• The Jello Is Jiggling for Bob Devine

 
This game's in the refrigerator: the door is closed, the lights are out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard, and the Jell-O's jigglin'!
— Chick Hearn

Or if you prefer Dandy Don Meredith's rendition of "Turn out the lights, the party's over, all good things must come to an end..." click the image to relive the magic.

Hut, hut... hike!

It was unceremoniously revealed on Tuesday Jan. 7th, through Martha Bridge's blog,  TheWildomarWatcher , that Planning Commissioner, Bob Devine, tendered his resignation.

As you probably know, each of the planning commissioners is nominated by one of the Council Members (CM). Bob Devine was tied to Bob Cashman (the only council member I've yet to meet). The other Council Member/Planning Commissioner combos go like this.

• Bridgette Moore/Bobby Swann
• Ben Benoit/Stan Smith
• Tim Walker/Veronica Langworthy
• Marsha Swanson/Michael Kazmier's recently vacated seat. 

I've only been going to the Planning Commission meetings since August. I started off rooting for Bob Devine. I liked his contrarian approach. He was holding the line against builders wanting to put apartments in commercial areas, and saying no to CFDs (basically Mello-Roos in another form).

My esteem for him took a hit when he appeared to be ok with playing chicken with the State of California over a deadline they set for Wildomar to send in our Official Housing Element. 

Click this link to see my summary of his interaction with Planning Director Matthew Bassi and Assistant City Attorney Erica Vega.

Then in the most recent Planning Commission meeting he really gaffed in my opinion, especially considering he's been on the Planning Commission from day one, dating back in 2008. The issue was about approving a few trailers at the Grace Point Church on Canyon Drive. 

Grace Point Church, with trailers easy to see... Thanks Google!

He divulged that he didn't know that an adjacent housing tract had already been built... and it had been up for about two years, or that the trailers in question were already on the property, just awaiting approval for installation.

Grace Point Church with a fully built and lived in neighborhood directly to the left.

It was in his own general part of the city, and yet he didn't even drive by the church to get a first hand look at it. Sorry, but that is not good representation for our city, and I'm glad he's stepped down. Thank you for the time you put in, but it's time to give the seat to someone eager to do the whole job.

Gotta love the classy way he did it too:

by email.

Though he'd sent it in last Friday, to his CM Bob Cashman, who happens to have a reputation for slow response to email, the City Manager Gary Nordquist and the Planning Director Matthew Bassi had to learn of this through the blogosphere.

How does that look to you? It sure doesn't look good to me when the first anyone hears of such a thing comes from three unofficial sources... not known for their objectivity.

According to one regular attendee of the Planning Commission (PC) meetings Bob Devine was heard to state, unequivocally, at a PC meeting, that he would not vote for new developments. He also was heard to say he would never vote to reduce the amount of business park zoned properties, despite the lack of interest from developers for such projects here. Again, according to a regular attendee of of the PC meetings, he made these opinions public and should be in the recordings of the meetings.  

 

He also caused a huge commotion at a city council meeting where he was quoting a blog by Kenny Mayes, seen on the Patch, that happened to be factually inaccurate. That he wished he could change his vote from the previous PC meeting, then he ended up storming out while he audibly was mentioning something about bovine excreta. 

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That leaves us two vacant seats out of five on the PC, though I've heard there is one qualified applicant for the seat that Michael Kazmier previously had. Let's just hope that the next two people to take this job understand the commitment involved. That the job is not only for a specified span of years, but that it takes a lot of reading, and they need to physically go to the various projects that they will be evaluating and voting on. Wildomar simply isn't so big that you can't take a car ride to the proposed site and check it out. If that's too much for you, please don't apply.

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