Temecula, CA city planners cut off cellular phones

To keep the peace, the department bans the devices and pagers from its offices. TEMECULA No parking, smoking, left turns, dogs, drinking alcohol in the parking lot, trespassing,

Thursday, February 17th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

To keep the peace, the department bans the devices and pagers from its offices.

TEMECULA

No parking, smoking, left turns, dogs, drinking alcohol in the parking lot, trespassing, bare feet or loitering. Prohibitions like these dot the city.

Now this: A "no cell phone" zone.

Cellular phones are banned from the Temecula Community Development Department.

Sometimes the place is filled with 20 developers conducting business with city planners. It's bedlam when they bark at subcontractors over cell phones, instruct workers via two-way radio and have pagers that keep beeping.

The din drives planning department concentration out the window, said Senior Planner Dave Hogan.

Two weeks ago placid baby-blue signs made the first polite request to extinguish the phones and pagers. But the noise continued.

This week planning receptionist Theresa Alvarez posted screaming, fluorescent-orange signs all over the office.

The new signs work like magic. "You can hear people turning their phones off when they come in," Alvarez said.

What do cell-phone police do to scofflaws? "We'd just ask them to step outside," Hogan said.

Mike Lake, project manager for Ryland Homes, likes the new planning office tranquility. "I get calls all day long," he said. But he doesn't mind going outside to take them. "I think it's a courteous thing to ask for."

Two cell phones and a pager always accompany Russell Ek, a manufacturing representative for Simpson StrongTie. "I see more and more people are starting to respect other people's work place," he said, after making a phone call in the parking lot. "I think it's a good thing," he said.

Not every planning office is under siege from cell-phone disruption. In neighboring Murrieta, "it's not an issue," said city receptionist Brenda Bieser.

"Cell phones don't work in here," she said.

Sandy Stokes can be reached by e-mail at sstokes@pe.com or by phone at (909) 587-3140.