Why Michael Philbrick is your best choice for City Council

By Michael A. "Mike" Philbrick

My objectives and how I plan to partner with the community to make San Juan Capistrano better for all.

By complacency, it is my considered opinion that our leaders have demonstrated an extraordinary lack of initiative and innovation. They appear to be relatively content with the status quo and seem to be "going through the motions" of governance. This community needs, deserves, and demands more. In addition, it seems clear that the level of trust between the public and the Council has deteriorated considerably. The City Council needs to mend fences by doing a better job of listening to, and being responsive to, the citizens of San Juan Capistrano.

As a city planner with over 24 years of experience, I feel I have much to offer this community in terms of doing a better job of making well-reasoned land-use decisions that make sense for this community. It seems that every major land use decision made over the past few years has ended up being challenged by referendum. With my knowledge and expertise, and a determination to achieve more, I plan on tackling the City's planning efforts with an elevated level of scrutiny with an eye toward seeking what's best for the community rather than on what's best for the applicant. My experience and knowledge also can be applied to addressing the transportation challenges the community faces.

What follows is a summary of the major component of my campaign platform. Topics include:

Why I'm running Restoring Trust, Impartiality, and Integrity Aggressively Protecting City Interests Seizing Opportunities Improving Development Monitoring Business Attraction/Retention Improving Parks Shutting out the Special Interest Addressing Affordable Housing

Why I'm Running

I used to think the staff was the problem in San Juan Capistrano. I thought if I could become a planner for the City, I could change things. I have since come to learn that we have a excellent all around staff. Then I thought I might be able to help by getting appointed to the Planning Commisison. I applied three times to offer my volunteer services as a Planning Commissioner and was denied by the Council all three times. What City Council in their right mind would turn down the services of a seasoned and knowledgeable professional planner to serve on its Planning Commission??? I began to realize that everyone in the organization was just following direction from the City Council and that the only way to really change things was to run for City Council and break up the power structure.

And so here I am. I have no connections, economic or otherwise, to businesses that do business in or with the City. I have no connections to anyone wishing to do business with the City. I have no intention of using my position as a City Council memeber to feather my nest after I leave office by leveraging my position as a past city official into some sort of consulting career.

I am running to fix San Juan Capistrano and beleive me it needs fixing!! Gridlocked traffic, rampant special interest influence, lack of affordable housing, lackluster business environment, shortages in recreational amenities, open space under attack, school district issues. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Restoring Trust, Impartiality, and Integrity

I believe it is important to restore trust in local government. In our community, there have been many controversial decisions made and some questionable incidents over the past few years deservedly leading to serious questions about the way the City conducts business and how it values community input. I think it's safe to say that concern over the integrity of our City Council has grown over the past four years. I'm not citing any single incident or accusing anyone of any specific offense. I'm just saying that actions are often more telling than words and if actions are any indication, the Council intends to do what it has made up its mind to do, regardless of public sentiment. Public input does not appear to be welcomed and seems to be tolerated only because there is a law that requires it.

My goal as your council representative would be to elevate the level of trust in the community. I would do that by emphasizing the need for and importance of community input and by reserving judgment on City decisions until that input was duly and properly considered. My hope would be that all the other candidates would commit themselves to that goal for the betterment of the community.

Now I'm not saying that I am absolutely going to do whatever the public tells me. That would be foolish because as we all know, there are numerous instances where there is a sharp divide between different segments of the community on a variety of issues. In those instances, it would be my hope and expectation that the Council would take time to break down the project issue by issue to explore ways to have those issues addressed rather than just putting a rubber stamp on it and sending it off to the next referendum.

Aggressively Protecting City Interests

In my opinion, the Council needs to do a better job of addressing community concerns with development proposals. Listening to, and considering the concerns of the community does not necessarily mean that the Council needs to do exactly each and everything the public says. Obviously there are factions in the community on almost every issue that will have differing opinions on how to proceed. As we all know, you can't please all the people all the time.

What I'm talking about is the Council getting creative with development proposals. I'm talking about the Council seeking compromise and innovation in these projects. I'm talking about the Council being willing, and not afraid, to suggest or direct modifications to a development application. It should never be an all or nothing proposition. The developers can and will revise their projects if the concern is valid and revisions are reasonable.

Seizing Opportunities

Another major downfall I see is the way the City seems to cater to developers. There have been several instances where an approval granted by the City results in windfall profits for the developers and the City fails to capitalize on the opportunity by neglecting to pursue development agreements that would allow the City to participate in the benefits reaped from these windfalls. These are legislative types of approvals (general plan amendments and zone changes) that the City can deny without any findings whatsoever. All the City has to do is say "No" and the applicant has no recourse.

But if the City decides to say "Yes", and that's not always a bad thing, we need be making every attempt to participate with the developer in the benefit of those decisions. These types of approvals can easily be leveraged into major benefits to the City. This happens routinely in other cities. It's time to set the bar higher in San Juan Capistrano. We need to become more aggressive in promoting the City's interests when considering large-scale projects with significant citywide impacts. We need to bring land use decisions in this community out of the 20th century and start acting like we know what we're doing and that we care about it and that it matters.

Improving Development Monitoring

Another area where I believe improvement is needed is in monitoring development activities in other jurisdictions. I do not believe enough has been done to ensure that San Juan Capistrano is being adequately protected from unmitigated impacts from surrounding developments, particularly from Rancho Mission Viejo. The City needs to be vigilant in reviewing and commenting on projects in adjacent jurisdictions (i.e. Dana Point, San Clemente, Mission Viejo, etc.) and ensuring the off-site impacts that affect San Juan Capistrano are properly mitigated. We can no longer afford to ignore these projects and their impacts to us as a city. Unfortunately, much has already been approved and not much can be done about the impacts from those projects.

