San Clemente : 3 Developers Contribute to City-Backed Initiative

Three backcountry developers have contributed nearly $30,000 to a group campaigning for an initiative on the Feb. 25 ballot that re-states the city’s position on growth, according to campaign statements filed in the city clerk’s office.

Estrella Properties, developer of the 3,300-unit Forster Ranch project, and the Lusk Co., whose two Marblehead developments total more than 2,800 units, gave $10,000 each in January to the campaign group Citizens Against Bureaucracy, the statement shows. Western Savings & Loan Assn., the Costa Mesa-based developer of the 2,900-home Rancho San Clemente project, had contributed $8,000 in legal, consulting and other services in December.

The $28,000 contributed by the three companies accounts for nearly all of the $28,846 in contributions received through Feb. 8 by the citizens group. Citizens Against Bureaucracy is backing an initiative sponsored by a majority of the City Council that essentially re-states growth-control provisions already present in the city’s General Plan.

Floyd Cate, a member of Citizens Against Bureaucracy, said that the group had also received contributions “from over a hundred different citizens, and there’s more coming in all the time.” Contributions received in the final two weeks of the campaign do not have to be reported until after the election.

The group’s statement showed that it had paid $15,000 to Nelson-Padberg Communications, a Costa Mesa public relations firm, to manage the campaign.

Backers of a rival initiative that would limit construction in the booming backcountry to 500 new homes per year have received $11,059 so far, according to their campaign disclosure statement. The largest donation, $1,000, came from the Laguna Greenbelt Assn., a Laguna Beach environmental group. The initiative’s co-authors, Dr. Brian Rice, Tom Lorch and Joseph Barton, president of a local homeowners association, have loaned the campaign $4,000.

“We’re just ordinary people in town,” Lorch said. “We don’t have any developers behind us. We’ll be all right, though; our surveys still show that about seven of every 10 people agree with us.”