For Better or Worse, Encinitas Celebrates First Year of Cityhood

“It’s really amazing how much we have accomplished. We started with nothing a year ago, and now we have a fully operating city doing lots of significant things that the county still hasn’t managed to accomplish in the unincorporated areas.”

--Councilman Gerald Steel, on what’s right about Encinitas after one year of cityhood.

“What is there to see? They aren’t doing anything. They’re doing a lot of planning. At the drop of a dime they’ll spend money to hire a consultant or sue someone, but they won’t sweep the streets. I haven’t seen a street sweeper in my neighborhood since we became a city.”

--Incorporation foe Fred Schreiber, on what’s wrong about Encinitas after one year of cityhood.

Encinitas had a birthday party recently.

The drinks flowed, platters of food from a wide slate of local restaurants were served to celebrants, a cake was ceremoniously cut. From all corners of the community, residents came to raise a glass and toast Encinitas, which on Oct. 1 completed its first full year of cityhood.

To many at the fete, it seemed like only yesterday that four distinct communities--Cardiff, Leucadia, Olivenhain and Encinitas--joined hands and rose up in revolt, voting overwhelmingly to throw off the shackles of county rule and set course as a self-sufficient municipality.

Champions of cityhood maintained that the county Board of Supervisors, ensconced in their chambers in downtown San Diego, were out of touch with the area’s residents, heedlessly approving high-density residential projects that violated the character of the coastal region.

Now, however, the county is no longer a part of the picture. Encinitas is being run by Encinitans.

Pros and Cons Since Incorporation

While the community’s founding fathers can point to numerous achievements over the past year as evidence that life is better since incorporation, critics contend the new regime has failed to adequately tackle some of the area’s most vexing problems, from clogged traffic to a lack of park space.

“I’ve been disappointed by the fact that there seems to be no physical evidence of us being a city,” said Betty Knutson, president of the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce. “I felt they could have

placed some trash cans around or done some type of spectacular cleanup effort in some area. But there isn’t anything we can point to and say, ‘We got that because we’re a new city.’ ”

Such gripes sting leaders of the new city of 44,000.

Among the most fervent promises made during the incorporation campaign was that cityhood would give residents more bang for their tax buck. But if some Encinitans feel they have yet to reap the fruits of self-rule, it’s only a matter of time before the benefits of incorporation will be obvious to all, city leaders stress.

“Right now, the average person might be a little disenchanted,” said Richard MacManus, a Cardiff resident and chairman of that area’s newly instituted planning advisory board. “He or she still sees major development going on and traffic jams in the streets . . . But the city is beginning to make headway against the problems we inherited from the county. We’re moving in the right direction.”

New City Diverse

Spread over 26 square miles of coastal terrain straddling Interstate 5, Encinitas is a hodgepodge of neighborhoods, from a mix of high-priced condominiums, single-family homes and old-time beach bungalows to a dense sea of tract houses that have spread across the eastern frontier, gobbling up flower fields and hills of chaparral.

While sharing similarities, each of the four communities that linked up to form the city maintains a particular identity that residents guard jealously.

On the northern coastline is Leucadia, where winding streets are typically devoid of curbs or gutters, where the commercial squalor of budget motels and small shops along Old Highway 101 bumps headlong into neatly tended homes that often fetch far in excess of $200,000.

Just to the south is Encinitas, a grid of streets surrounding a bustling commercial core of sun-baked buildings. Meandering inland along Encinitas Boulevard, the homes get progressively newer, and at El Camino Real they stop altogether. This is the commercial heartland of the city, a solid stretch of shopping centers, restaurants, movie theaters and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Along the southern coast lies Cardiff, where older beach houses are steadily giving way to mammoth duplexes and condominiums, prompting complaints from residents irked by the flip-flop in character as well as the loss of their ocean views.

Sprawling on the eastern edge of the city, Olivenhain is the section of Encinitas least touched by the bulldozer blade, a bucolic stretch of ranch homes and horse farms set amid grassy hills and arroyos.

It was from those disparate characteristics that a city was formed. Though the ambiance of their communities varies, residents throughout the region began in recent years to share common gripes about their out-of-town rulers on the county Board of Supervisors.