Business Attraction/Retention

We need to explore new ways to protect and grow our retail core. Other communities around San Juan Capistrano offer distinct retail advantages in terms of more modern facilities, better sites, and better access with properly sized roads. Our historic downtown (and the businesses in it) creates a draw but it is a limited draw. Many of our residents must shop or dine outside the community to shop their favorite stores or dine at their favorite restaurant. Our two grocery stores are dwarfed by more modern stores in Ladera and San Clemente and many of our residents have started to patronize those stores rather than fight the traffic downtown.

The resulting tax drain is harmful to the City's budget. We need to explore ways to reverse this trend by finding more and different ways for residents and visitors alike to shop San Juan Capistrano.

We also need to prepare ourselves for the eventuality of new commercial development in Rancho Mission Viejo. When it comes, it will have a very serious impact on our downtown, increasing the numbers of people who stop going downtown. At the very least we should be working on the planned annexation of all the properties at the intersection of Antonio Parkway and Ortega Highway. That way at least the City could capture the tax revenue.

Beyond that the strategy for business retention and attraction needs to focus on:

1. making the City an attractive place to do business, physically and economically

2. making the City business-friendly without compromising aesthetics and historical resources

3. identifying appropriate niche retail markets based on local and sub-regional demographics

4. promoting business opportunities in the City

Improving Parks

Our parks need to offer more amenities to our residents and we need more parks. I hope to find ways to boost our parks and recreation budget so that we can meet the growing demands of our community. We should be pressing harder for joint use programs with CUSD, especially in light of the plums they've received from the City I the past. I'd like to see an audit of our parks system (acreage, amenities, quality of maintenance, etc.) and compare it to levels provided by other cities to see how we stack up. If, as I suspect, we are deficient I'd like to look for ways to advance our City's parks programs

Shutting out the Special Interests

We need to be more vigilant about special interests and the detrimental impact they can have on the political process. Anyone who engages in this type of activity should be dealt with quickly and severely. Resignation is the first order of business followed swiftly by any applicable criminal charges. Candidates who have any direct business or relationship with any one doing business with the City, and anyone with even the slightest appearance of having such a relationship, should recuse themselves from voting on any item that might possibly benefit any campaign contributor. The mere perception of having such a conflict can be as damaging and undesirable as actually having a conflict.

The best way to accomplish this is to elect people that refuse funding from special interests. We also need people without vested interests, people who can resist the temptation to use their position to promote decisions that favor campaign contributors or others with long-standing relationships. I am one such person and I can represent you with an unquestionable allegiance.

Addressing Affordable Housing

Affordable housing is a major concern in the community. Many groups try to fight it, while still others press the City to address the issue. I know the term is often met with visions of slums and government housing projects but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about housing that our firemen, policemen, nurses and teachers can afford. I'm talking about housing opportunities that will be need to be met so that our children can live somewhere without having to buy a plane ticket to come visit us. The demand for affordable housing is staggering while the land available to satisfy the demand is scarce, particularly in San Juan Capistrano.

This issue has been deferred time and time again in project approval after project approval. No developer wants to put it in their own project so they offer in-lieu fees (money) to pay for it off-site. That can work fine when there's ample land to solve the problem down the line. It doesn't work so well in San Juan Capistrano when there isn't hardly any vacant land available that hasn't already been approved for something. It has put us in a situation where our Council has actually been forced to consider the possibility of a massive apartment building out on La Pata by the high school and the dump. Anyone with half a brain knows that that's not where high density housing goes. Not only is the site bad because of the dump traffic and the dump itself, its bad because high density housing goes in the City's core not out on the outskirts of town.

The Council has been forced (by themselves) to actually consider it though because the State establishes mandates for each cities' fair share of affordable housing and, thanks to the continual deferral of this issue, the City of San Juan Capistrano has run out of proper, non-controversial sites to accommodate it. A failure to meet the State-mandated quota could invalidate the Housing Element of the City's General Plan which would have disastrous effects on development in the city.

This is another area where the City needs to take action to aggressively attack the problem. The City needs to explore other, more innovative ways to address this issue than just plopping down an overly dense, three-story apartment complex out in the middle of nowhere. We need to get creative and think outside the box about how to dig ourselves out of the tremendous hole we've gotten ourselves into. With a shortage of available land, we need to think about mixed-use development in our downtown core. This would include the introduction of residential uses in the downtown area. The fact that we have a rail station here in town opens up opportunites for transit oriented development in the downtown area.

We also need to be careful to avoid overemphasizing senior affordable housing. To be sure, a component of our affordable housing needs to be addressed toward seniors but let's face it, senior affordable housing is the "easy" way to pursue affordable housing. Nobody is willing to fight it and it doesn't have the same stigma (however undeserved) of other types of affordable housing. But when the bulk of our affordable housing is directed at seniors, that comes at the expense of providing "real" affordable, or "workforce" housing for our policemen, our firemen, our teachers, and our nurses (to name just a few of the professions that desparately need affordable housing opportunities). It also ignores the housing needs of our children. Where are they supposed to live? I'd like to think we could be able to at least do something to address their hosuing needs because I don't want to have my kids drive in from Bakersfield for the holidays.

Overthrow the Status Quo!!

Vote Integrity, Initiative, and Innovation!!

Vote Philbrick for San Juan Capistrano City Council!!