wildo-Morons”) resort to the overused phrase “document dump” to describe citizen input to ongoing Planning Commission and City Council activities within the legal proscribed time limits.

At last night’s City of Wildomar Planning Commission meeting, Commission Chair Veronica Langworthy apparently complained to Wildomar citizen, Gary Andre, after he presented settlement documents that were already in the possession of Wildomar city staff but were not included in the agenda packet for  review  by the Planning Commissioners.

The previously-approved Oak Creek Canyon project was brought back to the Planning Commission for approval of “minor changes,” and it was important that the conditions within the settlement agreement between the developer, the City of Wildomar and the plaintiff, Gary Andre, be incorporated into the conditions of the development.

After spending  the past week  trying to get the settlement conditions incorporated within the  Planning Commission agenda packet, André was left with no alternative but to  hand carry the documents to City Hall  and present them to the City Clerk  in order to be assured that the documents would be available to the Planning Commissioners. Whether or not the documents were appended to the agenda  was entirely within the control of city staff.

Nevertheless,  Planning Commission Chair Langworthy apparently resorted to the complaint of a last-minute “document dump,” thereby alluding to and associating herself with  Washington DC-style tactics, presumably  to inflate her own importance.

The primary issue is the hiding by city staff of the  “environmental disaster” that is unfolding due to the presence of a  raw sewage “spray field” that has been the unfortunate method of  processing  of raw sewage from The Farm  since 1974. As a result of that  ongoing spraying of urine,  it is likely that the presence of nitrates in Cottonwood Creek  and the underlying the water table will have to be addressed  sooner, rather than later.

As you may know when the EVMWD took over the  water service  for nearby residents,  they required immunity from any lawsuits arising from  the water contamination  before they would agree to providing water service for the residents.

 More on this matter  in the near future .

Comments can be made to zakturango@excite.com.

Perhaps The Planning Commissioners will now find their own voice and  actually “dump”  on the Planning Department for keeping them in the dark on such important matters