Golf Course Permit, Part 2

Author: Phil Trubey

Date: March 26, 2023

Phil Trubey is a current member of the RSFA Board of Directors. These are his thoughts alone.

Communications

The Association has generally been silent about what has been going on with various people and groups trying to disrupt what we are trying to accomplish for various reasons. Why? First, we are busy trying to get things done, so replying to every article and mass email just isn’t worth the time and effort. Second, we are in active litigation with one person who brought a suit against the Association, and thus we are taking legal advice to publicly respond only in court and via our lawyer. Third, other actions, like the appeal against our granted County permit was a very fluid situation, so saying anything while negotiations were underway would have been counterproductive.

Unfortunately, this could leave many with the impression we are AWOL, or don’t care, or are hiding something, or whatever else. Rest assured that none of this is true. These various actions have taken up way too much staff and Board time as well as our money. We have been nothing if not busy handling these and other related affairs.

Finally, the less we say, the fewer spam emails you will get rebutting every utterance we make.

Golf Course Phase 3 Update

As I suspected would happen, acquiring a County permit for Phase 3 of the Golf Course remodel project wasn't the end of the process. Three appeals were filed challenging the County's granting of a CEQA exemption for the project. One of the appeals (from the San Dieguito Planning Group) was withdrawn during negotiations after the Association agreed to dig up a bury pit instead of just doing soil sampling as the permit originally allowed (more about that below).

Association members Bill Strong and Rob Whittemore individually, through their respective lawyers, also appealed the CEQA exemption. Various members of the Golf Club Board, Association Board, staff and outside consultants were then involved in negotiating a two page agreement with Strong and Whittemore to drop their appeals on the condition the Association, again, remove the bury pit. The agreement was signed, the appeals have been dropped.

The Association is now working with contractors to dig up the bury pit, the Association Board having pre-emptively during the last Board meeting approved a $101K budget for this task. Needless to say, not only was this a costly detour (the $101K doesn't include legal and consultant costs), but also drained a lot of time and energy away from other priorities.

In the end, finally, we have a comprehensive County permit covering all past and future Phase 3 golf course renovations.

The Bury Pit

As part of the Golf Course remodel, we removed concrete cart paths that were no longer desired. This both enhanced playability as well as making the course look nicer.

Concrete is considered, as a legal matter, "clean fill" and is allowed to be buried underground. Consider that all our houses have concrete buried underground – it is called a house foundation. Anyways, rather than haul the concrete to a disposal site, it was more environmentally friendly and less expensive to dispose of the concrete on site in a bury pit.

Strong, Whittemore and the SDPG alleged that the bury pit could contain hazardous materials, based on zero evidence provided to us.

At any rate, expect to see heavy machinery back onto the second hole of the golf course, hauling away concrete in dump trucks in the next several weeks, weather and contractor availability permitting.

Defending the Association

It appears to me that Bill Strong's lawsuit against the Association is what is driving all this. Mr. Strong, and now Mr. Whittemore at the latest Association Board meeting, take every chance they can get to allege various Association improprieties. The Association, of course, taking legal advice, is not going to reply to any of these allegations in a public forum. Our response and defense will be presented in court.

We expect to prevail against this lawsuit, and to the extent we can recover our legal and other costs, we will consider what actions to take.

This expensive and time-consuming saga is having very real effects harming the Association. Not only is this costing us money, but it is stealing inordinate amounts of staff and Board time away from accomplishing positive things for our community. Already one of our contractors has been deposed (at our expense), and our staff and various community volunteers are now wondering if they'll have to testify under oath. While I have been through various legal fights myself, most people have not and this is very, very stressful for them. One could almost call it harassment, but unfortunately even frivolous legal proceedings are legally protected (go figure).

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Bob Hall made an interesting comment to me during his short tenure as our previous Association Manager. He said that in his previous job as City Manager for Fountain Valley, managing their City Council was like herding cats, whereas managing our Association Board was like herding tigers.

It wasn't lost on me that Hall's analogy used a tiger, a very solitary and dangerous animal.

In all my years of covering the Association writing for the RSF Post and now from the inside as a Director, I have seen way too many individuals who think they know better and refuse to work with others when pursuing their own agenda. If after the fifth time you've tried to gain support for your idea, you can't convince the rest of the Board/Committee/Staff of your brilliant idea, maybe the problem is you. Or maybe the rest of us are too dumb for you, but either way, please give it a rest.

Organizations do not move forward when there is lack of consensus. Instead they get paralyzed. Sure the consensus might not be perfect, but it is still progress.

There is also real economic damage being done to all of us through incidents like this lawsuit. Prospective homebuyers, Association employees, and member volunteers all see what is going on and are deciding to not buy/join/volunteer based on it. One person's pigheadedness costs us a lot of money in reduced property values and lack of community engagement.

So this is just a plea to work on your persuasion skills, hone your arguments, but if you can't get traction, please work with the rest of the team to pursue consensus goals. If we can stick with that thought, maybe we can avoid expensive lawsuits in the future.