RB Residents Question Welcome Sign Voting Process, Influence of Business Community

The continued Thursday as residents questioned many aspects of  the voting, including whether business leaders are manipulating the process to get the design choice they want.

The questions came during Thursday night's Rancho Bernardo Community Council meeting, which also included a presentation about child sex trafficking in the county and the appointment of a new council member.

The night's primary discussion centered around Tuesday's controversial decision by the Refresh RB Committee not to move forward on a new community welcome sign using the design concept that received the most votes in a recent survey.

Because the voting results were so close—Concept C beat out the second choice by just 30 votes—the committee felt the winner was too close to call with the possible margin of error in the survey, committee member Jack Straw said. Concept C received 310 out of 824 total votes, or 37.6 percent; 34 percent for B; 28.4 percent for A.

Straw also is the community representative for Councilman Carl DeMaio's office, which is helping facilitate the project. The committee, after initially excluding Concept C from the next phase, is now considering a runoff between Concept C—a traditional design similar to the sign destroyed last year by a motorist—and a new contemporary design blending Concepts A and B.

The committee took the results, with nearly two-thirds choosing the more contemporary A and B concepts, to mean that most people wanted a contemporary design, even if no majority agreed on which particular one, members have said.

It also was suggested that having two contemporary designs up against one traditional design may have split the contemporary vote, in the same way having two Democratic candidates running against a Republican might give the latter an edge in the voting.

But no one mentioned a margin of error during the first round of voting in October, and there were four times as many votes this time, community council member Estelle Wolf said.

"Rules can't change to come up with the results somebody wants," Wolf said.

Straw also was questioned about the survey being only online, excluding residents who don't use computers; adding a new design in a runoff; the difference in quality between the contemporary A and B concepts, and the hand-sketched Concept C; and about not accepting as final the design with the most votes.

Straw said DeMaio will not support any process that does not include Concept C, since that received the most votes. But it does not seem that the original option—going with the design with the most votes in the survey—is still on the table.

As for concerns over undue influence by the business community, some wondered whether the business owners want a more contemporary look and are pushing for a runoff to give a contemporary design another chance to win. The plan is to have signage along the Bernardo Center Drive business corridor that matches the welcome sign on Rancho Bernardo Road. The welcome sign will be paid for by an insurance settlement from the accident that destroyed the former sign; the business owners will be responsible for the cost of the corridor signage and are free to choose a non-matching design.

Neither Larry McIntrye, the head of the Rancho Bernardo Business Association, nor Ron Bamberger, head of Boardwalk Development, Inc., were at the meeting to respond. Both are part of the Refresh RB Committee. McIntyre, who has a background in design, is supposed to be designing the blended contemporary design for the runoff vote, .

No final decisions have been made and the committee next meets March 8. Several suggestions were made to make the voting accessible to those with and without computers, including: holding voting exclusively at the Hats Off to Volunteers event at Webb Park on April 16; placing ballots in local newspapers and having people mail them in; allowing people to vote online or by mail. Straw said options with paper ballots are likely cost-prohibitive.

Other Notes

• Manolo Guillén of the ACTION Network was the meeting's guest speaker, discussing child sex trafficking in San Diego County. "A child is not a prostitute—a child is prostituted," Guillén said as he described the different types of pimps who lure or force children into prostitution. Guillén urged parents to be aware of where their children are and who they are hanging out with. Even children from suburban areas who aren't having major troubles at home are vulnerable to pimps, he said.
• Patrick Horgan was appointed to represent District A (Westwood/Casa) on the Community Council.
• Fire Capt. Justus Norgord from in RB said the department has been responding to chimney fires recently and urged residents to clean their chimneys and keep the fires small.

Editor's Note: The Hats Off to Volunteers event is scheduled for April 16, not April 9.