There are two open seats for the City of Lemon Grove, and Seth Smith, a Democrat, is running against Sitivi “Steve” Faiai, Jessica “Jessyka” Heredia, and incumbent Councilmember George Gastil. Smith, an architectural designer, moved to Lemon Grove in 2010, and since then graduated cum laude at NewSchool of Architecture San Diego, and has worked in architecture design with a minor in urban design. For the past six years, the 35-year-old has been on the Lemon Grove Planning Commission, chairing the commission over the past year. Smith volunteered to teach archery over summer vacations SEP Summer Camp before the pandemic, and recently began working with the Busy Bee Garden Co-op in Lemon Grove.
“I decided to run for City Council because of my experience as a planning commissioner,” he said. “I have been grateful to serve my community in that capacity. We have been dealing with zoning and land use, Lemon Grove’s general plan has not been updated since 1996. I think if I am on City Council we can really focus on getting that general plan updated, allocating staff resources and time doing that. Expand our downtown specific plan and focus on what we want as a community to make Lemon Grove the best and brightest that it can be. Unfortunately, we have not had the resources to do that. I am really feeling called from my time on the commission to do more, give more, in my capacity of just what the planning commission does.”
Smith said this year, with Measure T, a one-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot, he hopes if it passes, with its resources, Council will be able to update the codes in its general plan.
“This measure is supposed to generate between 5 and 6 million. Out of the sales taxes generated in Lemon Grove, one percent of that stays in the city and the rest goes to the county. It doubles the revenues coming into the city which will be hugely advantageous for us in being able to provide services in the city that we have been lacking,” he said.
Smith said this time with the tax measure, much more outreach has been done with the residents, with the city bringing on a consulting firm, and its findings say there is about a 69% approval rating from voters in Lemon Grove for the measure after its surveys.
Smith said he thinks the top priorities in Lemon Grove are updating the general plan, expanding its Downtown Village specific plan, and bringing zoning ordinances.
“We were the only city recently to meet our Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers and I think when you keep going down that track, we need to make sure we are getting those homes built and focus on policies that are going to bring homes to Lemon Grove for residents and homes that are going to be attainable for the residents,” he said. “We are getting a very large portion of housing numbers for our size as a city. I am in favor of transit-oriented development, hav¬ing more density around transit stops. I think Lemon Grove can be a little bit of everything for everyone and we have places where we can put in mixed-use, four over one. Four stories of residential over one story of commercial next to the Broadway corridor and the freeway and trolley stop.”
Smith said but the city also wants to maintain its identity as a small community with its single-family homes, and the city has the room to do both.
Smith said the city needs to work on its infrastructure.
“Many cities across the state and nation are all behind on their infrastructure, and another thing that I think that the tax measure can do is to get our streets paved, fix our drainage and sewer,” he said. “As we saw at the beginning of this year, we need to work out some things, so we do not have the flooding that we did if we were to be hit with another storm of that caliber. And we need to bring some updated standards for our sidewalks in our community. Much of the time, developers will build sidewalks, and we want them appropriate for what we want in our community.”
Smith said the unsheltered population in Lemon Grove is growing, largely because the city of San Diego passed its encampment ban.
“We need to work together with the other cities in East County to develop how we are going to deal with this situation. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with our neighboring cities, and we need to work on peeling down how we are going to share our resources and possibilities to get people from being unsheltered, to be sheltered and once again back on their feet,” he said.
Smith said he feels it is unfortunate that there is such a division now on City Council and believes much of it could be avoided if people spoke to each other respectfully and followed Robert’s Rules of Order.
“It should not be that hard to resolve,” he said. “Personally, I have a good relationship with Councilmember George Gastil, Mayor Raquel Vasquez, Councilmember Jennifer Mendoza, and Councilmember Alysson Snow. I know them all from my time on the planning commission and I work well with them.”
