The Poway City Council NOW cares about our neighborhoods Quality of Life!

The verbiage in the recent ordinance 727, the one to prohibit medical marijuana shops from opening in Poway, had some encouraging words.

Before I get into that, this post will NOT be about whether or not MJ dispensaries should be allowed in Poway.

Ok, the verbiage, and I quote, says "The City of Poway has an overriding interest in planning and regulating development of all uses of property within the City. Implicit in any plan or regulation is the City's interest in maintaining and improving the quality of life and the character of the City's neighborhoods. Without stable, well-planned neighborhoods, areas of the City can quickly deteriorate, with detrimental consequences to social, environmental, and economic values. It is the intent of the City Council to assure that all neighborhoods remain well-planned and that residents maintain a high quality of life." (bold and italics mine).

These are the words that the City is using to prohibit dispensaries, that they would lower our neighborhood quality of life.

Yet the City had no qualms about putting a girls softball field into the middle of a residential neighborhood, I'm not sure how that improved the neighbors quality of life? Or putting in a super box store in the middle of a neighborhood. Or lighting up existing sports fields when initially the City said they wouldn't be lit up, probably to quiet the neighbors opposition down.

Or, in my case, putting in a paint and body shop 50 yds from residential backyards! I guess it's the position of the City that a noisy body shop and a VOC emitting paint shop will IMPROVE the quality of life to those who live next to it.

Right...This is IMPROVING our quality of life...What a bunch of BS...

Oak Knoll improvements, a year late and overrun cost

Imagine hiring a contractor to redo your kitchen. He speaks of new cabinets that will neatly hold your wine glasses, the plates, the A & W root beer mugs. Oh, how wonderful! He'll replace the kitchen sink and put in a new one with triple wells. And the countertop, pure granite! You could cut your food right on top, or at least cool down hot fudge. It'll only take a month, and the best thing is that it will only run you $10,000! Sign me up!
The crew arrives and starts to work. It seems to be taking a bit long to get the old cabinets off. The sink is gone and the water pipes are capped off, where's my countertop? All I see is the cheap wood framing underneath. And it's been two months!

"Well", he says, "I've encountered some unforeseen problems. The cabinets were NAILED to the wall, you don't know how hard it is when that happens. And there were water pipes IN THE WALL that went to the sink. Who would have expected THAT! The people who built your house didn't know what they were doing. Oh, the granite countertops are backordered and might get here in a month or two."

"AND...I need MORE MONEY to finish it off because of all of my problems."

What do you do? He's already taken your $10,000. Do you call the BBB and complain that this guy's a crook and your signed contract has a price on it that he's exceeding? Do you tell him to finish it off NOW for his set price? Or do you do what a lot of cities like Poway would do, just pay him whatever he wants?

Let's look at Oak Knoll Road, a raggedy road if there ever was one. It really needed to be improved, so the city of Poway decided to have it repaved, widened, put in new sidewalks, put in a big sewer line to help out the business park. So Poway plops down roughly $3,071,893 to get the job done. Construction started Oct 5, 2009, with a completion date of April 28, 2010, a mere 7 months later. WHAT A DEAL!!! A brand spankin' new road with a big sewer line, sidewalks, oooohhh....

And then what happened? "Inadequate existing road base and pavement, groundwater, and rock removal" that was somehow unanticipated, ran the costs up and delayed the completion. So the city ponies up another $450,000. Good, now the job will get done. But wait, Batman, that's not the end of it! Now, the contractors need ANOTHER $680,000 on top of this to finish it up because of "continued difficult site conditions...increase pavement overlay quantities, and other items." (italics mine) And the end date is now the end of June, 2011. Our seven month job has just turned into a 20 month job. And our $3million job is now $4.2 million. And it's still not over! The undergrounding of the utilities has not been finalized either, that's going to go until the end of July due to "coordination issues", so the final project will be done in August 2011.
22 months!!!

Unless, of course, they run into more "unforeseen" problems that delays it again and adds even more to the costs, which the city will pay, no problem. It's a shame that this isn't even out of the ordinary. The timeline triples in length, the costs increase by 37%, and no one bats an eye.

(The $ and "problems" are all listed in agenda item 4.2 in the June 21, 2011 Poway City Council agenda.)

It's a shame that these construction contractors can't be held to the same standards that home contractors and auto mechanics are held to, they violate their contracts, they could lose their license. But if the job is contracted by the city and you blow over your costs and deadlines, you'll probably get another job from the city as a reward!!!

NOTE: I've been provided with a current updated workman's comp insurance policy. The following is now out of date.
To top it off, Mountain Movers (doing the work, License number 767120), expiration date for Workers Comp is 06/01/2011 and "The license may be suspended on 07/06/2011 if the workers´ compensation insurance policy is not filed with the CSLB." according to the "Check A License" page. Who gets stuck with the insurance claims if someone gets hurt in the meantime?