Growth was seemingly out of control. Traffic was increasingly becoming a problem. Parks, ball fields and tennis courts were scarce.

Overwhelming Vote

For the third time in a dozen years, residents banded together in 1984 and launched an incorporation drive. While two previous efforts were stalled by opponents, who argued that cityhood would mean an end to the sort of semi-rural charm that characterized the area into the 1970s, residents no longer were buying such rhetoric.

When the issue went before the electorate in June of last year, it was no contest. Roughly 69% of the voters favored incorporation.

Befitting the municipal revolution that was at hand, voters seated a contingent of activists on the City Council--slow-growth advocate Marjorie Gaines (who, as top vote-getter, was named the city’s first mayor); Rick Shea, president of the Leucadia-Encinitas Town Council; Gerald Steel, former chairman of the San Dieguito Citizens’ Planning Group; Anne Omsted, co-founder of the Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation, and Greg Luke, a civil engineer.

The new council promised that their first efforts would be to increase the level of services that residents received for their tax dollar and to redraft the blueprints governing the region’s growth. Those were heady goals, what with the nuts-and-bolts of lashing together a new city bureaucracy also a necessary part of the civic agenda.

Indeed, such housekeeping tasks were an inevitable--and sometimes distracting--part of Year One in Encinitas.

First off was finding a City Hall. Cushy quarters in a modern office park in the center of the city were favored over an old storefront site near the coast.

Next on the list was recruiting a city manager. Warren Shafer was wooed from San Carlos in Northern California, and he quickly set out to hire department heads and other necessary city employees.

By the end of its first year of operation, Encinitas had nearly three dozen employees, so many, in fact, that officials found it necessary to move to a roomier set of suites in the office park during the summer.

Touchy Issues

But meatier issues typically took center sage, and chief among them was growth.

During the county’s reign, the area developed from a sleepy community during the early 1970s into a suburban hub with nearly 20,000 homes. But while that development boom was occurring, corresponding improvements in the traffic system, parks and law enforcement protection were lagging behind.

Within minutes of being sworn in, the new Encinitas council declared a moratorium on development within the city. Though the ban has since been lifted, the city is busy preparing a new General Plan, a sort of municipal constitution for land use that is expected to mandate dramatic reductions in the density of residential development during the coming decades.

To help ensure greater community involvement in the planning process, the council early on established a network of Community Advisory Boards (CABs). Representing five different geographic areas of the community, the five-member boards are responsible for reviewing the design of residential and commercial projects before they move on to the Planning Commission and City Council.

“I think the CABs are critical,” said David Winkler, a developer who serves on the Cardiff advisory group. “One of the promises made during the campaign was to maintain the identity and preserve the ambiance and character of the four individual communities. The CABs will help do that.”

As yet, the council has not considered measures to slow the rate of growth, such as a controversial law approved by voters in Oceanside. But it may only be a matter of time, according to Mayor Gaines.

“There’s a definite sentiment for controlling growth in our community,” Gaines said. “What method will be selected? I don’t think any of us have a firm grip on that.”

Though some cities have opted to set a strict cap on the number of dwelling units that could be built each year, the Encinitas council could potentially favor laws tying growth to the availability of public facilities or setting the city’s standards and fees so high that development becomes more difficult, Gaines said.

Builders Unhappy

Such proposals, along with many of the council’s land-use actions, have irked developers and members of the business community.

“It’s been a hassle for the builder,” said Knutson of the Cardiff chamber. “In some ways, I think we were all prepared for that, because that was their stand when they ran. They say they want to listen to us, and in some cases they do. But if it has anything to do with growth, forget it.”

Fred Schreiber, an Encinitas homeowner who manages several residential and commercial properties, said the council has erred by creating “a tremendous bureaucracy” to handle land-use decisions.

“I’m surprised by the dictatorial nature of the council in matters that I really didn’t think they’d delve into,” Schreiber said. “If I’m constructing a fence, it should be between me and my neighbor. Instead, you have to go to a CAB for approval.

“We say we have this wonderful community, but it was made wonderful because individuals did their own thing and it all blends together. Yes, there are some abominations, but that’s life in a free society.”

