SAN MARCOS —— Voters in San Marcos defeated the world's largest corporation and booted out a veteran city councilman in 2004, a year that was also characterized by traffic headaches for those navigating road projects, a giant sinkhole and battles over protecting the city's ridgelines.

Following the opening of the city's first Wal-Mart in January, the Arkansas-based retail giant suffered a blow in March when the city's voters overwhelmingly said "no" to the company's plans to build a second store, this one on Rancho Santa Fe Road.

In November, voters rejected a re-election bid by then-Councilman Lee Thibadeau, who vocally supported Wal-Mart's efforts.

The fall campaign for two City Council seats was one of the ugliest in the city's history. While some of the six candidates running for council were civil, others dug up dirt, called each other names and found ways to discredit their rivals.

A squabble ends

This was also a year of reconciliation between the city of San Marcos and San Diego Gas & Electric. After four years of bitter fighting, the city agreed not to use its municipal utility to distribute electricity to new developments in San Marcos.

And in perhaps the strangest event in 2004, in March, a ruptured water main opened a 30-foot-wide sinkhole on San Marcos Boulevard. In an area of tract homes near Acacia Drive and Avenida de la Rosas, dozens of residents stood knee-deep in water that poured out of the broken pipeline. No injuries were reported but traffic was snarled for hours.

For all the headlines in 2004, there is much to look forward to in 2005.

Councilman Jim Desmond, a man who has never been elected to office before November, has taken over Thibadeau's spot on the five-member City Council. The 48-year-old former San Marcos Economic Development Corp. member is a political novice compared to his council colleagues, who have a combined 61 years of experience on the council.

Time for change

Desmond's election is the first infusion of new blood the council has gotten in more than four years.

"I think every city needs a change every now and then," said Juanita Hayes, chief executive officer of the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce.

Desmond and the other council members will be asked to make big policy decisions that among other things will govern development on the city's ridgelines. This month, they will be asked to approve a temporary moratorium to halt home building on a majority of the city's ridgelines until a citizens task force is formed to create a permanent ridgeline ordinance. The council will also select members of the task force.

At the bottom of the ridges is San Marcos Creek, a meandering body of water that winds its way from the Merriam Mountains to the Batiquitos Lagoon. The city is working on plans to channel the creek through 252 acres between San Marcos Boulevard and Discovery Street, just south of Restaurant Row.

The project, designed to control flooding and allow for commercial and residential development, may go before the City Council next fall.

A little inconvenience

Along with the creek plan, there are major road projects, some of which will be completed or get under way this year. For this growing city of 67,426 residents the projects are an inconvenience, but in the end, city officials say, they are necessary to ease the city's congestion.

"As long as residents see that there is progress, I don't think they will mind as much," Councilwoman Pia Harris-Ebert said. "(The projects) are extremely important to traffic flow."

Perhaps the biggest road project to get under way in 2004 was a freeway interchange at Highway 78 and Los Posas Road. Launched in October, the $20 million project is expected to give the 21,000 students and 2,000 employees at Palomar College's San Marcos campus direct access to the school. It is also expected to relieve traffic on San Marcos Boulevard and Rancho Santa Fe and Twin Oaks Valley roads.

Drivers will need to exercise patience because the behemoth project will not be completed until the end of 2006.

Connections

The city plans to launch another ambitious project this month, this one to build a $14 million connector road between Twin Oaks Valley and San Elijo roads. When it's completed in January 2007, the 2.1-mile connector will give the self-contained, 3,398-home San Elijo Hills community in the southern part of the city another outlet to the north.

While those projects are getting under way, a $13.8 million, 2 1/2-year project to widen Los Posas Road between Grand Avenue and Mission, will be completed in March.

Another project, the widening of Rancho Santa Fe Road from Island to Melrose drives, will be completed by the end of this year, after two years of work. The two additional lanes will also ease congestion for the residents of the affluent San Elijo Hills community.

