Santee Mayor John Minto, R, 66, is seeking another term as mayor for the City of Santee. Minto has been on the Santee City Council since 2003, elected as a council member, and has been serving as mayor since 2016. Minto has lived in Santee since 1992, growing up in East County. At the age of 22, the Republican left his job at San Diego Gas & Electric and entered the police academy in 1980 and had a 29-year career as a San Diego Police Officer and Detective.
Minto said he has approximately 50 years of experience of public service including his time as a police officer for the city of San Diego.
“I have been involved with the biggest California cities for the entire 22 years that I have been on City Council. I teach new mayors and council members throughout the state of California the basics of how to do their jobs, and work with council members. I teach about collaboration in councils also. This has given me extremely good education on how a city should work in government, especially in the state of California.”
Minto said in obtaining that knowledge, he applied that to the community’s frustration with the CA SR 52 congestion.
“I had an idea that we could probably redesign the freeway between Cuyamaca Street and Interstate 15, so I began to get our team to lobby federal government, state government, SANDAG, and in six years we went from concept to construction. You see that today as you drive down the 52, and it started by relieving traffic congestion east-bound to the I-15. No one has ever done that before. That demonstrates the ability to collaborate with federal and state governments,” he said.
Minto said his goal in the next four years is to calm the traffic congestion on the westward side of SR 52 so people going to work in the morning have a little more relief in travel time.
“Statistics show that about 25% of travel time will be decreased,” he said.
Minto said since the 1960s and 70s, the city has dealt with propositions of building the Fanita Ranch community, with most of the time being privately owned.
“In the early days it was about 2,600 acres. I understand that is close to the size of the city of Lemon Grove, and 30,000 were proposed at that time. Through the years, through lawsuits and environmental concerns, it has been whittled down to the latest proposal of nearly 3,000 homes, which is a significant difference. Each of those proposals had the position of building a fire station, where we could staff it and have more coverage on the north end of Santee,” he said. “Because of lawsuits over the years this never took place. We had redevelopment money to build a new fire station at the northeast end, and in 2012, Gov. Jerry Brown took away redevelopment agencies and all the monies were taken away. It is not because we did not want a new fire station and better fire stations, but every time we got ready to pull the trigger, something came along to undermine.”
Minto said Measure S, a half-cent measure on the November ballot to be used for infrastructure improvements, including the construction of fire stations and the addition of firefighter position, initiated by the Santee Firefighters Association, is a very well put together tax initiative.
“Although our council is not in favor of tax initiatives, this one is done so well, it is hard to say no. It has a 15-year sunset. It has an oversight committee, and it allows it to be paid off early. In my knowledge, no other tax initiative has been so well put together,’ he said.
Minto said Fanita Ranch was a very well put together design this time by HomeFed Corporation.
“There were challenges. Most of the challenges were on fire mitigation. We have placements in this design with the strongest fire mitigation programs in the country,” he said.
Minto said the new fire mitigation does not focus on larger regions, but rather focuses down to one or two blocks that might need to be evacuated in an emergency, which prevents bottlenecking, which would prevent people from not being able to evacuate an emergency area.
“The state of California has made it clear that we must start building new homes in our cities. That means if we do not build homes, they have a mechanism to build new homes. The executive order from the governor, and an order from the County of San Diego, and some other bills that have come down over the past years take the development out of the hands of local government and lets them build as many homes as they like. We created our Central Housing Ordinance, which uses points of authority, using the laws that have passed over the past three to four years. That would straight-line the building process a little more. We have a judge that said that this does not go with our General Plan, so we are still waiting for the ruling outcome will be.
Minto said the judge can rule to go back to square one and start over, which would cost the city millions of dollars.
“My belief is that it should be appealed. Our City Council will make the final decision on that. We have been indemnified by HomeFed, so they will be paying for that bill. I believe it will be overturned because the judge struck down the state laws. My question is does that mean it will be struck down by the state of California or the county of San Diego, and are they constitutionally correct or not? There are many questions that really should be answered on a street-wide level versus a county level. Because what it does is it is going to turn back all those laws and executive orders five years to back where we were. The state’s housing division will start finding municipalities to reach their housing needs assessments. They have already made that very clear,” he said.
Minto said fines for not complying could be up to $50,000, until the city complies.
“As long as courts continuously strike down housing developments, we will never be able to comply with these laws,” he said.
Minto said if developers went by state law, they could build a street on their property, line it with bus stops, and build 300,000 homes, without having to go through City Council.
“As long as they put it near a transit stop, they can do almost anything they want. How is that better than what is proposed, when we are asking that they comply with what our community wants? Nobody wants to see that kind of development. Look at what is going on in Mission Valley. There are thousands and thousands of homes there. Our idea is to do this in a balanced, fair manner. Environmentalists do not want to see it. I do not believe they are environmentalists. They are obstructionists,” he said.
