Frustration With City Hall Was Key to Putting Prop. A on Ballot

In the wee hours of Sept. 12, 1984, five disgruntled Sierra Club members were heading home from yet another defeat before San Diego’s City Council when they decided it was time to stop the skirmishes and begin plotting a revolution against the city government.

The small band in a pumpkin-colored Volkswagen van was returning from a marathon night meeting where the City Council had voted to permit the 5,100-acre La Jolla Valley project in the city’s “future urbanizing zone,” a large swath of land designated by the city’s General Plan to be off limits to development. Enraged by the vote, the environmentalists began talking about how they could overturn the decision and wrest control of the reserve from the council members--a group of politicians they believed were corrupted by developer influence and money.

The result of that early-morning van ride is Proposition A, an initiative on the November ballot that everyone agrees will have crucial, far-reaching ramifications on what role elected officials will have in resolving future land-use issues in San Diego’s outlying areas.

Proposition A simply asks: “Shall the City of San Diego Progress Guide and General Plan be amended by adding restrictions requiring that land areas which are designated as ‘future urbanizing’ not be redesignated without voter approval?”

If that simple proposition is accepted, it will make a fundamental change not only in how San Diego grows but how it will govern itself, experts in politics and land-use say. While some damn it as a lynch-mob approach to government, others say it’s a constitutional way to convene a San Diego equivalent of a “town hall meeting.”

“You certainly don’t get everybody from San Diego inside some stadium and discuss issues,” said David Brower, associate director for the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “But what you do do is move the decision-making. You change the decision-making body from a representative group . . . back to the electorate.”

During the last three years, voters in 18 of 21 California communities, most of them small, have approved some sort of growth control measure, according to statistics compiled by the governor’s office. But San Diego is far and away the largest city in the state, and possibly the nation, to consider a measure that would place individual growth determinations directly in the hands of voters, according to Tom Smith, a senior research associate for the American Planning Assn.

Proposition A is an effort by some frustrated San Diegans to punish and override their elected representatives by seizing direct control of the government, said Sam Popkin, a political science professor at UC San Diego.

“It’s vigilante politics,” Popkin said. “They are going to tar and feather the City Council because these people (council members) had to balance the interests of lots of groups and lots of voters. They want to punish the City Council for having to balance a lot of interests.”

Said Michael Madigan, vice president of Pardee Construction and a leading opponent of Proposition A: “It’s clearly a device aimed at the concept of representative government . . . .”

Environmentalists admit that while Proposition A is a drastic measure, it is needed to make sure council members keep their promises and make sensitive land-use decisions rather than bow to the will of developer cronies, who not only wine and dine the officials but provide one of the largest sources of campaign contributions in local council races.

“They (council members) are not going to pull some kind of deal in the back room,” vowed Jay Powell, coordinator of the local Sierra Club chapter. “We wouldn’t be having to do this if we had government making decisions on the facts that were laid before them . . . .”

Powell said Proposition A is meant to “check” a political chain-reaction of developer influence on the nine-member council. “All you’ve got to do is get five votes and you can damn well do what you want in this city . . . All you have to do is look at the campaign contributions lists and you’ll see who is fueling these campaigns. So what choice does a fellow have?” Powell said.

In its strictest sense, the November vote will determine who has control over 52,273 acres in San Diego designated as the “future urbanizing zone,” land theoretically set aside by the city’s General Plan as an urban reserve to remain untouched by bulldozers and backhoes until 1995.

The jewel of the reserve is more than 19,000 acres cradled in the northern reaches of the city between North City West and Rancho Bernardo--an inviting virgin landscape of rolling hills that is feeling the pinch from San Diego’s burgeoning growth.

Because of that pressure and the requests of builders, the City Council, in a series of decisions, began to open up for immediate development 6,576 acres--or 35%--of the 19,000 acres. The first decision was in March, 1982, a controversial vote that permitted the construction of Fairbanks Country Club, a 735-acre high-income residential and golf course project that was the setting for the 1984 Olympic equestrian event.

But although the Fairbanks decision stirred the ire of environmentalists, the La Jolla Valley vote was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Powell said.

