How Todd Gloria’s City Planning Prioritizes Developers Over Residents
Todd Goria abuses his position as mayor by using entire departments to promote his grandiose projects. The Planning Department staff in particular have become personal servants to the mayor. They ignore sound planning principles in their zeal to comply with the mayor’s goals.
It’s not enough for Todd Gloria to manage the city’s 12,000 employees, and do it effectively. He wants to redesign our neighborhoods by encouraging the tear-down of existing buildings, adding high-rises, closing traffic lanes and removing parking. The truly affordable housing in historic neighborhoods is vanishing, as the charming older homes and smaller-scale apartments are being torn down.
Let’s consider some of the mayor’s misguided projects.
- Complete Communities. Allows unlimited density and unlimited heights, while requiring very little from the developers. Abusive projects includes those in Bankers Hill and University City. No public input is allowed.
- Bonus ADUs. State law required that the city allow a total of 3 units. Todd Gloria expanded this to an unlimited number. Many projects have 10-15 units. One has over 40! The mayor thinks that a “backyard unit” means an apartment building.
- Seven Community Plan Updates, in which the Planning Dept has pushed excessive densities, without a plan for needed infrastructure. Community leaders have complained that they invested 4 to 5 years on the plan updates, only to see their input ignored. A Mira Mesa leader commented:
“The Planning staff just proceeded to do what they wanted,
while thanking us for their input”. - Elimination of the land standard for parks. How bad is the new system? The city gets as much credit for a small kids play area as it does a one acre park. The system was designed to make it easy to get points, and still the new Community Plans are short thousands of points. Mayor Todd Gloria has given up on providing adequate park space.
- Blueprint San Diego. An overall plan to upzone the city with limited review of the harmful impacts. Count on the closing of traffic lanes and the elimination of parking, in addition to irrational levels of upzoning.
- Build Better SD. Complete elimination of the Facilities Financing/ Impact Fee Study system for the communities. Development Impact Fees will be taken from communities which get new development, and spent where the mayor wants. The mayor will control most of the process. We can call it “Build a Better Slush Fund”. No attempt was made to replace the money taken away from communities.
- Ignoring new realities. The SANDAG preliminary Series 15 forecast has been available since July 2023, but the mayor has ignored the new reality. The population of the city is projected to increase by only 65,345 people from 2022 to 2050, an average growth rate of 0.17%. Yet Todd Gloria is still entranced by the notion of spearheading the rapid growth of the city.
- Planning disconnect. The forced upzoning of the communities is so extreme that each community is getting enough high-density zoning to accommodate the forecast growth for the entire city! It’s irrational and destructive. Three communities below illustrate the problem:
Mira Mesa | Zoning capacity for 65,000 more people |
University community (Univ. City) | Zoning capacity for 65,000 more people |
Uptown community | Zoning capacity for 70,000 more people |
Forecast for City of San Diego, 2050 (the entire city) | Forecast growth of 65,345 more people |