Booming Carlsbad Puts 6-Month Hold on New Building

Heeding the pleas of an overburdened planning staff, the City Council has approved a six-month moratorium on new building permits, putting the construction of about 6,000 homes on hold.

Council members said the moratorium is designed to stop the steady stream of development proposals flooding Carlsbad’s Planning Department so the staff will have a chance to attack a backlog of applications and draft a growth management plan.

“I think it’s critical that we give our planning staff this break so they can have a chance to plan for the future,” Councilwoman Ann Kulchin said. “We’ve got problems that need to be addressed, and it’s important that our people, rather than some outside consultants from Ukiah, plan this city’s future.”

The council, which is usually divided over growth issues, approved the moratorium unanimously Tuesday night after a three-hour public hearing. Several developers spoke in favor of the moratorium, but most urged that it last only three months.

City planner Charles Grimm said the council’s action suspends for six months both the acceptance of new project applications and the approval of final development maps. Exempted from the moratorium are redevelopment projects, housing projects of four units or less, developments already under construction, commercial and industrial projects, and “infill” projects--those in areas that are already densely developed.

Grimm said the moratorium is necessary to permit planners to draft a long-range growth management strategy for Carlsbad, a city experiencing rapid growth that has begun to prompt complaints about crowded roads, inadequate police protection and other overloaded public services.

City planners have proposed a tentative plan that would divide Carlsbad into 18 zones and require developers in each zone to submit a single, detailed plan for providing and funding public services. Those plans, intended to help the city better forecast public service needs, would require council approval before building could proceed.

“Under the current system, a developer comes in and merely puts in improvements around his own project,” Grimm said. “Because of that approach, we’re seeing problems on arterial streets in the general vicinity. We need a more comprehensive planning approach to deal with that.”

Grimm said planners have been unable to devote attention to their long-range planning chores because they are “swamped” with the ever-swelling load of applications from developers who wish to build in Carlsbad. Grimm said there are 65 applications now awaiting attention in the Planning Department.

In addition, the planning staff is attempting to respond to 26 recommendations from a citizens’ committee that recently reviewed Carlsbad’s general plan. Tasks assigned by that group include evaluating the city’s various land uses to assess the effectiveness of the general plan and developing a better system for monitoring the adequacy of public facilities.

“Basically, we need a break,” Grimm said.

Slow-growth advocates, who are sponsoring a ballot measure that would put a ceiling on the number of housing units that could be built in the city each year, greeted the moratorium with cautious enthusiasm.

“I’m pleased, because I think the council is responding to a very broad-based community concern, but this is by no means enough,” said Anne Mauch, a slow-growth activist. “We need the growth initiative to bring things under control here. This moratorium is really only a beginning.”