Council Delays Decision on Sound Wall for La Mesa Meadows Housing Tract

The Garfield area sound wall is still up in the air.

A 90-minute hearing Tuesday night ended with the City Council voting 5-0 to delay a decision on keeping a planned sound barrier next to state Route 125 in southeast La Mesa.

Mayor Art Madrid proposed the hearing be continued for 30 days and told  residents to meet with Reynolds, saying: “Compromise is neither illegal, fattening or immoral.”

The Planning Commission on April 20 voted 5-2 to allow the developer of a 31-home project called La Mesa Meadows to build without an 11-foot wall—as first included in the council-approved site plan.

Mary Putnam, a leader of the Garfield neighborhood petition group trying to keep the sound wall, said after the meeting: “I’m really happy that the council is [postponing a decision until its July 26 meeting]. I expected them to rubber-stamp it.”

Her fear was that the Planning Commission decision would be upheld—as most such verdicts are. Putnam filed an appeal of the planners’ vote to allow El Cajon-based Reynolds Communities to drop the sound-wall condition, which company president Mike Reynolds said would cost $1 million and wasn’t needed, based on more recent traffic-noise studies.

“Quite honestly,” Reynolds told the council and 35-member audience,, “there is no way this project is feasible [financially] with this kind of wall.”

But Garfield neighborhood residents slammed what they depicted as a “bait-and-switch” tactic to get the housing project approved in 2006—when Reynolds allegedly promised a 1,000-foot-long sound barrier in exchange for the community’s support of the housing tract in a tree- and meadow-filled area that once was home to a landscape nursery.

City staff recommended that Putnam’s appeal be rejected (see attached document). Experts went into numbing detail on noise standards, decibel levels, changing scientific models and even the design of noise-buffering windows—leading developer Reynolds to say: “This stuff is as boring to me as I’m sure it is to you.”

Madrid even quipped: “I think we have exhausted the issue. I think we can start our own consulting firm on the issue.”

But after hearing her question the data used in the Planning Commission decision—along with pleas from her supporters to make Reynolds show “integrity” and live up to what one speaker called “a gentlmen’s agreement” in 2006 for a sound wall—the council opted for a middle ground.

 “It’s just like school,” said Putnam, an environmental planner with the County Water Authority who has lived on Garfield Street for 20 years. “It’s not enough to show your answers. You have to show your work.”

 “Let’s get all the facts identified,” said Councilman Ernie Ewin. “Let’s get that resolved.”

Said Councilman Mark Arapostathis: “There is so much new data. I’m hearing new things.”

Councilwoman Ruth Sterling was among several who noted that Reynolds Communities voluntarily included the sound wall in the original site plan for La Mesa Meadows and rapped Mike Reynolds for trying to renege on his own business decision.

But echoing the rest of the council, which supports the overall project, she also said: “We need the property tax and the sale tax [revenues]. The council is between a rock and a hard place” by risking the whole development by requiring what the developer considers a project-breaking expense.

Madrid—who along with Ewin and Councilman Dave Allan earlier acknowledged having taken campaign contributions from Reynolds—defended the move to delay a council verdict on the appeal.

“This is not kicking the can down the road,” he said.  It’s 30 days to reach a deal that both sides can accept—“with the understanding nobody goes on vacation.”

For his part, Reynolds apologized from the speaker’s lectern for the impression left by a now-gone company representative for the sound-wall pitch made to neighbors that won their support for the housing project.

“I take responsibility for the people who came and spoke [with the neighbors],” he said.