Traffic is another issue that sparks heated debate in Encinitas. The carrying capacity of many roads in the community lag far behind the number of cars using them. Along some sections of El Camino Real, for instance, traffic has increased more than 250% since 1982.

Residents of several neighborhoods contend their once quiet streets have become virtual expressways for motorists eager to find an uncongested path through the city.

“The county’s traffic planning in the past can be described, in a word, as incompetent,” said Councilman Steel. “They approved developments without providing for the future traffic problems that were bound to occur when the community was built out.”

To tackle the problem, the city has hired a traffic consultant and established a citizens’ committee to study the issue and make recommendations, Steel said. In addition, new fees are being charged developers to help fund needed improvements. Though major road work is not expected to begin until the coming year, the city has undertaken some minor restriping projects in hopes of easing several clogged intersections.

Improving Police Service

Aside from traffic, the council has taken pains to improve police protection in the city. Under a contract with the county Sheriff’s Department, residents saw a 15% increase in the number of sheriff’s patrols and twice as many man-hours on traffic enforcement during the past year, according to Steel.

The council has also begun taking a look at forming its own police department, with a consultant’s study scheduled to be completed in early 1988. It will address the feasibility of establishing either an Encinitas police force or a coastal department that would also serve the city’s southern neighbors, Del Mar and Solana Beach.

Other accomplishments city leaders point to are a new capital improvements budget, which will be tapped during the coming year for park improvements and other projects, and establishment of an innovative recycling program.

Moreover, the city is exploring the possibility of joining with Solana Beach and MiraCosta College to build a cultural arts center and is considering a redevelopment program for the sagging commercial strip in Leucadia.

“We’re beginning to reap the benefits,” said Councilwoman Omsted. “These little subtle things are starting to happen. There’s no question in my mind that we’re getting devoted, personalized, focused attention that we never would have received from the county.”

At times, however, the council has run head-on into issues seemingly beyond its legislative reach.

Earlier this year, the council commissioned a report on the city’s illegal aliens. A complex, well-researched document was produced by a citizens’ committee. Though the issue is still scheduled to be discussed next month, many city officials already question whether the city can truly have an impact on a issue generally addressed on the federal level.

The city even got into its first full-tilt punch-out with a neighboring municipality during this first year, filing a lawsuit last month in hopes of blocking a controversial trash-to-energy plant planned in San Marcos.

Many Long Hours

Council members have earned top grades from all sides of the political spectrum for the long hours they have put in, taking time for everything from routine meetings to reading the reams of mail from constituents that has flooded City Hall.

The council has also worked to assure residents of the four communities comprising Encinitas that the distinct identities that mark each one will not be trampled by cityhood.

In Cardiff, for instance, residents were in an uproar earlier this year when rumors began to spread about the area losing its zip code and, hence, its Cardiff-by-the-Sea mailing address. Though that little drama never played itself out, the council is now toying with the idea of renaming Birmingham Avenue, the community’s major street, something to the tune of “Cardiff-by-the-Sea Drive” in hopes of further enshrining the community’s moniker.

Members of the business community, meanwhile, grouse that city leaders are failing to place the interests of merchants on an equal footing with those of homeowners. While county officials, especially deposed Supervisor Paul Eckert, seemed keenly attuned to the needs of businesses, the new regime works differently, they say.

“Eckert usually listened to business interests,” said Jerry Perkins, president of the Encinitas-Leucadia chamber. “Now we talk to this council, and they consider what we have to say, but very seldom does it go our way. Still, as long as we maintain a line of communications, I’m sure its going to improve.”

Business leaders, builders and others are eyeing with interest the upcoming November, 1988, election, which will see the council seats of Omsted, Luke and Steel up for grabs.

“There will be hope if there are some responsible people who run,” said Schreiber, one of the council’s harshest critics. “I’m not saying that all the people on the present council are irresponsible, but you can’t have the whole group made up of activists. It just doesn’t work.”

Such sentiments aside, it has been an important year for the city, a year that Steel suggests was most profoundly marked by a substantial shift in the way Encinitans view their community.

“Cityhood has allowed people to get involved with their community, to get involved with their neighborhood, to get involved with their environment, to be effective and get things done,” the councilman said.

“That’s really the goal of cityhood . . . to allow the people in the community to determine their own destiny and the way their city will evolve.”