Initiative Petitions Ruled Valid : Slow-Growth Referendum Gets Go-Ahead

A Superior Court judge on Tuesday cleared the way for San Diegans to vote in November on a controversial slow-growth measure when he ruled that the initiative petitions are valid. The decision foils a challenge by developers to keep the item off the ballot.

During a half-hour hearing, Superior Court Judge Douglas R. Woodworth denied a request by Pardee Construction Co. and Mike Madigan, a Pardee senior vice president, to throw out the initiative because of the way proponents collected more than 74,000 signatures on the petitions.

Woodworth’s ruling sets the stage for a political donnybrook over who will have the power to permit development in the city’s “future urbanizing zone,” 20,000 acres of so-called “urban reserve” in the northern reaches of the city that are supposed to be untouched until the year 1995. The initiative would require that all proposed developments in that zone obtain a majority vote in a citywide election.

Pardee Construction owns 2,000 acres in the reserve.

Attorneys for Pardee, which filed suit June 28, have argued that the initiative petitions were invalid because they asked for a person’s “address as registered,” instead of his “place of residence” as called for in the municipal code. They contended that the difference was a “fatal flaw” that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for true verification of petition signatures by city officials.

But Woodworth sided with attorneys for the City of San Diego and San Diegans for Managed Growth, the grass-roots coalition responsible for collecting the petition signatures. They argued that the petitions were in “substantial compliance” with the city code because the correct wording appeared in a preamble at the top of each page of the petition.

Woodworth called initiatives a “sacred part” of the state’s political process, and added that they should be allowed to “flourish in the hands of lay petition writers,” including those not able to hire lawyers to advise them on wording.

“If every ‘t’ had to be crossed and every ‘i’ had to be dotted by every petitioner in the state, there would be no initiative law left,” Woodworth said.

Immediately after the ruling, Pardee also dropped a second challenge to the initiative, deciding not to pay for a thorough check of the petition signatures. As part of the lawsuit, the firm had deposited $92,000 with the city for the verification check, but it asked for the money back Tuesday afternoon.

Madigan said his company is still considering whether to appeal Woodworth’s decision. But initiative supporters hailed Tuesday’s action as removing the last roadblock to a November vote.

“We didn’t expect it to go the other way, although it’s always possible,” said David Kreitzer, chairman of San Diegans for Managed Growth. “I think the judge upheld the right of the people to petition the government.”

The urban reserve was set aside by the city’s growth-management plan in the early 1970s to prevent Los Angeles-type urban sprawl.

Currently, the city’s growth-management policy says the City Council has the right to say when someone can build in the future urban zone before it is opened for development in 1995.

Since 1979, the council has allowed several developments in the reserve, including the 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley project in North City. Those votes, affecting more than 7,500 acres in the reserve, prompted the initiative drive, according to Kreitzer.

San Diegans for Managed Growth turned over petitions with more than 74,000 signatures to the city clerk, who on June 24 certified the initiative after checking a sample of 5% of the names. To qualify for the ballot, the initiative needed 52,000 signatures, an amount equal to 10% of the voters registered for the last city election.

Pardee decided to challenge the validity of the initiative because waiting for a citywide vote on its holdings in the reserve “makes it very difficult to plan that land and to talk to the city for the planning of that land,” Madigan said Tuesday. He said the proposal would require the citywide vote even after 1995, when the reserve theoretically would be opened to development.

On Monday, the San Diego City Council will decide whether to accept the initiative. If it accepts the measure, a citywide vote would be unnecessary. If, as expected, it rejects the proposal, the growth initiative will automatically be placed on the November ballot.