Politics & Government

Top Goals for Future of Imperial Beach

At a Wednesday workshop, everyone from department directors to the sheriff's captain listed their top priorities for the next few years. Top topics included redevelopment, a new city website and reducing crime by 10 percent.

The Imperial Beach City Council and city staff met Wednesday evening to lay out goals for the city in the next five years and review the city's financial status.

Finance Director Michael McGrane conducted a brief review of city finances as well. A 2011-2013 budget must be passed before the start of a new fiscal year starting July 1.

Though the workshop was designed to include public input, only a single member of the public attended, and left early.

Text below is not a direct transcription but a summary of quotations from city staff and City Council.

Top Goals for 2011-2015

Imperial Beach Sheriff's Station Capt. David Myers

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Capt. Myers: For crime, I'd like to see a decrease this year, just this year, by 10 percent overall across the board.

Mayor Jim Janney: Is that achievable from your professional standpoint?

Myers: Absolutely.

Myers: That all plays into what your goals are. That's what I want to do. You tell me what the bottom line is then I have to try and figure out realistically if we can achieve that and if we can.

Councilwoman Lorie Bragg

Bragg: I would like to see us really get with it and be on Facebook and be on Twitter and I think that in these days and times, by not doing it, we are, there's an entire group of people out there that we are missing out on.

City Attorney Jennifer Lyon: Other cities are doing it and everything you do is going to have a risk but if that's what you want to do then …

Bragg: Well I just think that's the way that an entire generation is communicating. They don't read our newsletters, they don't read our flyers …

City Manager Gary Brown: The news on the skate park was getting out way more on Facebook than anything that we had.

City Clerk Jacqueline Hald: We plan to meet with J Sims Agency in two weeks to go over social media technology.

Bragg: It's time for us to participate in that because we're just totally behind the times.

Bragg: Shame on us for not taking advantage of every opportunity, every vehicle that's out there to get the message out.

Bilbray: People were complaining about the special meeting we had in January that they had no idea about it.

Bilbray: Everybody's on Facebook

Councilman Jim King

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King: I would really like to see something go forward on the El Camino Hotel.

King would also like to see progress continue on sand-replenishment projects and continue facade improvement programs for businesses and clean and green programs for residents.

King: I think it's changed the aesthetics, look and feel of this community.

Public Works department Director Hank Levine

Levine's top priority is to maintain roads and quality of life.

His second priority is to make Imperial Beach a walkable, bikable community.

Levine: We can do it incrementally. Like Gary [Brown] said we don't have the money to do it all. I'm an incrementalist.

Levine: I've heard you all and your predecessors say they want that and want to continue working that way.

Community Development department Director Greg Wade

Wade: I don't think a project's done until it's done, so Seacoast Inn is definitely on the top of my list to get completed.

Wade: They've not necessarily guaranteed but they've assured us [the developer] they will working with our efforts of working towards tourism. So make sure they have a coordinated program in places like the estuary and the Audobon Society and things like that so that the Seacoast Inn isn't just a summer destination.

Bikeway Village
Wade: Only as much as that I think it's a little bit, believe it or not, ahead of the 9th and Palm project. Get that entitled, through the Coastal Commission and completed.

Wade: And with respect to the hostel component of it, yeah that's definitely part of the program is still a part of it and I just wanted to point out that the kind of hostel that they're looking at is not necessarily like the kind you might like the kind that was apparently here some time ago.

Wade: Similar to the Seacoast Inn coordinate tourism and eco-tourism efforts for the bikeway village. Make sure that that's a coordinated effort. I really foresee the Seacoast Inn and the bikeway village in a sort of coordinated effort and work together as sort of a co-marketing of that if you will.

Wade: The hostel component is really going to be responsive to what the marketing conditions are.

Wade: We've had preliminary discussions with American Hosteling International or Hosteling International. There were some questions initially as to whether that would be an ideal site for their kind of hostel but SANDAG numbers show there is a market niche for the type of sort of the active bicyclist, active hiker, backpacker hostel that we had until recently so it may not look like exactly what you envision a hostel to be but it's still a part of the program.

9th and Palm
Wade: Get that entitled and underway within three years. I certainly hope it's built within five years.

The project's success is highly dependent on whether or not the city has a redevelopment agency in future, he said.

Wade also wants to see commercial zoning changes made, to keep moving toward a more walkable, bikable community and sand renourishment.

Wade: It's far down on the list because it's probably the most long range and potentially expensive kind of component without at this point a viable federal funding source.

Wade: Regional projects are fine in the short term but in the long term we need to start looking at protecting what is our most precious recourse that is in my mind at least economically is the beach and then the properties that are on the beach. A lot of critics of beach renourishment say all you're doing is protecting the wealthy homeowners. And that may be true but we're protecting what we have in a recreational economic asset as well.

Wade: Those properties that we're protecting generate a high percentage of our property tax, so it's worth protecting.

City Attorney Jennifer Lyon
Lyon: My goal as a contracted service to the city, is it maximize the city's goals.

Lyon: If you take the last month and the redevelopment issues out of the mix I think we worked on most the Seacoast Inn, code enforcement, whether it be the the skate park, weed abatement or other kinds of administrative work.