If the City Council had had its way, Rancho Santa Fe Road would have become home to the city's second Wal-Mart. Three council members —— Mayor Corky Smith, Vice Mayor Mike Preston and Thibadeau —— voted in 2003 to approve the store.

A large foe

It was an unpopular decision that gave rise to SaveSanMarcos.org, a political-action group whose members —— many of them upper-middle-class residents of San Elijo Hills —— organized a campaign to gather enough signatures to put the Wal-Mart issue on the March ballot.

Even with its high-priced lawyers, money and political clout, Wal-Mart officials could not stop the referendum from happening, nor could they convince enough voters to back the store.

For the roughly 50 members of SaveSanMarcos.org, beating Wal-Mart was just part of the victory. They wanted to make sure Thibadeau, who backed the retail giant and publicly called group members names, would pay the ultimate political price for his actions.

In an unusual move in San Marcos politics, they organized a campaign to kick Thibadeau out of office. Armed with thousands of dollars left over from their Wal-Mart campaign, the group ran newspaper ads attacking Thibadeau's record and put up expensive political signs.

Sharp divisions

The group's campaign angered Thibadeau and Preston, his closest ally, as well as the councilman's family and supporters, many of whom hail from the mobile-home park community.

"It's sad for San Marcos," Thibadeau said at the time. "They (SaveSanMarcos.org) have allowed this to deteriorate into a hate campaign. I think voters are going to see through it."

When Thibadeau lost his seat, three leading SaveSanMarcos.org members, Lori Drake, Laura Meyers and Rebecca Jones, were so happy they attended the former councilman's last council meeting on Dec. 14, sitting in the front row.

"Each one of us should be proud of allÝwe did to better our community!" Drake wrote in a e-mail prior to the meeting. "We made our voices heard and we made a difference! Let's celebrate our triumph by attending tomorrow's meeting!"

While the election resulted in Thibadeau's demise, it also allowed voters to validate an agreement between the city and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Current events

The electricity company provides power to the entire city. Thus, when company officials found out the city was negotiating with a Solana Beach power company to distribute electricity in San Marcos, they were not pleased.

City officials disregarded the company's opposition and went forward with their plans, arguing that San Marcos could take in more than $200 million in energy revenues from 2004 to 2018 by having the city's municipal utility, the Discovery Valley Utility, serve future developments.

In May, both sides came to the bargaining table and reached a settlement, in which the city would abandon its energy plans and the electric company would spend money on public education and work with the city to find ways to use solar energy and fuel cells.

Both sides also got together to write Proposition U, a ballot measure that would prevent the city from distributing electricity to customers within its boundaries for 10 years without a public vote. Voters approved it in November.

"The real winners are going to be businesses and families in San Marcos," SDG&E spokesman Scott Crider said during the campaign.

Ridgeline epic

Another battle, which overshadowed the energy fight, was between city residents and developer San Elijo Hills.

When the company began grading the top of the 1,500-foot-high Cerro de las Posas ridgeline in June to make way for 28 homes, a water tank and park access road, ridgeline preservationists took action.

San Elijo Hills officials, whose project was approved by the City Council in 1997, told the public they would try prevent some of the homes from being seen from the north side of the ridge. That wasn't enough, however.

The protesters, led by Bill Effinger and Larry Osen, both of whom founded ridgeline protection groups, called for a halt in the grading and an ordinance to protect all the city's ridgelines.

They got their message across in November when the City Council decided to form a citizens task to create a permanent ridgeline protection ordinance and to create a temporary building moratorium for all ridgelines, except for Cerro de las Posas. San Elijo Hills' project was exempt because it had received prior approval.

The council also directed City Attorney Helen Holmes Peak to send letters to the state attorney general and county district attorney's office, asking officials to determine whether its 1997 approval of San Elijo Hills' project violated state or local laws.

Peak sent her letter in December. Members of both Effinger and Osen's groups, Restore the Ridgeline and Friends of Cerro de las Posas, also wrote letters to state and county prosecutors to back up Peak's letter.

Contact staff writer Ken Ma at (760) 761-4408 or kma@nctimes.com.