Planning Commission approves Barr Ranch tentative map

The county’s Planning Commission has approved a tentative map for the Barr Ranch subdivision.

The 5-0 vote March 10, with commissioners Michael Beck and Bryan Woods absent, approves a tentative map to subdivide a 8.39-acre parcel south of Fallbrook Street between Golden Road and Morro Road. The project would contain 23 residential lots, including an existing single-family home. The residential lots would range from 10,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet, and a 24th lot would be used for a detention basin.

In addition to the detention basin, which would also serve other properties, improvements which will be made once the final map is recorded include construction of sidewalk improvements along Fallbrook Street and Morro Road fronting the project and an extension of Avenida Campana through the property to connect that street with Golden Road. The Zebu Construction project will also provide fair share costs for the future traffic signals at Fallbrook Street and Stage Coach Lane and at Fallbrook Street and Old Stage Road as well as contributing the appropriate transportation impact fee for the dwelling units.

Two Morro Road residents addressed the Planning Commission to express concerns about the drainage situation, although their problems dealt more with the lack of further action than with issues from the project.

“I’m not opposed to the actual building of the homes, but I am opposed to any more water being allowed to drain off on Morro Road,” said Karen Steinbrenner Lopez.

“Ultimately the problem is there is no storm drain system in that area,” said Robert Winterstrom. “I think it’s time that the county does something about that and provides a storm drain on Morro Road.”

The environmental statement filed was a Mitigated Negative Declaration which acknowledged significant but mitigatable impacts on noise and on transportation and traffic. The Mitigated Negative Declaration was circulated for public review from December 8, 2005, through January 6, 2006.

In March 2003 the Fallbrook Community Planning Group voted 13-1 to recommend approval of the project. Two subsequent replacement maps have changed the project slightly but not substantially. The project returned to the community planning group in March 2005 to consider a requested waiver of the undergrounding of existing overhead utilities along the project frontage on Fallbrook Street and Morro Road. The planning group was unable to obtain eight votes for a decision either way on the waiver, and the tentative map includes the waiver of undergrounding. The project’s density of 2.74 dwelling units per acre is within the community plan designation of 7.3 dwelling units per acre and the property’s RS4 zoning of 4.35 dwelling units per acre. The property’s open space has been disturbed due to past avocado grove use.

Runoff in that area generally flows east and south to a creek, and the detention basin would address that additional runoff while also handling runoff from other developments. The existing runoff is 17.44 cubic feet per second (cfs) and the development is expected to create an additional 4.8 cfs of runoff for a total of 22.24 cfs. The detention basin will have a capacity of 9.6 cfs, allowing it to handle runoff from planned developments north and south of the Barr Ranch project. The capacity is 15 percent greater than what would be needed for all three projects.

The Barr Ranch project is at the upper end of the drainage basin, and further off-site improvements were not considered appropriate by county staff. “It’s not possible for it to improve these conditions with on-site improvement,” said Devon Muto, the project manager for the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use.

In addition to Muto, the tentative map also has a project manager from the county’s Department of Public Works. Nael Areigat is the DPW project manager and oversees the drainage basin issue.

“It will be about 25 percent reduction in the flow going to the inlet on Morro Road,” Areigat said of the detention basin. “There will be less, but it will not eliminate the problem.”

A maintenance assessment district funded by tax levies on the properties will be formed to pay for the operations of the detection basin.

“It’s going to be maintained by the county,” Areigat said. “That’s to guarantee that it’s going to work.”

An off-site storm drain was recently built just north of Winterstrom’s property. That water will go into a brow ditch which in part will go to Morro Road. “Seventy-four percent would go across my property through a riprap,” Winterstrom said. “Any increases at all of water there fall on my property.”

Winterstrom noted that other neighbors would be affected by the 26 percent which went onto Morro Road. “Morro Road really can’t handle that water,” he said.

Lopez provided the Planning Commission with photographs of runoff affecting Morro Road residents. Planning Commission member John Riess noted that the detection basin would reduce incidences but would increase the duration of the problem when it occurs. “The people are going to experience that same level of problem that you have in the photograph for a longer period of time,” Riess said.

Areigat said that the increased time would be a matter of minutes, if not seconds. “It will increase in duration, yes,” he said. “It will be a longer duration, but not hours.”

The trade-off of duration versus volume was acceptable to the planning commissioners. “It would moderate the peaks and spread them over a somewhat longer time,” said Read Miller. “If it works as advertised, which we certainly hope it would, the level of flooding, the depth of the water, would not reach as high a level.”

Commissioner Leon Brooks told Winterstrom and Lopez that the solution was to convince the Fallbrook Community Planning Group to include the storm drain on its next capital improvement projects list. “In my mind you have done mitigation,” he said of the project.

The existing Avenida Campana east of Morro Road is a public street, and the extended Avenida Campana will also be a public street and will provide an additional east-west connection between Morro Road and Golden Road. The project’s road construction will also include a private cul-de-sac off of Avenida Campana which will serve four of the lots. Avenida Campana will have two bends through the new development, although the “knuckle” design must be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Department of Public Works that it can safely accommodate truck traffic. The project will also make improvements along Morro Road, Golden Road, and Fallbrook Street to meet minimum widths while providing the new sidewalks and ensuring that turns from and onto Golden Road do not obstruct through traffic.