Growth-Limiting Initiative Gains Steam for Fall Ballot

A controversial initiative to prevent urban sprawl from spreading to the canyons and fields of north San Diego has enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, officials from San Diegans for Managed Growth announced Friday.

The initiative also garnered its first political endorsement Friday when U.S. Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) told reporters that approving it was “the minimum required to secure San Diego’s managed growth.”

Using volunteers and paid circulators who received 25 cents for each signature, officials from San Diegans for Managed Growth say they have collected signatures from 55,000 registered voters--3,000 beyond the number required to qualify it for the ballot.

The group’s chairman, David Kreitzer, vowed to continue circulating petitions as insurance against invalid signatures and to give the San Diego city clerk 75,000 signatures by the June 12 deadline.

The initiative seeks to halt development in the city’s designated “urban reserve,” 20,000 acres that the City Council has set aside for development after 1990.

Kreitzer and his colleagues, who include leaders of the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters and local planning groups, say the City Council has been ignoring its own guidelines for five years and removing vast acreage from the “urban reserve” category into the more readily developed “planned urbanizing” designation.

Under the initiative, land could only be removed from “urban reserve” if that shift received a majority vote in a citywide election. The initiative is retroactive to last Aug. 1, so it would require a citywide vote on such developments as the controversial 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley project, approved by the council on Sept. 9.

Also Friday, Kreitzer accused City Councilman Uvaldo Martinez of improperly using his city office and staff to lead the campaign against the initiative.

In an April 22 letter written on council stationery, Martinez told constituents about the “disgruntled (and badly misguided) opponents” of the La Jolla Valley plan. “I’m hoping that you and your family will join me in opposing that so-called ‘growth management initiative,’ ” Martinez wrote. He asked constituents to call his aides, Colin Flaherty and Rudy Murillo, at his office to offer support.

In a letter sent to City Atty. John Witt on May 3, Kreitzer protested Martinez’s letter and his “use of public office and taxpayers’ funds to oppose what is a fundamental right of California citizens.”

Deputy City Atty. Stuart Swett said Friday that he is still investigating whether the Martinez letter violated the City Charter.

Meanwhile, Flaherty said that Martinez will not be sending out any other anti-initiative letters on council stationery. He added that Dave Lewis, a private political consultant who does not work in Martinez’s council office, is conducting the campaign against the initiative.