It was thumbs up on one Soboba issue and thumbs down on another for the San Jacinto City Council last week.

The council approved a temporary conditional use permit that allows the Soboba Country Club to install a five-acre driving range at its northwest corner, but unanimously went on record as opposed to the Sobobas’ application to annex the golf course and other property it owns adjacent to the reservation.

The application for the conditional use permit will last for five years, said Planning Director Asher Hartel, though zoning regulations would seem to prohibit it because, though the property is adjacent to the golf course, it is zoned residential.

The application was rushed through because the Soboba Classic, a stop on the PGA’s Nationwide Tour, for which qualifying rounds start Monday.

Though he will not make a stop in San Jacinto, the nets lining the driving range to keep balls from either escaping into the hills or raining down on Soboba Road are high enough to snag a Tiger Woods drive, Hartel told the council.

The driving range will have no lights and operate only from dawn to dusk.

On the issue of the fee-to-trust annexation, the council continued its long-running opposition, but this time with a 5-0 vote.

Councilman Steve Di Memmo, who in the past has broken with the other four members of the council by refusing to take a stand against the application, this time voted with his colleagues.

The Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians plans to build a casino, five-story hotel, and retail complex on the land if it is annexed, and Di Memmo said the environmental study done on the impact of the project on traffic provide an inadequate assessment of the effects on local streets and roads.

“There is no proposed mitigation,” Di Memmo said. “It is impossible to address this at this time.”

He said he would like to see the tribe, the city, the county, and other interested parties seek solutions to the problems associated with the casino project.

 In fact, Rose Salgado of the Soboba Tribal Council renewed a proposal that the City Council’s Tribal Affairs Committee meet with representatives of the tribe, but was turned down. The city has repeatedly declined to meet if only the city and tribe will be involved. Representatives of the federal government, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, will have to participate if the city is to take part, the council members have said.