General Plan Is Going Green: Enviro Panel Having Say About City Growth

La Mesa’s next General Plan will go green when it takes effect in 2013—including an “element” that the Environmental Sustainability Commission is helping shape.

At Monday’s meeting of the mayor-appointed commission, the panel heard senior city planner Chris Jacobs review a 23-page draft document on environmental goals for the city.

Although a voting quorum wasn’t present—with members Robin Rivet, Kristin Kjaero and Griffin Dehne absent—the remaining eight members (including five nonvoting panelists) spotted typos, redundancies and mangled wording in the draft.

They suggested changing a reference to “dangerous air quality” to “occasionally dangerous air quality.”  They removed “roofer” from a sentence in which it appeared twice. They asked to fix a mention of businesses having a “minimal negative effect on the economy.”

“It’s very helpful to have new eyes,” Jacobs said. “I’d like to see an award-winning document.”

Jacobs said city staff, in composing the draft element, “had an internal conversation: Do we want it to have some zing? … We want it to be a good read.”

The current General Plan, a state-mandated document that guides city growth and development, was last updated in 1996, and has a conservation and open-space element, Jacobs said.

But the new one will split that element into two and incorporate environmental concerns.

Gloria Carrillo, commission chairwoman, said the final document would be “our vision [of] 2030. It’s a huge improvement over [the current plan]. Think out of the box. … There’s going to be a lot of drastic changes in the next 20 years.”

The entire General Plan, Jacobs said, will eventually be as “thick as a phone book,” and require an EIR—environmental impact report, which could take a year to 18 months under the state’s CEQA process.

“The goal is to create a legally defensible document,” Jacobs said. “We’re hoping it will go smoothly.”

The commission saw the draft element for the first time Monday at a meeting around the conference table in the city manager’s office. It has until 5 p.m. Jan. 18 to submit comments, corrections and additions to its portion of the plan.

The draft document cited four goals:

• The sustainable use of natural resources.
• Improvement of environmental and public health in the city.
• Diverse and stable local economy that supports the basic needs of people.
• The use of sustainable modes of transportation situated close to homes, services and jobs.

The plan wasn’t released publicly Monday night, said Public Works Director Greg Humora, since it was still in draft form. Humora acts as commission secretary.

“We look forward to everybody’s contributions,” Jacobs said, with two members of the public—nursing students Laurie Michelson, 41, and Tiffany Landaal, 24, both of La Mesa—and a reporter observing the discussion.

“It’s an exciting time to work in La Mesa and be a La Mesan,” Jacobs said near the end of his presentation, which led to a pizza-and-salad bread. Food was provided by Carrillo. Christmas cookies were courtesy of member Mary Jane Bailey.

Earlier, panel members briefly discussed an email from Anne Pacheco of the La Mesa Fair Trade Steering Committee, which mentioned a renewed attempt to get the City Council to declare La Mesa a “Fair Trade Town”—an effort to encourage shops to sell items from Third World suppliers who are treated humanely.

A resolution to that effect was defeated in mid-October by a 3-2 council vote.

The Fair Trade item on Monday’s commission agenda was merely informational, the panel was told.

“At this point in time, we can’t go forward with this,” Carrillo said. “It wasn’t approved by the council.”  She said no further action was warranted.

One panel member—Helix Water District board member DeAna Verbeke, said she was approached by Pacheco at Christmas in the Village, who spoke with determination about a bid to revive the resolution at La Mesa City Hall.

“She talked. I listened,” Verbeke said.

According to the city website, the commission:

• Serves as an advisory body to the City Council on how actions and policies of the city may preserve and enhance the quality of La Mesa’s environment.
• Addresses the effects of climate change and assists in the identification of measures that will improve environmental sustainability in La Mesa and the region.

Said Carrillo: “This is a very hard-working commission.”