Encinitas city staffers: Beacon's Beach should be top-priority project

Encinitas city staffers: Beacon's Beach should be top-priority project
ENCINITAS -- City staffers on Tuesday identified Beacon's Beach improvements as
the highest-priority capital project for Encinitas to complete.

ENCINITAS -- City staffers on Tuesday identified Beacon's Beach improvements as the highest-priority capital project for Encinitas to complete.

The job, which calls for a new trail, sea wall and parking lot to be built at the beach just west of Leucadia Boulevard, earned the most points in a ranking exercise by city department heads.

Other top-ranked projects included construction of the first phase of the Hall property park in Cardiff and accompanying road improvements, the design of a new interchange at Encinitas Boulevard, safe routes to school and pedestrian crossings along the railroad.

City Manager Phil Cotton presented the assessment of more than 40 projects to the City Council at its first of two goal-setting sessions for 2007.

The council is scheduled to assign its own priorities for capital projects when it reconvenes the workshop at 4 p.m. Monday.

The yearly goal-setting sessions offer a preview of the council's agenda and directives for preparation of the next fiscal year's budget, for which hearings begin in the spring.

In ranking a project, city department heads considered whether Encinitas faces a legal mandate to complete it, if the project affects health and safety and if it creates necessary infrastructure. The availability of funding and public support also played into the ranking criteria.

During more than an hour of testimony on Tuesday, public speakers offered their own take on which projects merit the city's attention.

Bernard Minster of Cardiff told the council that an analysis of traffic on city thoroughfares was overdue.

The city's so-called "circulation element update" is scheduled to come before the council in April, City Engineer Peter-Cota Robles said.

Mayor James Bond told Minster that the study was more than two years in the making.

"It's an issue for all of us to deal with," he said. "We have to make sure the traffic moves in an orderly, safe way."

Sanford Shapiro of the city's Parks and Recreation Commission told the council that cigarette smoking on the city's beaches was a most common complaint for two reasons: "Butts on the beach and smoke blowing on the kids."

Elizabeth Willes, an Encinitas resident and executive committee member of the San Diego chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, spoke in favor of a smoking ban on city beaches.

She said other cities in the county had enacted such bans. No one mentioned that a proposed beach smoking ban in Encinitas died by a 3-2 vote in 2004.

Other speakers called for the re-establishment of a city environmental committee.

Dadla Ponizil told the council that environmental considerations should play into all aspects of policy-making. Buildings with solar panels could generate more electricity than they consume, he said.

Bond said that solar panels atop City Hall could improve the appearance of the roof and make it more attractive for visitors to a new city library that is scheduled to open this year.

As for the city's goals, Cotton said he hopes to use money earmarked for low-ranked projects to help pay for ones with higher rankings.

"When you come back next week," Cotton said, "tell us the priorities."