San Marcos Voters Accept Renewal Plan by 2-1 Margin

By a 2-1 margin, voters here Tuesday approved an ambitious 30-year, $100-million redevelopment plan to improve this city’s road and flood control network.

With 29.8% of the city’s registered voters going to the polls, the vote was 2,075, or 67.4%, in favor of the redevelopment project, and 1,004, or 32.6%, opposed.

The project is the second redevelopment program for San Marcos. In 1983, the City Council initiated a $6-million program that has progressed without a flaw.

Tuesday’s vote was sparked after the City Council last year voted to adopt the more encompassing redevelopment project, and residents opposed to the council’s unilateral action forced a referendum election to decide the issue.

Proponents said the use of redevelopment, in which property tax revenue is diverted from the usual taxing agencies and collected instead by the redevelopment agency to pay for public amenities, was necessary so that the city could make widespread road and flood control improvements that have not kept pace with the city’s growth.

Opponents argued that the redevelopment agency’s reliance on property tax revenue to fund the improvements would further speed the city’s growth. They also objected that much of the redevelopment agency’s revenue would be generated by the construction of a controversial trash-burning power plant. The city, they said, should not rely financially on the success of the trash-to-enery plant.

“I’m jubilant,” Mayor Lionel Burton said. “It shows you the citizens of San Marcos have a great grasp of the issues and want our city to grow and prosper.”

Mark Loscher, co-chairman of Citizens for Better Streets and Roads, said he was elated, especially given the possibility that voter apathy or confusion might have worked against approval of the project.

“The biggest issue was the misdirection by the opponents” that a vote against redevelopment would “get back at the city for approving the trash plant. This was an unnecessary election, but people got the message loud and clear that this project will benefit the entire city,” Loscher said.

Jonathan Wiltshire, who spearheaded opposition to the redevelopment project, said his side lost because it could not match the amount of money spent by the city and redevelopment proponents during the campaign.

“The results to me aren’t that surprising, given the amount of money the other side spent in advertising,” he said.

City officials had expressed concern that voters might have rejected the redevelopment plan out of the mistaken belief that by doing so, they would block the construction of the trash-burning power plant.

Much of the City Council’s energies during the election campaign was in trying to convince voters that this was not an election to approve or disapprove the trash plant, which is nearing construction. The city spent about $30,000 on three mailings explaining that the trash plant was not the issue at hand.

Specifically, the redevelopment project includes four areas:

- The site of the trash-to-energy plant, not only so the redevelopment agency could receive the tax increments but also so roads adjacent to the site could be improved.

- Along Rancho Santa Fe Road from San Marcos High School to Mission Road, for widening narrow sections of the roadway, installing traffic signals and improving flood control.

- The old downtown section of San Marcos in the area of San Marcos Junior High School, Vineyard Road and the southern portion of Twin Oaks Valley Road, for street and drainage improvements.

- The site of the old Prohoroff poultry ranch on the south side of California 78, which is now defunct and which is being pitched by the city as a potential site for the proposed North County satellite campus for San Diego State University. Improvements would include streets, drainage and traffic signals.