Getting an ordinance to change the law: Or, rulez are for loozers

Q: How and when does an Ordinance become law?

A: Apparently whenever it's convenient to make it so.

Hmmm...

Q: Is this a violation of the city ethics standards?

A: I think so, do you? Please read on!

Let's pretend that a councilmember wants to make a change to the existing Poway code, or add a new statute to it. Here's the theoretical sequence of events for it:

The staff does the research, creates a report, and then a presentation is made to the Poway City Council at a meeting. The council discusses the report at a public council meeting. A council member can make a motion to amend the code. Another council member seconds the motion and a vote is taken. If the motion passes, a second reading is scheduled for either the next council meeting or maybe the next one after that.

In the agenda report is a statement that says when the change should be effective. Some might say that it's 30 days after approval and that means 30 days after the second reading of the change, some might be immediate.

If the first reading passed without controversy, a second reading might be placed in the consent calendar portion of the City Council Agenda, no additional staff presentation unless someone "pulls" the item and wants additional information. On extremely rare occasions, the second reading might overturn the decision made in the first reading.

It's possible that some of the changes are approved after one meeting, or that some have an urgency attached to them and are effective immediately, it just depends.

Sounds great in theory. And probably most of the time that's what happens. Is there ever an instance where something else happened? SURE, that's why this blog entry is here.

A bit of History: Back in 2005 the City of Poway installed a skate board park across the street from the Sheriff's station, near the Poway Library. Part of the rules are that kneepads and other protective gear needs to be worn. No bikes. In 2010, after complaints of vandalism, drinking, people not using pads and helmets, and of kids w. bikes, the city spent $50,000 to install a high-tech fingerprinting entry door. The kids would lift their bmx bikes over the fence surrounding the park and ride there and harass the skate boarders.

Subdivision B of Section 9.48.320 of the Poway Muni Code prohibits the presence of bicycles or scooters in a city-owned and operated skate park. Ordinance 717 will allow bikes and scooters on a limited basis, effective "thirty (30) days after the date of its passage" which is anticipated to be thirty days after the 2nd reading on June 7th. See this Poway site for a description of the ordinance.

"Ok, Joe, but I still don't see a problem, don't you like kids? Where's the alleged ethics violation?"

Good questions, but let me provide a bit more background info. Councilmember Jim Cunningham shepherded this item. His two sons ride bmx bikes.

In February, Cunningham announced that he would meet w. a local property owner in an attempt to get him to sell his property for a bmx park. Cunningham said that he would work to "speed approvals and permitting to get the park built" according to this Poway Patch article.

The sale didn't happen and the bmx track was not built off Garden Road.

Then a few months later in April it was announced that there were going to be limited Wednesday afternoon bmx-only sessions at the skate park starting on May 25th.

And lo and behold, the sessions actually DID start on May 25th, to great reviews!

That's good news for anyone who wants to ride bikes in the skate park. Personally I think it's a great idea and should have been done years ago. I don't ride skate boards or bmx bikes at all, maybe 40 years ago, but not now.

A little more info: As of May 25th the ordinance has not yet passed the 2nd reading to the City Council, and the 30 days after that hasn't happened yet either, yet bmx riders are merrily riding on Wednesdays.

The first reading for Ordinance 717 was on May 17th. The second reading is scheduled for June 7th. Assuming it passes with flying colors 5-0 as it did on the first reading to the Council, the first bmx riders shouldn't be in the skate park, legally, until July 13th, the first Wednesday after the 30 day waiting period. So the original "thou shalt not ride bikes in the skate park" IS STILL THE LAW until July 7th.

Maybe it's a mistake? Surely the city must have passed some temporary waiver to allow this to happen before the municipal code was modified to allow the bikes? Nope. I emailed the city about this, thinking I didn't understand the process of getting ordinances to be "legal". The response was, and I'm putting this into words as I understand them, "Sure, the ordinance hasn't passed yet but gosh, half the summer would be over and the bikers wouldn't be able to use the skate park if we followed the rulez! We could have made this an emergency to get this done faster but that's too much work!"

So now the Poway City staff knows it's not yet legal to use bikes in the skate park, and are directing the senior recreation supervisor to hold the sessions, and of course, paying part-time people to supervise this all. I don't know, but isn't telling someone to violate the law some sort of ethics violation? What does the Poway Code of Ethics state?

"The purpose of this Code of Ethics is to set a standard of conduct for all elected officials, officers, employees, members of committees and commissions, and volunteers for the City of Poway." "I promote consistency, equity and non-discrimination in public agency decision-making." "I avoid actions that might cause the public to question my independent judgment."

