The city launched its own council meeting recap this week — a welcome addition to the kind of meeting coverage we’ve been providing. Below is the city’s summary in full, with some added context and notes from Encinitas Action.
🏛️ Council Meeting Recap – August 26, 2026
💬 Quote of the Night
“I believe she has shown too much bias in this category… I personally think she has a common law conflict of interest.”
— Deputy Mayor O’Hara (again), moving to remove sitting Mobility & Traffic Safety commissioner Leigh Ratcliffe from the red-light camera review.
Mayor Ehlers, who appointed her: “I have no problem with Commissioner Ratcliffe. I wouldn’t have put her on the commission if I thought she couldn’t do good work.”
🏛️ The City’s Council Rundown — with Encinitas Action’s notes
⚡ Special Meeting @ 4PM — Roadway Safety & Traffic Enforcement
City Rundown: The discussion focused on strategies to improve traffic safety and address concerns about traffic enforcement throughout Encinitas. As a next step, staff will bring the Local Road Safety Plan and Comprehensive Safety Action Plan to City Council for consideration in the near future. The City Manager will work with the Sheriff’s Department to look into the need, logistics, and funding of adding two additional deputies at the mid-year budget and look into a co-sponsored e-bike safety event, video recorded. Staff will also write a letter to approach other cities within the county to discuss entry points into the city.
📌 What Else? Twenty people spoke. Several were talking about children.
- Laura Russell lives at El Camino del Norte. On the evening of July 10 she heard the thud, the tires, the yelling. By the time she got her shoes on, a 17-year-old had been pronounced dead in an enhanced crosswalk. There is still no public acknowledgment at that site.
- Ron Medak and his son tape-measured the physical evidence at the crossing where 17-year-old Fin Fadick was killed: 71 feet of fresh skid marks.
- Mike Dubransky laid out the number that framed the entire night: 17 pedestrian and cyclist fatalities since 2016. Six since 15-year-old Brodee Champlain-Kingman was hit three years ago. Not one of those locations has been publicly reviewed. His ask was narrow — a public fatality review process.
- Fabian Gonell read back Councilmember Lyndes’s traffic-calming resolution from a year ago, noting that it died without a second. His accounting of the dais that night: one councilmember vehemently opposed, one wanted it both ways, and one “had nothing to say on the issue at all — pretty remarkable considering a child had just died.”
Also Mayor Ehlers revealed the city had not added a single traffic deputy in 15 years before the recent two. Councilmember Lyndes surfaced a number nobody else mentioned — the highest-priority pedestrian crossing projects in the city’s own 2022 plan total only $292,000.
- 🌮 Food For Thought: Six fatalities in three years, zero public location reviews, and a $292,000 shortlist sitting in a plan adopted four years ago. What is actually holding this effort back?
⚡ Regular Meeting @ 6PM
New Rules for Housing on Certain Commercial Sites: ✅Vote: Unanimous
City Rundown: The City Council adopted an ordinance implementing state housing laws AB 2011 and SB 6, for certain housing development on qualifying properties throughout Encinitas. The ordinance also incorporates objective design standards into the Downtown Encinitas and North 101 Corridor Specific Plans. Introduced August 12, adopted August 26.
📌 What Else? This is genuinely proactive work — the city is setting objective design standards before any AB 2011 project arrives. Zero applications have been filed under these laws anywhere in San Diego County.
La Costa Avenue Pedestrian Path: ✅Vote: Unanimous
City Rundown: Council awarded a $1.2 million construction contract for the La Costa Avenue Pedestrian Path Project, improving connectivity and pedestrian access. The contract with Prestige Prime Engineering is for up to $1,197,539.
Environmental Commission & Mobility/Traffic Safety Commission Work Plans
City Rundown: Council received and approved the Environmental Commission Work Plan and the Mobility & Traffic Safety Commission Work Plan for FY 2026-27.
📌 What Else?
- Environmental Commission: ✅Vote 3-1, Deputy Mayor O’Hara abstaining, Mayor Ehlers voting No. The fight was over the SCOOP sand program. Mayor Ehlers wanted it deleted as too narrow. Councilmember San Antonio pushed back.Councilmember Lyndes sided with broadening the item rather than cutting it. The item survived.
