Santee Town Center

By Mike Allen

Photo:  Santee Fire Department responding in 2023

March 1, 2025 (Santee) -- The chaos and disruption happening daily at the federal government isn’t permeating to the local level in Santee, where the City Council took several significant actions this week, including funding the remaining balance on a $2 million temporary fire station, adopting a new specific plan for its Town Center area, and hearing that its finances are in sterling shape.

The East County city of 60,000 has long acknowledged that it lacks adequate fire protection, making due with the same two fire stations that existed decades ago. At the prompting of the local firefighters’ union last November, the Council unanimously backed their plan to raise some $54 million through a half-cent sales tax increase and bond issuance to build two new stations, and hire additional staff.

Santee voters rejected the idea, forcing the Council to address the issue without imposing new taxes on the public.

The temporary station, which converted a maintenance operations yard to a fire station off Olive Lane, was approved in 2023, and is close to completion. Initially, the Council appropriated $1 million for the temporary station, but the final bill will be about twice that amount.

To finish the project, the Council allocated some $425,000 it still had left of federal stimulus funding to go with earlier allocations and transfers. The contract was awarded to Horizons Construction Co. of Orange, CA, the same one that did the living quarters building.

The slew of provisions contained in the vote gives Fire Chief Justin Matsushita the power to make change orders to a maximum of $151,000 or 15 percent of the contract, which will be done in a design-build mode.

The action triggered little comment from the five elected officials except from Councilman Rob McNelis who said he was under the impression the new financing arrangement would result in a surplus to the city. Matsushita said he didn’t recall stating that.

The new station will provide much better response times to calls emanating from the southern part of Santee, and relieve pressure on the city’s two aging stations, one on Carlton Oaks Drive, and the other on Cottonwood Avenue. The overwhelming number of calls are for medical emergencies. Of the total 919 calls the Santee Fire Dept responded to in January, 708 were medical related, and only 18 involved fire, according to numbers posted on the department’s Facebook page.

In other actions, the Council adopted a revised Town Center Specific Plan, setting a framework of planning concepts for the city’s core section, roughly bounded on the north by Mast Boulevard, on the south by Mission Gorge Road, on the east by Magnolia Avenue, and on the west just past Town Center Drive. Hired consultant Mark Steele said the vision that developed from several public workshops held in Santee was for “an American village” with five distinct neighborhoods anchored by an Arts and Entertainment neighborhood.

Mayor John Minto said adopting the new plan that replaces the first specific plan of 1986 is one more step in a process of transforming the city to having “communities and amenities that are just dynamic enough for people to want to be here.”

Santee has been trying to change its image in recent years as not just a convenient shopping destination, but for enjoying the benefits of a concentrated group of restaurants, art galleries, and live performing venues that would attract both residents and visitors, as well as generate more sales tax revenue through visitors’ spending.

For the most part, that effort has failed. A lynchpin project, a Karl Strauss brewery/restaurant/office complex along the San Diego River behind Trolley Square approved more than a decade ago, was downsized to a tasting room, and even that is still in limbo. A combined movie theater/restaurant project called Studio Movie Grill planned to go next to Karl Strauss didn’t happen when the company went bankrupt. And a 97-room hotel at Trolley Square that was approved in 2023 got mired in litigation, and hasn’t broken ground.

The city’s longstanding summer concert series at Town Center Community Park is successful in drawing folks, and the city continues to bring in new restaurants, but some venues that have shuttered several years ago such as Mimi’s remain closed.

At least the city’s financial condition remains well in the black. In a report on the soon to be completed 2024-25 fiscal year, Finance Director Heather Jennings said the city should end up with a balance on its general fund of $16.7 million from a budget of about $64 million at the end of June. That essentially is a net profit on its revenues after paying expenses and provides Santee with an envious reserve balance of 27 percent of the total, well above a target threshold on reserves of 22 percent.

Among the main contributors to the city’s heftier balance sheet are some $206,000 more in property taxes that was projected; about $235,000 more in sales taxes; and $436,000 more in interest income. It is also saving money from job vacancies not being filled to the tune of $1 million, Jennings said in her report.

 Among the unexpected expenditures listed in the report but not commented upon was $61,470 for “materials and supplies related to a cyber incident.”