{"id":272973,"date":"2024-05-16T22:05:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T05:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesofsandiego.com\/?p=272973"},"modified":"2024-05-17T06:35:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T13:35:33","slug":"opinion-hillcrest-is-ground-zero-for-citys-war-on-community-planning-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesofsandiego.com\/opinion\/2024\/05\/16\/opinion-hillcrest-is-ground-zero-for-citys-war-on-community-planning-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Hillcrest Is Ground Zero for City’s War on Community Planning Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Housing<\/a>
Housing under construction in Hillcrest. Photo courtesy Circulate San Diego<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re wondering why Uptown Planner<\/a>s has become a prime target of City Hall\u2019s war on planning groups, the battle over the unpopular Plan Hillcrest<\/a> offers a case study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Uptown community first questioned the city\u2019s radical <\/em>proposal to shoehorn more density into an already congested community, the planning group went to work. After seeing what looked like development overreach — 50,000 new residents, 30-story buildings \u2013 they requested public records that might elucidate how this startling proposal was conceived and crafted.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Opinion<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The city responded with a 600-document data dump. Undaunted, Uptown leaders sifted through the pile and zeroed in on several dozen relevant document pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That extensive research uncovered a cat\u2019s cradle of highly-paid city employees who are managing highly-paid consultants to sell rampant densification to a public that isn\u2019t buying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catering to a state government that rains money on overstuffed housing, the City Hall bureaucracy is spending millions of tax dollars to advance a single political goal: justify cramming as much new construction as possible into unwilling neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To cite one example, records indicate that over several years, 32 city employees have devoted nearly 9,000 hours — over $1 million in staff time — to working on Plan Hillcrest. Much of that staff time was spent overseeing at least a dozen consultants whose city contracts for planning services fall in the range of $10 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What exactly did those consultants do? According to the documents, their work included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n