The Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) will sport some new faces following an election and members agreed to a controversial street vacation and approved positioning of non-solar airport noise-monitoring poles during its March 20 meeting.
As far as the PCPB’s new makeup followiing the election, the top six vote-getters were David Dick (170 votes), Paul Webb (94 votes), Don Sevrens (94 votes), Pete Nystrom (89 votes) and Mike Ryan and Jon Linney with 77 votes.
Since there was a tie, Mike Ryan volunteered to take the one-year term, leaving Jon Linney with a three-year term. Board member Bruce Coons also announced he is one of 19 candidates who will be vying to temporarily replace now-Mayor Kevin Faulconer for the District 2 City Council seat. That appointment is expected to take place April 15.
An owner of a Loma Portal historical home who’s best known as head of Save Our Hertiage Organisation (SOHO), Coons said he’s a grass-roots candidate interested in “improving the quality of life,” noting local government has been largely remiss in performing that function.
“On April 14, the City Council will be vetting the 19 District 2 candidates and narrowing the field to six, from which they will decide on a candidate on April 15,” said District 2 spokeswoman Tracy Cambre.
Meanwhile, the PCPB agreed to re-vote on a previous motion to deny a proposed road vacation of an unimproved portion of Plum Street at 3344 Canon St.
Previously, members of the PCPB voted to deny the proposed road vacation, fearing the project could displace parking and that, once the road is vacated, the property it’s on could be redeveloped by a new owner.
The applicant requested the vacation to use that portion of Plum Street for “gardening and landscaping,” noting the unimproved property was previously designated as green space for a community pocket park.
A PCPB subcommittee, after discussions with the applicant, approved the proposed street vacation 5-0. Subcommittee chairman Jay Shumaker said he felt more time was needed to puzzle through what impacts vacating that portion of Plum Street might have.
Others disagreed.
“It’s really unfair to hold this up based on something that might happen in the future,” said PCPB chairwoman Julia Quinn.
Others noted the benefit of the decision.
“I was opposed to this at first because I thought it was a grab of public land,” said PCPB planner Paul Webb. “But we need to acquire more park space and this is the last piece of good unimproved land.”
The final vote was 7-2-1, with Shumaker not supporting the project because he said there were too many land-use questions about it.
In another matter, Peninsula planners and Point Loma neighbors have expressed concerns about visibility and other problems presented by existing airport noise-monitoring poles at 3412 Browning St., 1944 Plum St. and 1625 Froude St.
A San Diego County Regional Airport Authority spokeswoman told PCPB members the airport is required by state law to have strategically placed noise-monitoring poles gathering data to ensure decibel levels with planes are kept within required limits.
The Airport Authority had proposed making its existing poles solar-powered, which would have necessitated reconfiguring them. Some neighbors, however, argued re-fits would be too large and would negatively impact their views.
Heather Nelson said she objected to the location of one noise monitoring pole in her neighborhood.
“This is completely unacceptable and a total eyesore which would have gigantic panels in front of Loma Portal Elementary School,” she said.
At the end of the discussion, Airport Authority officials agreed to bow to the public’s will and abandoning the idea of making the poles solar-powered, agreeing instead to connect them to existing overhead power lines.