At last year’s State of the City event, the then-new Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehlers spoke of a need to get back to “the basics” by improving roadway pavement and storm drainage conditions.
This year, he plans to talk about what’s been achieved since then.
“Most of our goals are on track to being completed,” Ehlers said last week as he discussed his planned speech and mentioned recent city projects he plans to highlight.
Ehlers will give his State of the City address on April 9 at an Encinitas Chamber of Commerce-hosted event at the Encinitas Community and Senior Center. Considered one of the city’s major business-related gatherings, that annual event typically draws about 250 people.
Tickets, which cost $65 for chamber members and $75 for nonmembers, can be obtained from the chamber’s website at local.encinitaschamber.com/events.
In addition to the ticketed event, there’s a no-cost, open-to-all, version occurring a week later at City Hall. At the start of the April 15 City Council meeting, Ehlers plans to give his 20-minute speech for the second time, he said.
Last year, the mayor said he had three top priorities for the coming year — increasing local control over housing development issues, reducing homelessness in the city and fixing basic infrastructure, particularly repaving streets and improving drainage issues.
This year, he said, he plans to mention the newly completed repaving projects on Birmingham Drive and part of Leucadia Boulevard near the Fox Point Farms housing development. And, he’ll add that the rest of Leucadia Boulevard westward to Interstate 5 will get its planned upgrade in the coming months.
When it comes to drainage improvements, there’s the work the city recently did jointly with North County Transit District along North Vulcan Avenue, and “now east Jason (Street) is not flooding like it was,” he said.
To tackle the homelessness issue, Encinitas has begun contracting with the San Diego Rescue Mission to provide outreach and get people who are living on the streets to accept assistance. That arrangement is improving conditions downtown, the mayor said.
The third goal, increasing local control over large housing development projects, has proved more challenging, but the city is working at the regional level to make changes, Ehlers said.