By TIMOTHY NEIPP
News Review Staff Writer
    In an uncharacteristic decision, the Ridgecrest City Council (by a 4-0 vote) refused to accept Carole Vaughn’s request to appeal the Ridgecrest Planning Commission’s rejection of her proposed 80-acre Mountain’s Edge residential development.
    Mayor Pro Tem Steve Morgan abstained from voting after voicing his opinion that the appeal should be heard.
    “The one thing that I’ve asked is that the facts be looked at. The one thing I don’t believe at this point in time is that the facts have been considered at all,” said Vaughn speaking to councilmembers. She said the objection that her project would interfere with the mission of China Lake was unsupported by the Navy’s own documents on land use planning around military installations.
    Planning Commission Chair Mike Biddlingmeier said commissioners weighed the input of the Navy in making their decision but that the primary reason for rejecting the project was that it would be incompatible with the city’s general plan.
    “As your chairman, I think we have it right,” he said. “I think rezoning this property so that higher density can occur will compromise our current general plan and will not be compatible with our new general plan of tomorrow.”
    Councilmembers, however, said the Navy’s letter (signed by Naval Air Weapons Station Commanding Officer Capt. Mick Gleason and dated June 8, 2006) constituted a primary reason for rejecting Vaughn’s request for appeal.
    The Navy’s letter cites “over-flight noise and inherent flight safety concerns” as reasons for suggesting that the city leave the zoning (40,000 square-foot minimum lot size) for Vaughn’s land unchanged.
    “The city has submitted eight [development] proposals to the Navy,” Mayor Chip Holloway pointed out. “The Navy had no comment on or concern with seven of the proposals. Yet the Navy had concern on one proposal – only one proposal.”
    Vaughn said she is puzzled why her proposed project is such a concern to the Navy when it is positioned nearly six miles from Armitage Field with many existing developments located between her land and the base.
“The California Department of Transportation Aeronautical Division has a 416-page document that tells you how to plan around airports,” explained Biddlingmeier. “There are specific paragraphs that tell you how to deal with military installations. They want at a minimum a 30,000-foot military influence area from the departure end of the runway and a minimum 50,000-foot arrival or approach area.”
    “If [Vaughn’s project] is such a negative impact, what I would like to see is the base to work with the city to acquire property that is of concern so we won’t have this issue again because this is going to continue to come up time after time as this city tries to grow,” said Morgan.
“This is the pinhead of a problem because if you take the 30,000 feet and the 50,000 feet that was just described to you, half the town shouldn’t have been built and we should start figuring out how to move people from those areas…
“And though personally I know it’s going to go down in flames, I think we ought to accept this appeal, and we ought to get those questions answered for our community.”
“As someone who has dealt with the Navy intimately for the last three years I have learned there are some questions the Navy just isn’t going to answer,” Holloway responded.
“I continue to be somewhat frustrated not because I don’t understand where the Navy’s coming from but because I can’t educate the community well enough as to where the Navy’s coming from…”
Holloway said there is a danger in looking too closely at the questions Morgan posed. “Do we really want to go down a path to prove that this community is in harm’s way and create this big image in this community that we might have a problem with what this base does? … BRAC [base realignment and closure] is not going away and we’re going to be in this battle every five years from what I understand.”
“It’s time to end this,” said Councilman Ron Carter. “I like Carole very much. I know the amount of time and money that [she has] put into this. But we need to end this. I’m in favor of denying the appeal and supporting the planning commission.”
“For us to accept this appeal, we have to have a reasonable chance for us to change our minds – that we’re going to go against what we heard from our planning commission, and I don’t see that as happening,” said Councilman Dan Clark.
“I don’t think there’s been any other occasion where we didn’t accept an appeal,” Holloway said. “But I also don’t think there’s been any other occasion where council became engaged in the process from Day 1. So I feel very comfortable that everybody’s had their day in court.”
People from Patuxent River, Pt. Mugu and the Pentagon are watching Ridgecrest officials closely for how they respond to land use directives from China Lake, he added.
“This air corridor is pristine territory unlike any found in the entire world. And you wouldn’t believe this, but there are commanders at other bases that are genuinely jealous of this corridor and this asset. For their own personal interest they’d like to damage that air corridor…  So, there are people within the Navy that would like to see us make a poor decision…
“I have traveled to Washington four times in the last three years and have committed to very high ranking officials in the Department of Defense and the Pentagon that this community fully supports the mission…
“I assure you that there are high-ranking officials on the base that are just as frustrated that we have to take this stance [on Vaughn’s project]. But that corridor is pristine and that corridor will protect this community and protect the viability of the base and I’m not going to be that councilman that messes up that corridor…
“I think you will get a 5-0 headshake that we will try to find some way to make this viable for both you and this community,” added Holloway, speaking to Vaughn. “It does us no good to let the land sit there raw and not be developed, but we are not going to develop it in this manner, and that’s the end of the discussion as far as I’m concerned.”
Vaughn is less optimistic that a compromise is possible. If her only option for the Mountain’s Edge property is to build homes on one-acre lots, the land will simply remain undeveloped, she said in a recent interview with the News Review.
“The Carole Vaughn issue was terrible in the sense that it lasted so long,” said Holloway. “There were a lot of things that could have been done better.”
“I feel the frustration that Ms. Vaughn has. At the end of the day, I think the planning commission did yeomen’s work. I think this council did yeomen’s work. I think everybody stayed engaged. Even the Navy tried as much as they could. They’re restricted too.
“It illustrated some flaws, and it illustrated why we need a general plan update, why we need a joint land use study, why we need a specific land use plan. And hopefully 18 months from now this type of issue will never happen in this community again.”