Warner wrote on Aug 21, 2008 9:28 AM:The words, "ordinary citizens" in the above article, rile me. Bear with me while I attempt to explain.
My dictionary gives Democracy to mean, "Where the people are supreme." It gives Republic to mean, "Where the people are supreme."
As you can see it does not mean a hill of beans which you want to call it, the people are supreme in our country, state, county, and city of San Marcos. And they have spoken. The voters of San Marcos want a "Slow Growth" plan on the ballot this fall.
The developers and realtors know that the people will overwhelmingly vote for slow growth and it will destroy their plans to make fortunes by stripping the city of its wealth and tranquil living that we have today. Some of them are not citizens of the City of San Marcos.
The barbarians and their supporters have gone past our gates and penetrated our Chamber of Commerce, our city government, and our city employees.
The updating of the plan is a means of changing the plan before the election, so they the barbarians can argue before the election that a slow growth plan is not necessary because they, the barbarians have already implemented one.
Please remember that one of the members of the Chamber of Commerce, a barbarian in the first, argues that voting citizens of San Marcos lack the expertise and inclination to properly scrutinize a proposal....
I propose that the Mayor and City Council show that they are not with the barbarians and delay the updating of the General Plan until after the election and let us show what we "ordinary citizens," the supreme citizens and true bosses in the city, have to say. If they do not they will be demonstrating what they think of the citizens of San Marcos.

Dan wrote on Aug 21, 2008 12:17 PM:We should be allowed to build, build, and build. The city needs tax revenue and more development and these "watch groups" should be shunned and slayed as they try to rpevent economic progression and progress. Shame on them!

Elelphant in the Room wrote on Aug 21, 2008 3:04 PM:The elephant in the room that remains here is the "in your face" willingness of most of this new Council to change (flip) the zoning of parcels from Industrial to high density residential with impunity. THAT is the problem....updated General Plan or not. Witness Palomar Station and several other parcels that have been flipped with impunity from Industrial zoning to places where people will sleep in just the last year! This new Council majority first demonstrated this blatant impunity when they voted to "flip" the zoning on the chemically contaminated property where Palomar Station was slated to be located. This, after it was voted down THREE other times in previous developer attempts with former Councils to pull this one off. Their remedy is to have the prospective residents sign off on a "Significant and Unmitigatable Risk" Cancer warning waiver because it is smack dab next door to a violating chemical factory...sighted many times by the EPA.

A damn shame on these people elected to PROTECT the citizenry.

So...the question becomes...how do we keep the integrity of the document that would be the (theoretically) new General Plan? Only one way with this new seated majority...mandate it legally. The gross lack of consideration for the population over the financial windfalls on behalf of the same favored few developers time and time again needs to be stopped.

That is the essence of the Managed Growth Initiative (Prop. O)
THAT is why this vote is so important come November 4th.

Please MAKE TIME to do the right thing on November 4th....go in there and vote "YES" on the managed Growth Initiative that is Prop. O

GP update NOT AN OPTION wrote on Aug 21, 2008 3:43 PM:It is amazing SM has not completely updated its general plan for 20+ years. You only have to understand that SMSU is not even part of the plan to understand how outdated this plan is. Those who are familiar with the college area around SDSU can understand how it changed things for them. The citizens of SM better be prepared to plan for growth around SMSU to cope with the demand from students all around north county. I certainly don't see the streets and freeway access being able to handle the future traffic. Good luck to all of us if they don't update this plan.

--SM Resident

To Dan wrote on Aug 21, 2008 3:56 PM:Slow growth does not mean no building. To me it means controlled and balanced growth where residential, industrial and commercial zones are maintained in proper balance. And in that manner the necessary tax revenues will be there when needed. Building the out of control slums of tomorrow will not bring in tax revenues, but it will bring the need of tax revenues that we don't have and can't get. Take a look at the cities around us and see if you want to be like that where developers and realtors have run rampant building as they please and ask yourself if that is what you want. I think San Marcos is the best place in the world to live, Let's not spoil it by turning it over to people who could care less about our city.

Try Following the General Plan wrote on Aug 27, 2008 3:21 AM:A city’s General Plan is the “constitution” for Land Use and Planning. Every new city is required to create its plan for its development and follow it. All development is required by law to be consistent with the General Plan. A General Plan sets out the ultimate population, areas of residential housing, commercial, industrial, agricultural, open space, parks and recreation, traffic and roadways, housing types, and many other important elements a city must have to function properly. While the law allows for some changes to the General Plan, it limits amendments to no more than four per year. Imagine you set out to build a house on a small plot of land on a quiet narrow residential street. Your architect drew up the plans, you budgeted for materials and you began construction. What would happen if you decided in the middle of building to move the rooms around, then changed the position of walls and windows? Pipes and wiring? What if you doubled the number of rooms in the house to accommodate more family members moving in, but had no more space for garages or bathrooms? Now imagine that your neighbors all began to do the same thing only some of them decided they wanted to build stores and factories on your street and others wanted to build small apartment houses? What would the traffic look like? How would the sewer function? Where would all the cars park? In 2004 the cumulative experience of our city council members was over 94 years serving in office. Today, just 4 years later the cumulative experience of our five council members is only 30 years. It really shows. These folks don’t seem to have a clue that every time they stick another one of their bright new ideas someplace where it wasn’t planned to go we come up short on roads, schools, parks, police, parmedics, and there’s just more and more and more traffic. This council’s idea of planning is planning their own future resumes! The “look at me, I’m a “smart growth addict” I do whatever the SANDAG 20-something bureaucrats tell me to do”. The one-upsmanship mentality of this council leaves me longing for Lee Thibadeau, Corky Smith, Pia Harris and Rick Gittings to come back and set things straight! Oh I'm DEFINITELY voting for the Initiative. Give homeowners the vote, they have more common sense than this council by light years.

I agree wrote on Sep 4, 2008 12:29 AM:I don't want to change the general plan, I want to change the council into a group of people who GET IT. If this motley crew can't follow our general plan, let's elect some people who can. If we let these guys loose on the basic general plan they'll just re-write it to accommodate all their hairbrained ideas about smart growth and zillions of condos and apartment complexes that will look like crap in ten years like Escondido