San Dieguito, Solana Beach Proposals : 2 North County Groups File for Votes on Cityhood

Leaders of two separate movements advocating cityhood for Solana Beach and the cluster of North County communities known as San Dieguito took their first formal step toward home rule on Tuesday, filing applications for a vote on incorporation with the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).

Gail Paparian, an organizer with Citizens Intending to Incorporate (CITI) in Solana Beach, said her group submitted petitions bearing 2,638 signatures--an estimated 33% of the community’s registered voters--along with a $1,500 filing fee to LAFCO Tuesday morning.

Soon after, organizers hoping to mold Encinitas and the surrounding hamlets of Cardiff, Leucadia and Olivenhain into a city of 44,400 presented LAFCO with their request for incorporation, which was handled by the Encinitas Fire Protection District. (According to state law, an incorporation effort can be initiated either by petitions signed by 25% of a community’s residents or by resolution of an agency--such as a fire district--in the affected area.)

Analysts at LAFCO, a state agency organized at the county level to review incorporation proposals, will now study whether cityhood is financially feasible in the two areas and make a recommendation to commission board members by December. If approved, the proposals go on to county supervisors, who are empowered to put the question before voters in the June, 1986, election.

Meanwhile, a third player in the incorporation fray--the Party to Incorporate Encinitas, or PIE--intends to file its application with LAFCO within the next two weeks. Bob Weaver, PIE’s founder and chief booster, said his group is proposing cityhood for Encinitas alone and would submit data supporting such an incorporation by May 14.

Although today is the official deadline for incorporation proposals destined for the June, 1986, ballot, PIE has been granted an extension, said Jane Merrill, LAFCO’s director in San Diego.

Leaders of the three cityhood movements afoot in North County share common goals--an increase in local control over land use and related planning decisions, and a better return on the tax revenues unincorporated communities funnel into county coffers.

“The primary benefit of cityhood is to provide our area a higher level of services than it now receives from the county,” said Matt Rielly, director of the Encinitas Fire Protection District. “For far too long the county has failed to give us services on a level equal to what we give them in revenue.”

In addition, proponents of cityhood argue that home rule would replace the distant Board of Supervisors with a city council of locally elected, accessible representatives. Further, Rielly said surrounding cities, Carlsbad among them, have a tendency to encroach on unincorporated areas, annexing commercially productive sections of a community and thereby eroding its tax base.

Incorporation campaigns are nothing new in North County. A 1981 effort to bring cityhood to Solana Beach failed by a narrow margin, and two bids to incorporate San Dieguito, in 1974 and 1982, were overwhelmingly rejected.

But times have changed, today’s proponents say.

“This time around, we’ve got the clear, unmistakable financial proof that Solana Beach can support itself as a city and do much, much better than it’s doing under the county’s wing,” Paparian said. A fiscal study prepared by CITI predicted an incorporated Solana Beach of 17,000 residents would earn first-year revenues of some $1.9 million while spending roughly $1 million.

In San Dieguito, the question this time around seems to be not so much whether to incorporate, but what to incorporate. The fire district and the North Coast Incorporation Coalition favor linking Encinitas and its sister communities in one big as yet unnamed city, while PIE’s followers believe Encinitas should go it alone.

“Our feeling is, Encinitas is the one that generates the sales tax and also suffers for it, in terms of traffic and other burdens, so Encinitas should benefit first from the revenues earned by the new city,” Weaver said. “Eventually, we can expand, annex Leucadia and the others, and take care of their problems.”