December 2022
Greetings!!! We hope you are all doing well and enjoying the holiday season.
You are Invited to our First Meet and Greet
We are having our first “Meet and Greet” on Tuesday December 20th from 4-6 at the Santos Pecados Todos Santos Restaurant in the garden patio. We hope you can come and meet your fellow Protect Todos Santos members and learn about our efforts to protect our pueblo from overdevelopment. The restaurant is located on Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon one block south of Baja Tasty Ice Cream. Appetizers will be served.
At the event we will be providing an update in both English and Spanish on all that’s happening now with regard to development and what we are going to be working on going forward.
If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Gail Bosch at boschgail@gmail.com. We hope to see you there.
Permit Issued for Dune Lot on Vista Ballenas Amid Protests
A building permit was issued by the permit department in La Paz to Eddie Ogden for a two story 4,000 square foot house on the dune on Calle Vista Ballenas. Ed Ogen is the main developer of the 90 dune lots along the coast in Las Tunas and San Sebastian. We immediately assembled over 100 people to protest at the Cultural Center in Todos Santos at a meeting on November 29th.. The meeting was intended to discuss a municipality wide new PDU. However, when our Delegado Javier Salgado who was at the meeting, heard about the dune permit he immediately called the authorities in La Paz to voice his concern. The protest and his phone call got the immediate attention of the municipality, and they called a special meeting two days later on December 1st. The meeting was led by the President of La Paz, Milena Paola Quiroga Romero, and attended by our Attorney John Moreno and members of Protect Todos Santos along with the Deputy Director of SERMANAT, the Mexican environmental ministry.
At the meeting it was agreed that the permit was issued by mistake because it ignored our development plan’s ban on dune construction. Unfortunately, the authorities in La Paz would not pull the permit so we held another larger protest with over 150 people at the construction site on Friday December 2nd.
Currently Attorney Moreno is filing lawsuits against the people who issued the permit and the municipality itself. We are hoping the court will issue an injunction to stop the project.
Stay tuned.
New Illegal Projects Spring Up in Las Tunas
Las Tunas, along with most of the coastline is zoned RT “Residential Tourist” which means it is zoned mostly for single-family homes. Boutique hotels are allowed, but the limit is 10 rooms per hectare of land. A hectare is about 2.5 acres meaning only one hotel room is allowed per quarter acre of land.
There is one project under construction near the end of Calle Mango on what appears to be one acre that includes 8 units. In addition, there are two projects being built on Vista Ballenas just south of the intersection with International. Both happen to be directly across from the homes built on the dunes. These projects mark what could be a disturbing trend of small hotel-sized rooms in Todos Santos in the RT-zoned areas on single lots and renting them out on VRBO.
Most of the lawsuits filed so far have been funded by affected neighbors, but these types of projects affect all of us. We are hoping you will consider making an online donation to our organization so John Moreno can continue his work to stop these and future illegal dune construction projects impacting our community.
Construction Zoning and Environmental Protection Rules for the Todos Santos Region Coastal Areas Are Now Posted on our Website
Since most of the violations of our zoning rules that we are aware of are occurring in the coastal region of Todos Santos and Pescadero, we have developed a summary of the PDU’s building restrictions for the Residential Tourist Zone. This includes the entire coastline from Agua Blanca in the North to Elias Calle in the South.
It is a very important document that we plan on distributing to local real estate agents, contractors, architects, and lot buyers so they will become aware of our zoning rules which are designed to protect our coastline from overdevelopment and prevent construction on our protected dunes.
The document is also designed to educate our members so they can report any illegal construction in their area. So please take some time to read it over and share it with others. And if you see anything that looks illegal popping up in your neighborhood, please contact us through our website at www.protecttodossantos.org and we will investigate.
Here is a link to the document, which is also attached to this email: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eLeDTJ_Kx9AZ_9xjPV-Uu7krRcJITlDm/edit
Thanks – The Team at Protect Todos Santos
