Cities Decide on Growth Issues : San Diego Passes Measure to Stop ‘Los Angelization’

An initiative aimed at stopping the “Los Angelization” of San Diego was approved by a wide margin in elections Tuesday, while a proposal to ban all high-rise development in San Francisco was defeated.

And the most expensive election in Santa Barbara County history resulted in defeat for an environmental proposal that would have severely restricted onshore satellite oil facilities.

Those were among the key results as voters in California went to the polls to decide scores of races for local offices, school boards and community college district boards.

Mayor Measure Defeated

In one of the more noteworthy contests in Los Angeles County, where only 11% of voters went to the polls, a ballot measure in Compton that would have given that city a full-time mayor with a salary of $73,000 a year was soundly rejected by a 58%-42% margin.

By a margin of 57% to 43%, Pasadena voters defeated a measure that city officials said would save taxpayers $400,000 a year by transferring some of the city prosecutor’s duties to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. County officials said before the election that the transfer would actually cost Pasadena voters almost $100,000 more each year.

In neighboring San Marino, voters turned down a special property tax measure to raise $700,000 for schools. The measure garnered 60.5% of the vote, but it required a two-thirds vote, or 66.6%, for passage.

Tax Increases Rejected

The only other tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles County sought to raise $29 million for an underpass and drainage improvement in Lancaster. Both were soundly trounced--one by a 9-1 margin.

In San Diego, the “managed-growth” measure was championed by environmentalists who were incensed over a September, 1984, City Council vote permitting immediate development in part of the city’s urban reserve, about 52,000 acres on San Diego’s north side that has been declared off-limits to development until 1995.

The proposition reversed that council decision and wrested from the council control of future individual development decisions in the reserve by requiring that they be approved by the city’s voters.

$600,000 Spent in Vain

The measure’s opponents, financed largely by developers, spent an estimated $600,000 in their futile bid to defeat it, while the initiative’s supporters raised and spent about $42,000.

“We are on a roll, and we’re going to go out there and we’re going to pass a growth-management philosophy in every neighborhood across this city,” said Councilman Mike Gotch, who supported the measure.

“The power has been returned to the people of this city. They are now in the driver’s seat.”

While San Diegans were turning back so-called “Los Angelization,” San Franciscans defeated a measure aimed at preventing their downtown from being “Manhattanized”--an election result providing no small comfort to Mayor Dianne Feinstein.

She opposed the measure, which would have banned all high-rise hotel and office development for three years, as well as halting construction, conversion or modification of buildings containing more than 50,000 square feet.

Feinstein also came up a winner--by a 3-1 margin--with her proposal to repeal comparable worth pay raises approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors earlier this year.

$28 Million for Raises

The supervisors’ plan gave $28 million in raises to 7,000 city workers in jobs traditionally held by women and minorities--raises first disguised as $5-a-day “meal allowances.”

The allowances were scrapped when city officials learned that they might be illegal, and the money was placed in a special reserve fund until the board could figure out how to legally distribute it.

Feinstein vetoed the outlay, saying that she supported comparable worth, but the plan provided more comparable worth than the city--facing a $76-million budget deficit--could afford. When her veto was overridden, she ordered a ballot proposal to repeal the already abandoned meal allowance and the reserve fund that replaced it.

“I do think I have some credibility in this town,” an obviously pleased Feinstein said of the election results.

Representatives of city workers, however, called her a hypocrite, saying the mayor claimed to support comparable worth but was unwilling to pay for it.

Oil Company Effort

In Santa Barbara County, celebrity endorsements were no match for oil company dollars, as the measure that would have tightened already tough restrictions on oil companies lost by a 58%-42% margin.

The measure’s opponents, financed by major oil companies, spent $1.2 million--about $3.50 for every man, woman and child in Santa Barbara County. Supporters, including Jane Fonda, Steve Martin and John Travolta, spent $75,000.

Election officials said 38% of registered voters, a large turnout for an off-year election, cast ballots.

Although Santa Barbara County supervisors already have approved stringent measures regulating onshore oil development, environmentalists placed the measure on the ballot to protect against any possibility that officials might yield to pressure from large oil companies.

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino