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June 20, 2014
T he C oast News
By Promise Yee
Vista Community Clinic has two clinics in close proximity to the fitness club, which is housed in the Junior Seau Center on Country Club Lane. Stamm said the clinic would be looking for ways to further integrate the fitness club into its wellness services. Right now the focus is on reopening the facility for seniors and community members to work out. “We’re hopeful paperwork will be completed this week,” Stamm said. Club 55 has three rooms Club 55 has been closed with no notice of when it will reopen. Fitness club members want to get back to their of cardio equipment, free
Club 55 for seniors set to reopen June 23
OCEANSIDE — The popular Club 55 fitness center for seniors has been temporarily closed for more than a month due to changes in its fiscal management. During this time club members have been left in the dark about why the club had been closed and when it would reopen. “Friends and I are puzzled about it,” club member Don Bendickson said. “It closed six weeks ago, with no explanation.” Bendickson would routinely workout from 10 a.m. to noon. “I’m dearly missing it, as do friends,” he said. The prior manager gave minimal notification to members who paid annual dues through July 1. The new manager, Vista Community Clinic, is just getting up to speed with securing necessary insurance and permits to reopen the club. The partnership agreement between Vista Community Clinic, which will serve as the fiscal agency; the Boys & Girls Club, that operates
workouts. Photo by Promise Yee
the building; and the city, that finances operations, was reached on June 2. Vista Community Clinic was asked to manage the fitness club after the previous fiscal manager came to the end of its agreement with the Boys & Girls Club and the city. Without a new fiscal manager the fitness club would have been shut down permanently. Nannette Stamm, direc-
weights and exercise machines. Current fitness club memberships will be honored through July 1. continuing Then, and new members will be charged the ongoing annual fee of $55 to use the club. “We’re happy to be partnering with the city of Oceanside and Boys & Girls Club,” Stamm said. “We’ll be opening very soon and apologize for any gap in service.” Club 55 is scheduled to reopen June 23. Hours of operation will be from 7 to 11 a.m., and 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
tor of Vista Community Clinic health promotion center, said Vista Community Clinic has not notified members on the new management agreement, or the anticipated opening date. As of June 16, no signage is posted to inform members when it will reopen. “We just took it over from the previous fiscal agency,” Stamm said. “It didn’t happen as smoothly as it could have.”
Planning Commission will look at proposed cell tower ordinance By Aaron Burgin
SAN MARCOS — San Marcos has proposed new regulations it says would discourage cell and communications towers from popping up near homes and farmland, but local activists say the rules don’t go far enough. The city’s Planning Commission will discuss the proposed telecommunications facilities ordinance at its June 30 meeting. The debate over the proliferation of cell towers in the city heated up last fall when a homeowner in the San Elijo Hills community sought approval for a second, 35-foot-tall microwave tower on his property. Neighbors protested the proposal, which prompted the City Council to direct staff to draft the proposed regulations. The city has hosted several workshops since January, using the feedback to fine-tune the rules. The proposed rules encourage wireless applications to locate new antennas on existing towers, rather than build new ones, and discourages new towers in residential, ridgeline, environmentally sensitive and agricultural land. A wireless company seeking to erect a tower in an area the city discourages would have to provide technical proof that the location is necessary to bridge a significant gap in coverage and is the only location possible to do so. Opponents, however, said the proposal falls short in two significant areas — it doesn’t set a min-
imum distance between cell towers and homes and doesn’t mandate wireless companies to install newer, smaller, less intrusive tower technology. John Signorino, one of the neighbors spearheading the opposition, said homeowners would “sleep better at night” if the city
I can tell you that our ordinance in its current draft form is on the safe side of the line of not violating the law, but that line is not very far away.” Jonathan Kramer Legal Expert
required a 1,000 foot buffer between towers and homes. “If you are going to use the old technology, which is intrusive and dangerous, then have reasonable distance requirements from homes or schools,” Signorino said. “This ordinance doesn’t do either of these things.” A wireless law expert who has helped the city craft the ordinance said
the reason that cities can’t adopt such restrictions is because federal law doesn’t allow it. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 specifically says that a municipality can’t prohibit or create provisions that would effectively serve as a ban. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this provision in a later case, when it ruled that a local government would be violating the law if it did not allow a wireless company to close a significant coverage gap. Federal law also prohibits cities from prohibiting certain cell tower technologies outright. Cities can require the companies to provide a “high level of proof” to justify placing the towers in a residential area, and regulate the aesthetic features, said Jonathan Kramer, the legal expert who has helped several cities — including San Marcos — craft their wireless tower guidelines. San Marcos law does require wireless companies to camouflage and disguise towers to the furthest extent possible, as well as encourage towers to be placed on city rightof-way before other locations are explored. “I can tell you that our ordinance in its current draft form is on the safe side of the line of not violating the law, but that line is not very far away,” Kramer said. “We know from court decisions how far we can go. So we are staying within the bounds of the current level of the law.”
Coming June 20 to
VISTA, SAN MARCOS & ESCONDIDO
The CoasT News Inland Edition
The Inland Edition, the same as its sister publications: The Coast News and the Rancho Santa Fe News, will be a free on-demand publication and be available for pick up in racks and newsstands in almost high-traffic locations.
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The same award-winning reporting that has covered the coastal North County communities for more than 25 years is expanding this month with a brand new publication to include the inland communities of Escondido, San Marcos and Vista. The debut issue of the bi-weekly, The Coast News Inland Edition, which has set the goal of giving inland North County the news coverage it deserves, will reach readers starting June 20.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL
760.436.9737