San Diego’s plan to make it easier to open child care centers in University City, Mira Mesa, Clairemont, Kearny Mesa and Torrey Pines has hit a setback that the City Council is scheduled to confront this fall.
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The council unanimously decided in May to allow child care centers in an area around Marine Corps Air Station Miramar’s airport that’s known as the airport’s transition zone.
The goal was to address a glaring shortage of child care; most of the city is classified by social service agencies as a child care desert.
But the county’s Airport Land Use Commission voted in July to reject the zoning change, based on concerns that large groups of children are more vulnerable during aviation emergencies because they can’t evacuate as smoothly and swiftly.
The commission’s vote forces city planning officials to either abandon the zoning change or ask the council to consider overriding the commission with a supermajority vote — at least six of the council’s nine members.
Planning officials announced Aug. 24 that the council will have an initiation hearing for the overrule roughly six weeks after that announcement — likely sometime in October.
If the council votes then to initiate the overrule, the city’s Planning Commission and then the council will be asked to vote on the overrule itself later in the fall.
The battle between the city and the Airport Land Use Commission, an agency governed by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, comes after years of efforts by city officials to allow more child care facilities.
In 2022, city voters approved a ballot measure to allow child care centers to operate at public parks and in recreation facilities — but none have yet opened in those locations because of funding problems.
Measure H, which was placed on the ballot by the council, won approval from 68% of voters.
San Diego gets praise for trying to solve the problem, but success has been limited, said Courtney Baltiyskyy, vice president of policy & advocacy for the YMCA of San Diego County.
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“We really appreciate the city’s efforts,” she said Monday. “A majority of the city is a child care desert.”
Baltiyskyy said zoning rules have been one of the biggest barriers to addressing the problem.
For years, each of San Diego’s annual land development code updates has included various efforts to soften zoning and other rules governing child care facilities.
The zoning change now in dispute was part of the latest code update, a package of 134 zoning and regulation changes the council approved May 11.
But the child care change is now on hold, primarily because of concerns it would be dangerous to locate a large child care center in the Miramar airport’s transition zone — a large area covering many of the city’s most populated areas.
The airport land use compatibility plan for Miramar is the source of those concerns.
“The ALUCP considers children to be less ambulatory, vulnerable occupants in instances of an aviation emergency, such that swift evacuation would be impeded,” the plan says.
The plan raises similar concerns about schools, prisons and facilities for elderly people.
The city has overruled the Airport Land Use Commission before — particularly to allow taller buildings than recommended in Little Italy, Bankers Hill and other neighborhoods in the transition zone for San Diego International Airport.
The battle over child care zoning comes just as the YMCA launches a new website, childcaresandiego.com, to help families figure out what subsidies they’re eligible for at which facilities.
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