Conservancy united on Act V

Barbara Diamond

Corporation Yard relocation opponents Toni Iseman and Wayne Baglin

were asked to preach to the choir Monday at the Laguna Canyon

Conservancy dinner meeting.

“Our history as an organization is protecting the canyon,”

conservancy President Carolyn Wood said. “Moving the Corporation Yard

to Act V is very much a concern to us. I hope our speakers provide an

interesting program tonight.”

Both council members voiced opposition to relocating some of the

city’s maintenance yard functions to the fringe of the open space in

Laguna Canyon.

“Personally, I feel as strongly about this as I did about water

pollution,” said Baglin, a leader in water quality issues.

He said a cooperative effort raised the quality of the waters off

of Laguna from probably the worst to among the best on the coast and

the same kind of cooperation is needed now to reach a satisfactory

decision for the maintenance yard.

“Many see this as a petty council squabble,” Iseman said. “It is a

squabble. It is not petty. I think it is the most important political

decision we will make -- and it shouldn’t be political.”

Mayor Cheryl Kinsman and former Mayor Kathleen Blackburn, who

attended the dinner meeting, support the relocation, as do Council

Members Elizabeth Pearson and Steve Dicterow.

“I would love a compromise,” Kinsman said, when asked Monday if

she had any comment.

Asked what compromise she would suggest, Kinsman said she

personally favored the recommendations of the Village Entrance Task

Force, on which she served as a planning commissioner.

The task force was a broadly based group led by the commission,

which met for months before unanimously recommending the removal of

the Corporation Yard, but without specifying the location.

Unanimity eroded when the council selected Act V as the relocation

site, and groups began choosing up sides.

More than 30 meetings have been held on the Village Entrance and

Act V, not including the Act V design committee chaired by Blackburn.

Baglin, who did not initially oppose the relocation, later came

out strongly against it, at first in the council majority, now in the

minority.

“I am confused about how we got here,” Baglin said Monday. “We are

not doing this by city standards. We are doing it through the county

and when was the last time you remember the county doing anything

environmentally sensitive?”

Neither the council nor the public had an opportunity to

thoroughly scope the plan before it was presented at a California

Coastal Commission hearing on the project, Baglin said.

Assistant City Manager John Pietig, however, conducted a tour of

the maintenance yard a few days prior to the meeting, attended by

many of the people at the conservancy dinner. The plan was displayed.

Modifications include the elimination of one building, the

construction of a Caltrans-required de-acceleration lane and the

repositioning of the driveway.

The development will cost public parking spaces on the lost on the

periphery of town and according to Baglin’s calculations a cumulative

loss.

Baglin and Iseman support a combined maintenance yard and parking

structure at the present site, identified as the Village Entrance.

Such a plan won the Village Entrance Design Contest conducted by the

city, which specified joint use.

Baglin estimates the combination plan would cost about $15 million

and would have only 30 less parking spaces than the optimum predicted

if the maintenance yard was relocated, while avoiding a loss in

peripheral parking that makes the city’s successful shuttle system

viable.

Iseman said 600 spaces at the Village Entrance would be fully

utilized only two days a week, two months of the year, during

festival season.

“The rest of the days it will be empty and it will require all of

our parking revenue to build,” she said.

The conservancy members gave a voice vote of approval to

Conservancy President Carolyn Wood’s proposal to ask the City Council

to hold a public workshop on the relocation.

Few people dispute the need to improve working conditions for the

city employees and most people, if they care at all, seem to agree

that the city should have a Village Entrance that defines the city.