Wildomar Approves Spending $255K To Clean Up City, Train Planning Commissioners, Update General Plan

Wildomar made some budget adjustments Wednesday night that signal the city is moving forward.

For starters, some properties in Wildomar have become trash dumps, and the city is saying “no more.”

With a 5-0 vote Wednesday night, the Wildomar City Council approved spending an additional $40,000 to clean up the city.

The money will be split over a two-year period beginning with the current fiscal year, and will be used to pay “costs associated with the removal of excessive debris, rubble, hazardous materials and other items from properties that are not in compliance with the Municipal Code,” according to city documents.

The money would be spent on “high priority code enforcement cases” that require abatement. Clean-up projects would be managed by the city’s Code Enforcement Department “utilizing the services of a professional geologist, contractor, hauler and/or hazardous waste removal company,” city documents show.

Citizen complaints helped drive the decision to allocate added funding for abatement, according to the documents.

The city will seek reimbursement of costs from property owners.

The move to approve the $40,000 was part of a resolution to amend the 2013-14 fiscal year budget. As part of the unanimous approval, the go-ahead was also given to spend an added $205,000 to prepare a general plan update/environmental impact report to the city’s existing general plan.

When the city incorporated in July 2008, it adopted the county’s general plan. With an update, the general plan will be strictly a Wildomar document, according to City Manager Gary Nordquist.

The resolution approved Wednesday also provides that $10,300 be allocated for training of Wildomar planning commissioners. Specifically, the money will be used to send the five commissioners and the city’s planning director to the March 2014 League of California Cities Planning Commissioner’s Academy in San Francisco.