Re: 'Making change on the Planning Group'[Village News, Letter, 10/31/24]

I am happy to see that The Planning Group is paying attention to the concerns of our Community. Thank you Steve Brown for your response to the letter of two weeks ago. There are several issues at play here and all of them have representation of our community and keeping it informed in the mix.

Steve says I do not know what has been happening with the Planning Group because I only recently started attending meetings again. This is also true of most of our community as attending the meetings or going to the county website to read the minutes (which are not up to date) is considered by the current Planning Group as sufficient access to what is happening.

The Planning Group Chairs, who Steve claims, get regular updates on project progress don’t even keep minutes. Steve also claims that the complicated processes of the County Planning Department make it hard to follow up on projects. He seems to have missed that I proposed that the Planning Group assign a member to each significant project to follow up with the applicant.

Also, I proposed follow up be a regular agenda item so that it would be part of the minutes and the public meeting. Steve also stated (in capital letters) that the role of the Planning Group is to make recommendations and as an advisory group.

Further, Steve claims “This is beyond the scope and control of the Planning Group to monitor or control.” I have heard these assertions before and this is the kind of limited thinking that keeps our Planning Group from being a force for the evolution of Fallbrook.

As the earlier letter mentioned, 12 projects approved in the last six years and we may now have one that has broken ground. Here is a quote from the County Planning Groups website ”..recognized community planning groups as formal mechanisms for community input in the land use decision-making process…”

I take this to mean that our Planning Group should promote and facilitate input from our community. The revised Community Guidelines being an exception, our Planning Group mostly waits for projects or ideas to be presented to it and then reacts to them.

Some current members of the Planning Group will argue that this is the proper role of the Planning Group. If that is true, then our community needs to take this up with the county government and get the mandate changed. I ask you all to join me in the effort to get our Planning Group to be proactive and vastly more transparent in its activities.

Mark Mervich