Prop. A Author Savors Sweet Taste of Victory

Victory tastes sweet to D. Dwight Worden, particularly since he has had more than his share of the bitter taste of defeat.

Worden, 38, is the author of Proposition A--the growth management initiative--which won big at the polls Tuesday. His authorship of the measure carries with it no gold medals or fat retainer fees.

“Sure, I wrote it. And I did it for nothing because I believed in the growth management plan,” Worden said. “But I don’t deserve the credit. It was the people who got out and pounded the pavements--Lyn Benn, Mike Gotch, Dave Kreitzer, Jay Powell, (Mayor Roger) Hedgecock and a few others--that put Proposition A over. All I did was write it and give $100 to the cause. I couldn’t even vote for it because I don’t live in the city.”

As a public-interest lawyer and advocate of environmental concerns, Worden said, “You lose more often than you win.”

He admits that he expected Proposition A to be another such defeat because of the $600,000 or so spent by the opponents and the apparent misunderstanding by many voters over whether a “yes” or a “no” favored sterner growth controls.

But the victory was “a real indication that there is a strongly held belief in growth management,” he said Wednesday, “that San Diego is growing too fast and too much and is too responsive to developers.”

Worden, a 1974 graduate of University of San Diego Law School, has always been among the few environmentalist lawyers in the area--a distinction that does not often bring in big retainers or influential allies.

Not that he doesn’t have grateful clients. There are about 50 golden eagles nesting in the forested slopes around Big Bear Lake that owe him a fee. Worden took on the case for the Audubon Society and triumphed over developer interests, saving the eagles’ nesting grounds.

But, in his 10 years of private practice and six years as part-time Del Mar city attorney (succeeding Roger Hedgecock in that post), Worden has often sampled the agony of defeat.

The one that galls him most--the loss of Del Mar’s challenge to San Diego’s massive North City West development --makes Tuesday’s victory even sweeter.

The 1981 battle over the San Diego City Council’s right to approve construction of the 40,000-resident community at the northernmost undeveloped border of the city pitted Worden as Del Mar city attorney against “a stable of high-priced lawyers, which is pretty much the way it is most of the time.”

But the loss was not the worst of the experience, Worden recalled. “They (San Diego City Council members) said, at the time they approved North City West, that it was the last that they would violate the city’s growth management plan. Then came Fairbanks Country Club, Sorrento West, La Jolla Valley. They were eating into the urban reserve.”

The Solana Beach attorney said he believes Proposition A will put a halt to the continued “violation” of the urban reserve acreage that the plan holds for development after 1995.

The successful initiative probably will run into problems, he said, because “all new legislation does,” but nothing that will cripple its intent of giving San Diego residents a right to vote on their city’s major developments.

Worden admits that he won’t be surprised if Proposition A goes to court as developers seek to challenge the voters’ right to vote. He is confident, however, that the battle to protect the growth management plan is won.

“It was like hitting the mule with a 2-by-4,” he quipped. “We got their attention.”

And, he predicted, there will be no more North City West-type approvals by the San Diego City Council. Despite developer pressures, “the City Council will remain responsive to the electorate,” which Tuesday firmly placed controlled growth right up on the popularity poll with apple pie, the U.S. flag and motherhood.