- Mobility & Traffic Safety — ✅Vote 4-1, Lyndes voting No. Deputy Mayor O’Hara moved to remove a sitting commissioner from the red-light camera review. Councilmember Lyndes objected on the record and asked the City Attorney to weigh in, calling it “an unfair treatment of a commissioner” — then delivered the parallel that landed: Commissioner Medak is publicly on record opposing bollards and is assigned to the bollard review. O’Hara distinguished the two by pointing to group membership and a social media account. Lyndes negotiated a compromise — add a second commissioner rather than remove the first. It passed anyway, over her no vote.
- 🌮 Food For Thought: Volunteer commissioners are unpaid residents who bring opinions — that’s the entire point of appointing them. If having a documented public position now disqualifies you from an assignment, who’s left to serve?
Development Impact Fees Ordinance: ✅Vote: Unanimous
City Rundown: Council introduced Ordinance 2026-17, updating code provisions governing Development Impact Fees — one-time charges on new development that help fund growth-related public facilities and infrastructure. Returns for second reading September 16, 2026.
📌 What Else? Housekeeping, mostly — but it does add a new 5% program administration fee on all city impact fees. Fee amounts themselves don’t change.
User Fees: ✅Vote: Unanimous. Effective date changed to October 25, 2026.
City Rundown: Council approved updates to city user fees for Planning, Land Development Engineering, and Fire Prevention and Marine Safety following a comprehensive review. Cost recovery increase from approximately 43% to 60%, generating an estimated $1.46 million in additional annual revenue. The new fees take effect October 25, 2026.
📌 What Else? Both resolutions originally said October 1. Resident Fabian Gonell stood up during public comment and pointed out that most of these fees fall under Government Code §66017, which requires a 60-day delay before taking effect. Sixty days from August 26 is October 25. He suspected §66019 — which governs impact fees — had been applied where §66017 controls. The City Attorney’s response, on the record: “I actually was not aware of that issue until now. I would recommend that we just defer the fees till October 25th.”
Evacuation Planning: ✅Vote: Unanimous.
City Rundown: Council directed staff to develop a scoped work plan and preliminary cost estimate for an Evacuation Master Plan. The action follows a council-initiated effort to evaluate tools and technology to analyze evacuation routes and their capacity, safety and viability during emergencies, as required under AB 747.
📌 What Else? The Most Substantive Item of the Night Got 5 Sentences. Chief Gordon’s finding: no software silver bullet exists to analyze evacuation routes. Only the Florida Keys have an objective evacuation time standard, and theirs works because hurricanes give three days’ notice. Encinitas would be doing something genuinely novel.
Council authorized a consultant and required the resulting tool be independently verifiable using public data — no proprietary black boxes — and establish a nexus (a rationale) supporting development impact fees. That last piece is the real play: an objective, defensible standard is how a city gets to “we will not build if it is not safe.”
Genuinely good work by staff and council.
Some Other Highlights:
🎉 Presentations
- 🌿 Escondido Creek Conservancy, 35 years — 7,000+ acres protected in perpetuity, 30,000 students connected to nature, and a donor matching every 2026 gift up to $1 million.
- 🚧 Leucadia Streetscape Segment C — All 4,000 feet of 60″/66″ storm drain pipe is in, installed 30–35 feet deep. Staff directly killed the rumor that this was ever due in June 2025: once the big pipe was added in June 2024, end-of-2026 has always been the target. The contractor is about a month behind on a three-year job — and the city deliberately never shut down Highway 101, which is a large part of why it took this long.
🏛️ City Manager’s Report
- 🛂 Two immigration enforcement incidents. Aug 19 near Leucadia Blvd/El Camino Real — ICE attempted a vehicle stop, driver fled into vegetation, Border Patrol called in to support US Marshals. Aug 23 near Garden View — ICE/Enforcement and Removal Operations targeted operation; subject fled on foot, not apprehended. Sheriff notified both times. Freedom of Information Acts filed by the city.
- ⚠️ Phishing alert: Scammers are emailing fake city permit invoices. An Encinitas business paid nearly $6,000 last week before catching it. The city will never request payment by email, wire, crypto, or payment app.
⚖️ Closed session: Council voted 5-0 to initiate litigation over unpermitted construction at 2000 Playa Riviera Drive — the compound-style encampment neighbors have been reporting for months.
📅 Coming Up
- Red light cameras discussion: September 9
- Impact fee code adoption: September 16
- Full Climate Action Plan review: September 16 or 23
Wednesday’s meetings were a reminder that some of the most consequential decisions don’t arrive with much fanfare — they emerge in work plans, fee schedules, safety studies and debates over who gets a seat at the table. Those details matter, and we’ll keep following them.
Thanks for reading — and thank you for paying attention to Encinitas government!
–Encinitas Action