Last and most important: "Elected officials, officers, employees, members of committees and commissions, and volunteers shall comply with the laws of the nation, the State of California and the City of Poway in the performance of their public duties. These laws include, but are not limited to: the United States and California constitutions; the Poway Municipal Code..."

To me, having City employees knowingly violate the Poway Municipal Code and directing staff to do so also is a blatant violation of the ethics codes of the city. Sure, the skate park ordinance will pass 5-0 on the second reading too, the kids will have fun riding their bikes there, but if the City chooses to ignore the law by not needing to wait for a second scheduled reading (and the waiting period), what's to stop them from doing this again and again when they decide it fits their needs? You can bet that if I wanted a grading permit to bulldoze my lot and I started plowing between the first and second reading of the permit, I'd be fined right and left since the permit wasn't valid yet.

But, that's just me, a common citizen, not a city staff member nor a city council member, and remember, rulez are for loozers...

Takin' it to the streets, or how to create the impression of success by lowering your standards

Let's look at a few numbers for traffic density in Poway, specifically in the area around Poway Road. There's a measure called "Level of Service" (LOS) that describes, from A - F, the quality of the traffic situation on the streets: A being the best situation where dear old dad bragged about you to the neighbors, F being the grade that got you into trouble on your report card and strict talkings-to from daddy. A more official way is to use these descriptions from the Highway Capacity Manual (from the Transportation Research Board, a U.S. national highly respected organization) which describes the levels thusly:
A = Free flow
B = Reasonably free flow
C = Stable flow
D = Approaching unstable flow
E = Unstable flow
F = Forced or breakdown flow
Another definition of LOS A is the flow you see either late late at night, or on a car commercial.
Agenda item #8 in the March 16, 2010 Poway City Council meeting had a nice LOS map. I've taken the liberty of adding numbers to various streets as well as the summary in the lower right corner. These numbers, called "Car trips per day", indicate, well, how many cars per day travel these streets. It's interesting to note that the measurements are taken on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, not the weekends. No conspiracy theories here, it's just interesting. Ok, the numbers (obtained in 2007) show the car trips from 2003. The area with the numbers just coincidentally happen to bracket the existing wally-world store with LOS ranging from D to E. Lovely... The only worse area in the city is Espola Road going by Poway High, but that's going to be blessed with a couple of roundabouts (maybe) and made into a wider road with really wide bike lanes on both sides so I'm sure the LOS will move up a grade or two, just enough so daddy will let you take the car this weekend but not enough for him to give it to you forever.
One could note that because of the lousy LOS given in most of the city, they won't allow granny flats anywhere but the areas in east Poway...But that's a separate issue...



There was a 126 page General Plan amendment 10-02, item #15, dealing with the Transportation Master Element (TME) presented at the June 1, 2010 Poway City Council meeting where they changed the road standards. Note: We ALL love and support the General Plan, let's change it!!! Wait, we haven't really changed it, we've merely amended it. It's a living breathing document, don't you know? It presented the current traffic status of the roads, recommended redefinitions of the roads, and future estimates of the traffic on the roads. It also gave guidelines for bicycle paths, pedestrian paths, etc. Some of the following graphics are extracted from the staff report.The first deals with the current definitions of the roadways and traffic levels.

Sounds ok so far. The existing levels are "outdated" and aren't quite what the HCM (used by all local agencies) defines.

Ok again, let's be consistent with the way these things are done everywhere else in the county.

WAIT A SECOND HERE!!! Given the current levels and definitions from the General Plan, a whopping 46% of the roads FAIL to meet the standards? However, by using a standard that everyone else is using (if everyone jumped off a cliff, would you join them?) suddenly and magically EVERY SINGLE roadway is now in full compliance. Abracadabra, we're now in great shape. Thank GOODNESS for being able to lower our standards in the name of being like everyone else. No sense holding our city to some higher standard when a lower one will give us a 100% success rate, right?

Hold on, there's more. Projected studies of the traffic twenty years into the future (2030), show that ALL of the streets ARE STILL in compliance with the redefined elements. Whew, for a second there I thought they might actually have to FIX the traffic but apparently it's all good now and into the future. Of course it doesn't make a difference that every person you talk to about Poway Road traffic complains that it takes 15 minutes to go a mile. What could they talking about, the traffic studies show that the road is perfect?

So now we can add a Lowe's and a superwalmart because the streets can now handle the traffic, all by merely redefining your success criteria.

Just for information, here's pages showing the traffic levels now to show how wonderful the street system is! So don't complain about the traffic, it's all within acceptable limits, you whiner!