Targeted for a prime location between Interstates 15 and 5, the 5,100-acre project backed by Campus Crusade for Christ called for a 1,000-acre Christian university, a 500- to 750-acre industrial park and roughly 10,000 homes.

As the project worked its way through the city bureaucracy and headed to the council for approval, it became a symbol of many issues, not the least of which was the so-called “Los Angelization” of San Diego. Mayor Roger Hedgecock and environmentalists vowed to stop La Jolla Valley because it would be “leap-frog” development and destroy the integrity of the urban reserve.

Developers and the Christian community pushed for its passage with a massive lobbying effort, arguing that the General Plan was not rigidly against such developments and that a single, large development allowed for better planning than a score of smaller projects.

The issue came to a dramatic climax during a late-night council meeting at a Rancho Bernardo community center Sept. 11. Hedgecock scheduled the meeting for Rancho Bernardo because opposition to La Jolla Valley ran high in the community, but advocates of the project arrived early at the meeting hall with Campus Crusade partisans and packed the audience.

After four hours of debate, the council voted 5-4 to allow the La Jolla Valley university and industrial park to proceed immediately. Councilman Dick Murphy, the swing vote, said he decided to approve the project because he didn’t want to stand in the way of a Christian university.

The defeat meant a somber trip home for Powell and four other Sierra Club members, who rode away in the pumpkin-colored van. They started talking about what they could do, said Bob Hartman, the van’s driver and owner.

Hartman said discussion included possible legal challenges to La Jolla Valley, but also touched on possible ways to change the political system to prevent additional City Council decisions that would open up more of the urban reserve.

“If we’re going to have anything to do with having a hand in the planning process, I don’t think it’s possible for the council to continue this way,” Hartman said the group concluded at the time.

During the next couple of months, several more meetings were held at the Balboa Park offices of Citizens Coordinate-Century III, another environmental group. Those attending included Powell, Hartman, Mary Hanson of the League of Women Voters, and Diane Barlow, an aide to County Supervisor George Bailey. By December, the group had come up with the idea for the initiative and decided to hire Solana Beach attorney Dwight Worden to draft the language.

In its entirety, the initiative would roll back council decisions about the General Plan to August, 1984, in an attempt to overturn the La Jolla Valley vote, which took place in September of 1984. It would also require a majority vote of San Diego citizens on any future proposal for development in the reserve, a new twist in governmental decisions that could be popular in a city where a familiar bumper sticker reads, “WELCOME TO SAN DIEGO. NOW GO HOME.”

David Maggleby, a political scientist at Utah’s Brigham Young University, said the San Diego measures is indicative of an “explosion” of such initiatives that he finds troubling.

“You can imagine what politics would be like, San Diego or anywhere, if all other active groups in policy areas--education, budgetary, tax groups--were able to enact that kind of requirement,” Maggleby said. “It would be a very crowded ballot and you would have an immobilized government, a government that is unable to act.”

Experts question whether complex planning issues could be reduced to such basic terms that voters would be able to digest the information and make decisions. However, environmentalists counter that elected representatives make the same decisions now--and they certainly are no smarter than many voters.

“When it comes down to the bottom line, I think I distrust the people a little less to make these decisions than I do the political officials,” Worden said.

In San Diego, the seeds for Proposition A were planted with Hedgecock’s initial mayoral election victory, Hartman said. After throwing their support behind him in that campaign, environmentalists met with the new mayor and urged him to push some kind of citywide initiative to further protect the urban reserve from developers, he said.

But Hedgecock asked the environmentalists--who were a key component of his political coalition--to shelve the idea so he could use his powers of persuasion to push land preservation and “make my mark on the city,” Hartman said. With a quick start, Hedgecock’s office was able to push through added safeguards for the city’s canyons and additional procedural hurdles for developers hoping to build in the urban reserves.

“We kind of decided, OK, fine, if you think you can pull that out, we’d just as soon see a strong mayor without going into this whole business of trying to have an initiative,” Hartman said.

Then came the J. David scandal. Hedgecock became embroiled in a legal and political controversy that whittled away his powers as mayor. He lost the key La Jolla Valley vote a week before he was indicted for felony conspiracy and perjury.

