Understand the Plan is an Informational Website created by James La Mattery, an Independent Real Estate Broker with James LaMattery Realtors. My services include the entire area of San Diego County with a focus on Bay Park, Bay Ho, Overlook Heights, Clairemont Mesa, La Jolla and Point Loma.
“With the information at our fingertips, residents can now become an effective vital part of changes being made city-wide by San Diego’s Development Department. Whether you’re buying in our North, South, East or West County areas, you’d be foolish to purchase without a true understanding of how the area you decide to live in is shaping up. Moreover, your participation in public planning is more important than ever as San Diego Officials update its 52 Community Plans.” James LaMattery
A Beginners Guide
When you click on your community plan area (above) your local planning group’s agenda & meeting times and locations are published on the same page.
We encourage you to attend at least one local planning group meeting to familiarize yourself with their process. The members of your planning group are volunteers that reside in your plan area and it is their responsibility to note public input before they recommend or reject a development project application. Never been to a planning group meeting? Watch video of the March 17th Clairemont Community Planning Group here.
The Model Community
Guiding principles of San Diego’s Regional and General Plans form the basis of the Model Community’s development. Ten Elements have been created from the guiding principles. Both plans rely upon our local community plans to provide the site-specific guidance that will lead to implementation of the guiding principles (policies) and elements, and the continued involvement of an engaged citizenry to monitor its implementation.
A balanced approach prevents implementation of a single goal to the exclusion of others equally important. Only one segment of the community benefits when a single goal dominates over the others. For example, only developers benefit when green building practices or recreational green space is sacrificed in the name of higher density.
The current county Regional Comprehensive Plan and the San Diego City General Plan address all of the elements that make up a model community. Getting to the model community will necessitate action by residents in each community to ensure all of the plans’ goals are implemented fairly and equally.
The opportunity for residents to ensure that this fair process happens is when each community goes through its Comprehensive Plan Update or CPU. When one interest tries to change, amend or otherwise alter a community plan prior to a CPU, the community can suffer.
For example, if the Morena Study proposals were made to Clairemont Mesa’s Community Plan without a CPU, only high-density infill would be codified (changed in the municipal code) whereas all of the other stated goals for providing adequate infrastructure, green space, green building practices and connectivity of the neighborhood would be left out of the code, left unimplemented or remain a promise to be filled at a later time. This is unacceptable and will necessitate a powerful singular public voice to prevent.
Our communites are in grave jeopardy of not seeing some of the most important goals and visions of the Regional and General Plans ever implemented in our community unless we take action now. We are determined to leave our neighborhood a better place for our children.
Why Should You Understand the Plan?
Big Money Developers will dictate what gets built in our neighborhoods unless residents become familiar with county and city proposals for changing our Community Plans.
Its important, therefore, to have at least a simple understanding of what goals the County and City of San Diego want to achieve from their respective General Plans. Those plans were finalized in 2004 & 2008 and are currently being implemented on the local level by the city’s Planning Department by way of amending our local Community Plans.
Huge changes to our transit systems and residential community layouts will be made to accommodate visions and goals for density, linked transportation systems, affordable housing, vehicle use control and neighborhood diversification. Without an understanding of some of the simplest development proposals, residents can be caught unaware that some goals of the City’s plan may be implemented without regard to other equally important goals.
Without equal implementation of the goals, community and developer interests will never align properly. For example: The Morena Blvd Station Area Planning Study that the city planners finalized in February 2014 seeks to change zoning and land use designations to increase density (number of living units) in the Bay Park, Bay Ho and Overlook Heights neighborhoods without codifying (making it ‘law’ or incorporating into the Municipal Code) any of the other goals of the study such as green building practices, zero-net energy, green area ratios, walkability and bike-ability. It will take the residents of those communities to stand up and voice support for such codification prior to approving any re-zoning or land use changes.
Simple understanding of the Plan is essential to ensure that residents can actually shape the coming development to increase the quality of life of the entire community.
Why are Our Community Plans Being Updated and/ or Amended?
Unfortunately, without a watchful eye from residents of each community, some of the goals can be sacrificed to special interests that demand only what benefits them, such as some developers who want to build high-density projects but are unwilling to do so with sustainable design due to building costs. Read more about High Density goals here.