RB Planning Board Cancels May Meeting; Welcome Sign Decision Pushed to June

The Rancho Bernardo Planning Board will not meet in May due to a lack of agenda items, it was announced late Monday.

The group was scheduled to meet May 19.

Board Chair Teri Denlinger said the only significant item was a vote on the welcome sign design, and the board's executive committee did not consider that reason enough to meet. The board's last meeting, on April 21, stretched until 10 p.m. with discussion about the welcome sign but no decision.

At that meeting, board members asked Refresh RB—the volunteer committee coordinating the sign project—to create a "cut sheet" to better show what the final sign would look like. Denlinger on Monday said she had not yet heard whether that had been created.

Refresh RB was scheduled to meet Tuesday morning to discuss—and possibly change—the design it recommended after throwing out the results of two online polls. That design—mostly contemporary with elements of a traditional design choice—has been said to be architecturally unsound, a problem to be addressed at Tuesday's Refresh RB meeting.

But by the time the Planning Board next meets in June, there may be a different sign in the running. The RB Community Council has called a special meeting Wednesday to vote on a different sign created by its Maintenance and Assessment District (MAD) Committee. Some community members were unhappy with Refresh RB's recommendation, which was not a design the community voted on, so the Council accepted new submissions.

The original plan was for Refresh RB to select a design based on community voting, then submit that choice to the Council and Planning Board for final approval.

The MAD Committee, at its last meeting, made changes to one of the submissions to create its own recommendation. That is the sign to be voted on during the Wednesday meeting. Denlinger said the Planning Board, too, will be able to consider that choice since it won't be meeting until after the Council has its say.

The Planning Board typically meets the week before the Council and, without the special meeting, wouldn't have been able to include the Council's choice in its May meeting. The Council, however, will not be considering Refresh RB's choice at its Wednesday meeting.

It's not clear what will happen if the two groups do not agree on a design.

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