Del Mar City Council Special Meeting Agenda
Del Mar Town Hall
1050 Camino del Mar, Del Mar, California
January 21, 2025 City Council Special Closed Session Meeting
INFORMATION RECEIVED
AFTER THE COUNCIL AGENDA
WAS DISTRIBUTED
(“Red Dots”)
Red Dot Letter – DMCC Closed Session Agenda Item A1 – 21 Jan 2025 San Dieguito Drive Assessment District
Dear Mayor Gaasterland and City Councilmembers Martinez, Quirk and Spelich:
The “San Dieguito Drive Assessment District” is on the Closed Session agenda for Tuesday, 21 Jan 2025 and although I don’t know exactly what will be discussed with Legal Counsel because of “Significant Exposure to Litigation,” I am assuming it has something to do with the email that Councilmember Quirk sent to the community on 5 Jan 2025. The email was titled “False Information Used to Determine Del Mar's $900,00 Contribution for San Dieguito Drive Repaving Project.” (I assume Councilmember Quirk meant to write $900,000.) On March1st, 2024, Councilmember Quirk asked City Manager Jones to release the preliminary draft of the SCI report to the public. City Manager Jones replied the same day:
Hi Dan,
The agenda item for Monday is not intended to release the draft preliminary Engineering Report, which is a working draft document. Working drafts are not subject to the public records act, which is what we would consider this request to be. However, City staff obtained permission from the consultant to make their draft report available for review by residents following the resident meeting on Tuesday, March 5, so that they can review, ask questions, and provide feedback that may further inform the report prior to it being finalized in April. I was envisioning that we would make the report available on the City's website, which could be accessed by other members of the public as well. It will be clearly noted that the report is a working draft subject to revision. The City Council will be presented with a final version of the Engineer's Report in April.
On 5 Mar 2024, the Crest Canyon residents received a public presentation which included a summary of the engineering report prepared by SCI. Many residents asked questions about the report summary at the meeting and were promised answers. The next morning, I sent an email to the city asking for the SCI report to be released. It was eventually released to the Crest Canyon neighborhood on 20 Mar 2024. This was the residents’ first opportunity to see the methodology used in SCI’s report.
My first impression of the report was that SCI had been overly simplistic in its analysis. I focused on the weighting of the benefit received by the two zones identified by SCI – Zone A (San Dieguito Drive) and Zone B (Oribia Road). I was finally able to meet by Zoom with SCI engineer John Bliss on 12 Apr 2024, just 3 days before the DMCC made its final decision on cost sharing for the project. I was generally dissatisfied with the explanations I received from Mr. Bliss.
I also spent some time trying to understand the methodology SCI used to assign a “General Benefit” to the City. SCI wrote:
And in this case, the Engineer of record is tasked with quantifying the relative (special) benefit received from the Improvements to the parcels within the Improvement District versus relative (general) benefit or the to the parcels outside, but proximate to, the Improvement District. It is clear the benefit diminishes as distance from the Improvements increases, but a fair and accurate proportion must be established. Various analyses were considered and the chosen analytical January 21, 2025 Item A.1 - Closed Session
approach relies on the work done in support of the City Fire Department’s Crest Canyon Evacuation Plan from March 7, 2022, (Microsoft Word - Agenda Report_Wildfire Evacuation Plan final draft.docx (delmar.ca.us)).
Review of the report indicates that Zone F includes 89 homes including the 31 already in the proposed Improvement District. Of the 89 homes in Zone F, 27 of the homes are on Racetrack View Drive and east of San Dieguito Drive. Since wildland fires in this area move from east to west, these 27 homes receive no benefit from the proposed improvements to San Dieguito Drive. Therefore, the remaining 62 homes receive benefit from the improvements. Of these, 31 homes are in the proposed Improvement District and 31 homes are outside of it. As a result, 50% of the benefit (31 of 62) is special benefit, and 50% (100% total benefit minus 50% special benefit) is general benefit.
I tried to figure out where the 31 homes were outside of the Improvement District and concluded they must be up on Crest Road which would likely be evacuated in the case of a wildland fire in Crest Canyon. I decided not to question this part of the analysis but I did believe that the use of the Evacuation Plan to establish General Benefit to the City was overly simplistic. The improvements on San Dieguito Drive provide better access for fire fighting equipment and therefore provide a general benefit for fighting a wildland fire before it spreads to the rest of the City. This is, in my opinion, the most significant benefit to the City and is greater than the 50% calculated by Mr. Bliss’s methodology.
At the time the SCI draft report was presented to the public, the majority of the residents of Crest Canyon were feeling quite desperate to find a solution to the dangerous condition of the road.
Despite my dissatisfaction with the SCI report, I walked the neighborhood with Best Westburg in the days before the 15 Apr 2024 City Council meeting to enlist the support of the neighborhood to encourage the City Council to move forward with an agreement to repair the street. I submitted a Red Dot letter for the Closed Session meeting that evening asking for the City Council to reconsider the allocation they had settled on in their Closed Session meetings. I wrote in part:
Also, I have asked several times for an explanation as to how the City calculated their proposed 70% share of the project cost. I have not received an answer. I would ask the City Council to consider again the public benefit that repairing this street brings to the safety of our City and the preservation of the San Dieguito Lagoon Ecological Reserve and as much as possible increase the City’s percentage share of the cost of this project so that the residents’ share of the cost will be more affordable for individual homeowners.
Now that Councilmember Quirk has reviewed the SCI report (10 months after its initial release) and has found it to be based on “false information,” I would ask the City Council to review the methodology SCI used in its calculations and determine whether it accurately reflects the general benefit to the city from repairing San Dieguito Drive. I believe it doesn’t and that the general benefit to the city is actually greater than the 50% SCI calculated.
Sincerely,
Amy Cheshire
San Dieguito Drive
January 21, 2025 Item A.1 - Closed Session