Stocks Detox Continued

SANDAG Ex-Chairman Stocks & Executive Director Gallegos

Jerome Stocks is being removed from everything he controlled in Encinitas and the region.  Stocks falling from grace has come at a pretty steep price tag of misguided notions of legacy in his mayoral capacity and now in his chairmanship of the San Diego Association of Governments primary project.

The most recent failure relates to his trumpeted claims to fame with SANDAG's 250 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), the first of California's Regional Plans to address transportation over the next 40 years. This plan was supposed to comply with the state law requiring its transportation plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next 25 years.

On January 21, 2012 the governor's office and state Attorney General Kamala Harris said "the SANDAG plan didn't go far enough to get San Diego drivers off the road and into buses, trolleys or bike lanes." This reported in Voice of San Diego by Rob Davis.

Next, Senator Kehoe addressed the Attorney General's and the public's criticism in her bill which would have, among other things, put transportation budget monies into the mass transit first.  All of the Interstate 5 widening posts written for Our Mayor can be found here.  The final one from April 27, 2012 meeting speaks to the Kehoe bill opposition Stocks single-handedly muscled through the Encinitas city council via his compliant cronies.

Within a week and despite outdated, non-relevant information, no staff analysis and even after almost 20 public speakers who waited up to 5 hours, some with expert testimony delivered around midnight, the resolution he wrote passed. This whole five hour meeting is the Encinitas machine in motion.

Fast forward to this week's news that San Diego County Superior Court judge upheld a lawsuit challenging the SANDAG

Tuesday's ruling, which mirrored a tentative ruling issued before Thanksgiving, said Sandag’s plan failed to clearly define its effects on greenhouse gasses, how to mitigate them and didn't adequately explain decisions within the plan.

Specifically, Sandag’s environmental review didn’t conform to an executive order issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005.

From KPBS

This is a vindication of the well informed Encinitas citizens who attended meetings and challenged Jerome Stocks and the SANDAG and CalTrans plans to ignore quality of life, community character, public health and climate change in order to maintain the status quo that serves Big Oil above all else.

50:10 alternative plan pdf