If Encinitas wants to preserve its bit of paradise, then it needs to return to the basics and improve the city’s infrastructure, Mayor Bruce Ehlers said as he gave his first State of the City address.
“Paradise is what we have and it’s up to us to keep it that way,” Ehlers said Thursday as he concluded his 30-plus-minute speech before a crowd of some 200 people at the Encinitas Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event.
Ehlers, who was elected mayor in November, told the crowd that he will have three top priorities in the coming year:
- Focus on “local control, not Sacramento control” when it comes to housing development issues;
- Reduce homelessness in the city, by both enforcing laws and by encouraging people to seek assistance;
- Fix basic infrastructure, especially repaving the streets and upgrading the city’s storm drain system.
When it came to his first priority, Ehlers said he and the city’s three new council members “will lobby against and oppose” state legislation that promotes massive housing development projects, such as the now-under-construction, 250-unit Goodson project near the corner of Encinitas Boulevard and Rancho Santa Fe Road.
Regarding homelessness, Ehlers said recent court rulings, particularly one that allows cities to start enforcing their bans on camping on public property, will help law enforcement efforts. On the social services side, the new Buena Creek Navigation Center — a shared homeless shelter with the city of Vista — and additional staffing for the city’s Homeless Outreach Program for Empowerment (HOPE) will help resolve the problem, he said.
And, when it comes to infrastructure, Ehlers said he’s anticipating drastically increasing funding for projects ranging from roadway repaving to storm drain improvements.
Encinitas needs to do “basic infrastructure before vanity or beautification projects,” he stressed. “We need to address the basics, and that includes … repairing pavement, rehabilitating storm drains, fixing Leucadia flooding, implementing (train horn) quiet zones and at-grade crossings.”
As he displayed a chart that showed the city’s pavement conditions declining citywide over the past half-dozen years, Ehlers said he wanted the council to dedicate an additional $1 million or more a year “to reverse this trend, because we certainly don’t want it to get any worse.”
Ehlers said he also wanted to increase city spending on storm drain improvements from what’s now an average of $250,000 a year to “up to at least $1 million dollars a year” to prevent sinkhole problems. Two years ago, the city spent $3.7 million to fix sinkhole issues related to failing storm drain pipes, he noted.
If Encinitas commits to the higher spending rate for the next five years, it could redo all the city’s existing corrugated metal drain pipes, he said.
“We just need to be more proactive and ultimately then we’ll be more fiscally responsive,” he said.
In addition to the mayor’s speech, Thursday night’s ticketed dinner event featured videos from the Chamber of Commerce and the three Main Street Associations. Celebrating the city’s artistic creations featured in several of these productions. Cardiff 101 Main Street President Joy Sheppard said Cardiff has so much great artwork that her organization is planning to start a bike mural tour, while Encinitas MainStreet Association President Evan Larkin said plans are in the works to beautify the concrete barricades around downtown’s outdoor dining areas.
People who didn’t get to hear the mayor’s State of the City address Thursday night will have another chance to do so. Ehlers plans to give it during next week’s City Council meeting.
The second presentation is being done in response to a recent state Attorney General’s opinion regarding open public meeting laws, Ehlers said. In past years, all of the council members have attended the chamber’s event, but the state has ruled that doing that without advertising it as a public meeting and allowing people to attend for free violates state public meeting laws, he said. Three of the four council members attended part of the chamber’s event Thursday, but left before Ehlers began speaking.
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