Public Safety department Director and Fire Chief Tom Clark

Clark: Our budgets have a lot of the Port [of San Diego] funding to support them. And if the port pulls back on its funding, we're going to be really, severely impacted. so that's a key for me as a watch out. And I'd to really see that become a goal of the council to get where we have some minimum standards.

Budget and funding
Clark: I mean if there's conscious decisions to cut, you know you're going to be cutting a response time for how fast a fire engine for an EMS unit or a law enforcement officer is going to show up at your incident. And it could be simply to take a report or it could be somebody having a heart attack.

Clark: Crime rate [reduction], I support that. And I also want to look at response times as far as units go so we can monitor those and we can look at how we're doing as a community. I support all the things that we're doing but what we're going to do is bring in more people ...

Clark: The economic model of bringing in the Seacoast Inn, the walkable areas, the bike areas, that's going to bring in more people to this community which is great. But you're also going to possibly need more resources to help serve those people.

Dedicated apparatus and equipment replacement program for the fire department
Clark: That's what I'd like to see on the table and I'm working on that right now. And I'd like to see it funded because having a fire engine is a very expensive piece of equipment.

City website
Clark: People talked about social networking. I'd like to see the city have a great website, an interactive website that you can click on and get a dog license and fill out a special request application for a permit. and you can pay for it online. That would be a great move.

Clark: And again part of it is the scope, your goals and direction with a limited staff we'll have to support it. We've lost people on the fire side and the city has lost staff throughout and we're being asked to do more and more and more and Facebook and Twitter and all those other things need staff resources.

City Clerk Jacqueline Hald

Hald: We did not fill the deputy position as a cost saving measure so I'm looking at ways to try to streamline a lot of the processes that we do in the city clerk's department and one of them, one of the biggest tasks in my department is producing the agenda packet. So we reorganized the city clerk and city manager's office and we're looking at using this program that's an agenda maker. It would be more electronic rather than paper so I'm hoping that all of you agree to eventually go paperless.

Hald: So that's one of my major goals to be green and streamline the process so more is coming. We still need to work on the program and get it so we can get training. But then my goal is to eventually to go paperless as fast as we can.

Janney: I support that but we're going to see how that goes.

Councilman Brian Bilbray

Bilbray: My main thing is trying to get the youth involved in the city. I'd like to see us, from what I understand, back in the '80s they had a youth council. I know Encinitas has a youth council right now, and they put in a lot of info on remodeling their parks up there and one of the things that they brought up to the council was putting a skate feature into the park they have there so I'd look into doing something like that.

Bilbray: Of course the 9th and Palm but in particular to 9th and Palm is going to the feds for building a new state-of-the-art post office. I think that would be a real good draw for that shopping center and it would probably get a lot more tenants in it.

Janney: Gary [Brown] and I have actually met with the superintendent of the high school, brought it up to him and some way in engaging with the school on that.

Janney: And also we brought it up with the principal cause both of them agree they like the idea.

Janney: I think it's a good idea because once again it's getting people involved and the process.

Bilbray: I mean look at Serge Dedina. My dad's the one that appointed him to the youth council back in the day. He's a bit of a thorn in your side but….

Councilman Ed Spriggs

Spriggs: We want to be that informal kind of a beach community that doesn't exist anywhere else. And we want to preserve it. so to me that means and we also want to kind of…

- Increase our tax base

- Bikeway village

- Sand replenishment

 - Walkable day and night community that's safe and that's attractive

Spriggs: That leads directly to the next thing which is what's going to populate these vacant lots and the, you know, sort of empty areas of our community.

Spriggs: With the new zoning we should be looking for strategies that favor investment and filling in those areas and creating new storefronts and housing above that means

Spriggs: That really means we need to be an investment friendly community and a business-friendly community and we really need to pay attention to this because it's going to be private investment. With or without redevelopment, it's going to get less amenities.

Mayor Jim Janney

Public Safety
Janney: Public safety's always top. That's just how we do it.

Hostel

Janney: What is the feeling of a hostel?

Bragg: [The old hostel] It was a very successful little place that brought tons of people in.

Bilbray: It's perfect to surfer way of life.

Bragg: There was a variety of people and they spent money in the community.

Bilbray: Plank Inn said they lost $600 a week when it shut down

A hostel is being discussed as part of the Bikeway Village project. Imperial Beach had a hostel at one time where the adult education center is now at the corner of Palm Avenue and Seacoast Drive.

At one time the city had six different committees to hear the opinions of local residents and assist City Council. Today, the city has two committees: the Design Review Board and the Tidelands Advisory Committee. The Design Review Board can be expanded but Janney would like to see the Tidelands committee possibly renamed or reorganized under other important subjects, like discussing the budget, before any new members of the community are appointed to the position.

Janney: Provide some sort of a park east of city hall in IB for those people in one of the more higher density [parts of the city]. Maybe it takes partnering with the school districts but I really think that's one of the more important things we need to do. I know its not on our list but…

Janney: We need to work with school districts, the Navy, Port of San Diego and try to leverage what we've got out there. I mean Mr. King on the SANDAG [transportation board]. Lets try to leverage the connections we have to not only just monetary but some of the other resources we can use out there and try to make the city work better because we can be partners with everybody.

Janney: We have two different school districts. The folks at the church across the street have worked with us in the possibility of sharing parking lots. I mean there's so many other assets in this city that might not make a lot of money but the thing the bothers me the most is the time it takes to get some of these things done.


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