Special Votes on Prop. A to Be Costly for Builders

Developers who want to build in the city’s urban reserve could be charged $500,000 for every special citywide election required under recently passed Proposition A, a San Diego City Council committee agreed Monday.

The bill, however, would be far less if the issue was put on the ballot during a regular election.

Deciding who foots the bills for elections required by Proposition A was among the details council members began ironing out Monday as they took their first steps to officially implement the slow-growth measure, which voters approved Nov. 5 despite a high-powered campaign against it by the development industry.

Mayor Roger Hedgecock took care of another detail by asking that the city’s policy on the urban reserve be specifically amended to block the La Jolla Valley project, the 5,100-acre Campus Crusade for Christ development in the reserve near Rancho Bernardo that drew opposition from environmentalists and triggered their successful bid to have Proposition A passed.

Portions of the La Jolla Valley project--a 1,000-acre Christian university and 750-acre industrial park--were approved for immediate construction during an emotional 5-4 City Council vote in September, 1984. Since the Proposition A vote, attorneys for Campus Crusade have claimed that the initiative has no legal effect on the project, although environmentalists specifically targeted the development in pushing the measure.

On Monday, however, Hedgecock attempted to make sure that the City Council put on record that La Jolla Valley must come up for a public vote. The mayor insisted on a change in the council’s policy to reflect Proposition A, which called for a retroactive starting date of August, 1984--one month before the Campus Crusade project won approval.

Proposition A, championed by environmentalists and other slow-growth advocates, took from the council and gave directly to the people control over development in the city’s urban reserve, roughly 52,000 acres of prime real estate located primarily along San Diego’s northern tier. The city’s General Plan designated the land as off limits to development until 1995, when the plan was to be revised. But the City Council has allowed several exemptions.

Under Proposition A, any proposed development would be reviewed by the city’s Planning Department, Planning Commission and City Council just as it was before the measure’s passage. The popular vote is now the final hurdle in that process.

The hurdle was raised a notch Monday when council members tentatively agreed, as proposed in a report by City Clerk Chuck Abdelnour, that developers who request a special citywide election on any development proposal must pay $500,000, the amount it would cost the city to hold the vote. They would have to pay only $40,000 if they asked that a Proposition A-mandated vote on a development be held at the same time as a state election, because the city’s costs would also be lower to place the matter on the ballot.

The city, however, would lower the charge to $12,000 if the developer asks to have his project voted on during a regular city election in an odd-numbered year, the panel agreed. In an even-numbered year when there is no other city-related issue on the ballot, a developer would be assessed $40,000 to pay for the election. The city might charge only $12,000 for special and state elections if a city issue is already on the ballot, the committee members agreed.

The full council will review the election cost question in an open hearing on Dec. 16, then vote on the measure.

The panel Monday also discussed the question of how long Proposition A would be in effect, once implemented. Pro-A forces said during the election campaign that the measure would be good only until 1995 because the General Plan would then be up for revision. But opponents argued that the initiative was written so vaguely that public votes would be required indefinitely.

Chief Deputy City Atty. Frederick C. Conrad told council members Monday that he still is not sure who is right.

Proposition A “does not refer to 1995 at all,” Conrad said under questioning from Councilman Uvaldo Martinez, who at one point spearheaded opposition against the initiative.

“It is a close question that really is going to have to be resolved on an actual case when someone raises the issue,” Conrad said. “It is arguable that it could go either way.”

Since the passage of the initiative, some have predicted that the battle would move from the ballot box to the courts, with a suit testing the measure’s legality perhaps initiated by Campus Crusade, which pumped more than $200,000 into the $600,000 campaign against Proposition A. A Campus Crusade spokesman has said that the organization was considering its options in the wake of the vote, and James Milch, one of its attorneys, declined to comment Monday on whether the organization had decided to filed a lawsuit against the city.

Hedgecock, at the urging of pro-A speakers Monday, asked Conrad if the city attorney’s office would vigorously defend the initiative.

“The people have voted and we will defend it,” Conrad said.