“Since the industry plays such an active role in financing campaigns, I think the stranglehold the development industry has on the council is so strong,” Hartman said. “Roger just couldn’t buck the tide.”

But the environmentalists found a strong tide of their own as they stood in front of shopping centers to gather signatures on petitions to place the initiative on the November ballot. Months after Hedgecock was politically damaged by indictments and one felony trial, the environmentalists collected 75,000 signatures--23,000 more than they needed--and saw their initiative certified for the ballot on June 24.

They warned that developing the urban reserve would ruin the “quality of life” for San Diegans and turn the area into another Los Angeles, with out-of-control growth, smog, car-choked roads, overburdened city water mains and sewers and environmental degradation.

“I hope it doesn’t take a complete collapse of the urban environment to convince the public that we are on the brink of disaster,” Hartman said.

Meanwhile, development forces starting lining up to oppose Proposition A when it became clear the groundswell of popular support would put the initiative up for a vote. With Councilman Uvaldo Martinez serving as point man, the opposition forces held their first fund-raiser June 5 at the Town and Country hotel to plan for a possible campaign, said political consultant Dave Lewis of Johnston & Lewis.

Those in attendance included Councilman Bill Cleator, shopping mall developer Ernest Hahn and Tom Hawthorne, a prominent local Republican and Caterpillar dealer who serves on the California Transportation Commission.

“It’s pretty well known that most people don’t like the idea that once they cross the county line of having (other people) follow them in. It’s easy to say, let’s pull up the drawbridge now,” Lewis said. “It’s an emotional argument, but it’s not realistic. Roger Hedgecock himself said growth is inevitable.”

Opponents of Proposition A charge that closing off the urban reserve would cram growth into the city’s existing neighborhoods, an argument designed to win sympathy from communities such as North Park and Golden Hill, already so crowded they’ve asked the City Council to stop granting building permits in certain sections.

The alternatives can be confusing to the voters. While the environmentalists say that allowing the urban reserve to develop based on the wishes of developers and the City Council would create a metropolis overwhelmed by growth, the opponents turn that around, arguing that by keeping the urban reserve sealed off, the metropolis will be overwhelmed by growth.

Which argument wins may be the result of who can speak the loudest and most frequently. And the anti-A forces are accumulating a political war chest that will give them quite a voice down the home stretch. So far, they have outmatched environmentalists in fund-raising by a four-to-one margin.

As of Sept. 17, anti-A forces had collected $96,495, compared to $26,766 for the environmentalists, who spent the bulk of their donations on gathering enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Major donations to opponents of Proposition A have come from developers, the same kind of influence the environmentalists are fighting. For instance, a political action committee based in Los Angeles and associated with the California Association of Realtors has donated $25,000 and the Home Capital Corp. of San Diego has chipped in $10,000.

The development money will help with a last-minute, high-powered media blitz. “Over the next few weeks, they (voters) are going to get a cram course on how bad an idea Proposition A is,” Lewis said.

One radio spot that began airing Friday against Proposition A features background music reminiscent of “Jaws.” The commentator intones: “See a cast of thousands crowd your neighborhood like never before. Watch parking space disappear before your very eyes . . . . See canyons bulldozed in living color . . . .”

If the anti-A side receives the $725,000 it set as a goal in the campaign, its media blitz by Nov. 5 could include $235,000 in radio and television ads, $52,500 worth of billboards ads, and $185,000 worth of direct mail, according to a confidential campaign proposal written by Johnston & Lewis and obtained by The Times.

Lewis acknowledged last week that polls show the anti-A forces behind its proponents. “Yes, we are somewhat behind right now, but by the time we’ve been able to communicate with voters, we will be in good position on Election Day,” he added.

To counter the anticipated blitz, environmentalists have already requested equal time from television and radio stations. And they say they will continue to talk to potential voters at shopping centers to push their revolution against the City Council.

“You wake up in the morning and kind of wonder what kind of monster you’ve created,” said one of the proponents, who asked not to be identified. “Who knows what all this is going to lead to? But I’m not afraid of letting the public make those (growth) decisions.”