(More to come)

Poway Housing Solutions Propaganda Campaign

At the April 20th Poway City Council meeting, the Poway Housing Solutions folks gave a presentation about "Poway, Affordable Housing, and Our Way of Life." It must be nice to have a report (that they paid for) presented to the City as if it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
A few of the things that were either asserted or implied was that:
1.) Low-income housing does not hurt the neighboring schools. It actually HELPS the API.
2.) Everybody loves low-income housing.


Let's first look at Poway Elementary schools from the report.
The measure of a schools goodness is the API, which is "The cornerstone of California's Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999; measures the academic performance and growth of schools on a variety of academic measures"
It's a standard to measure how the schools are doing. Anything under 800 is a no-no under the "No child left behind" act of 2001.


Here's the raw data for the Poway City Elementary schools from 2000 to 2009*:



And here's the data in graphical form:


Looks great huh? Everyone is FINALLY above 800. Note that Valley Elementary took until 2007 to break that barrier. Also note the general trend, every school is heading upwards. Soon they'll be breaking the max 1000 API limit. (API's go from 200 to 1000). Wonder what happens then?

What's the point? Well remember that quote about there being "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? The Poway Housing commission study on low-income housing and its effects on the schools, crime, and the housing market, states that (surprise, surprise) ".... the standardized Academic Performance Index scores from the two schools (Valley & Midland) improved at a higher rate than district-wide trends." The Valley Elementary API (the school with almost half the students being from low-income households) went up over 5% from 2005-2008. What was implied is that low-income students, being concentrated at Valley Elementary, managed to bring up the scores the most among the Poway schools. Hooray for that!!! Statistically that's true.

Of course they failed to mention a number of things. First, the 2009 score at Valley is down from 2008. For a number of years Valley was in danger of getting slapped from the "No child left behind" act. Check the numbers, if you average the scores w/o Valley, then Valley's API are a whopping 80 points BELOW the average and 52 points BEHIND the next school (Garden Road). Even as far back as 2000, Valley is consistently at the bottom. So we're supposed to be glad that Valley has improved 5%? That's better than going down, but there's a long long long ways to go to be even near average.

For years the city of Poway has clustered the low-income housing around two schools, Valley and Midland, and after the Brighton complex is completed there will be even more at Midland. The teachers at these schools are doing a bang-up great job with the resources they have to work with. The teachers volunteer to teach English to the parents on Saturday mornings, they provide extra tutoring to the students after school, they go BEYOND the extra mile to see that the students are given a good education. However, there are far too many disadvantaged students at Valley Elementary. If there were fewer, the extra effort would lift up the students more. What's a solution? Since the housing is already near the schools, busing to other schools in the city would help. If low-income students are helping raise test scores as the housing reports implies, then Painted Rock and Tierra Bonita, whose averages went DOWN during the same period that Valley's went up, would benefit from the influx of new students from Valley.

In the future, don't concentrate new low-income housing near these two schools, spread it out.


Next, the residents love to live there.
The report states that the residents of the low-income housing love it there. I'd love it too if I could pay $583/month for a 1440 sq. ft. condo as is being offered for Brighton**. Maybe I'll quit my job, go to work at walmart, and my disabled wife and I can live there on our low income?
Note that the report didn't ask the neighbors of low-income housing how they feel about it. I live next to two complexes, they were built years after I moved there. From talking to the housing residents, if the kids misbehave, if the residents violate the rules, park on the street instead of the garages, etc, they will be evicted from the housing complex. Sounds good. Except that a half dozen of these cars now park in our neighborhood every night. (too many cars per household?) The kids, bless their hearts, play in our streets because there's not enough playground room in the complexes for them. Where are they supposed to play when the City doesn't provide adequate green space in the complexes and doesn't build any new parks for the increased population? Another former resident, who just moved to RB, used to have a condo that backed up to the housing. The kids would throw garbage over the fences into the condo parking lots, would climb the fences to "play" in the greens there, etc.

Last, how much do these complexes cost? According to Mayor Higginson (April 20th council meeting), the average cost for EACH unit is $399,000!!! Holy cow!!! The city could have bought up houses in foreclosure for under $300K each during the last couple of years but instead are spending almost $400K for a low-income unit!!! The report also stated that there's an average of 2.1 people/unit. That's not a lot of people in a $400K unit. Once again, I wouldn't mind paying under $500/month (for the small 1000 sq. ft. units) to live in a $400K condo with maintenance taken care of.

While nothing stated in the housing report is a lie, it's far from "the whole truth".


*http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/API/APISearchName.asp?TheYear=&cTopic=API&cLevel=County&cName=&cCounty=37,SAN,DIEGO&cTimeFrame=S
** http://www.poway.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=1175