San Clemente Vote to Shape Future Growth

San Clemente residents vote Tuesday in a special election that will shape the course of growth in the city’s backcountry, one of the most sought after building areas in Orange County.

On the ballot are two competing initiatives that offer markedly different blueprints for guiding the city through a growth surge that could double San Clemente’s developed territory and current population of 31,000 by the year 2000.

Permits for a record 1,758 residential units were issued last year, and present plans by developers call for nearly 15,000 houses and condominiums to be built in the rolling ranchland east of the San Diego Freeway--known locally as the backcountry--in the next 10 to 15 years.

Backers of Measure A--the developers, a majority of the City Council and many top-level city staffers--are counting on the boom to lift San Clemente out of what they say is an economic slump. Their opponents, however, say that backcountry growth is outstripping the city’s ability to provide services, and they say that their initiative would slow construction down to a manageable growth rate of about 500 units a year.

Positive Effect Required

Measure A, which was put on the ballot by three members of the City Council--Mayor Robert Limberg and Councilmen G. Scott Diehl and William Mecham--would not change the way the city currently reviews development plans. It is essentially a restatement of sections of the city’s General Plan designed to prevent unfettered growth, with an added proviso: no project could be approved unless a fiscal impact study showed that it would have a positive net effect on the city’s coffers.

Measure B, co-authored by Brian Rice, a local dentist, and Thomas Lorch, an aerospace engineer, gained 3,287 certified signatures--19% of the city’s registered voters--in a petition drive that qualified it for the ballot last November. It would limit construction in the backcountry to 500 units a year and would establish a Residential Development Evaluation Board--made up of members of the city’s Planning Commission--to allocate the 500 building permits. The board would rank each development proposal by points based on its design and its projected impact on city services.

If both initiatives pass, the one with the most yes votes will become law. The new ordinance could not be amended by a vote of the City Council, only through another citywide vote.

Supporters of Measure A say that it allows developers the flexibility to provide enough different types of housing to create a larger economic base and labor pool--both of which are necessary, they say, to entice businesses into a 300-acre business park in one of the developments that city officials hope will create several thousand new jobs.

Measure Called Elitist

Measure B, they say, is elitist and would force developers to use their scarce permits to build high-priced, high-profit homes that will be bought by people who will neither work nor shop locally.

“If you are a developer,” said Floyd Cate, co-chairman of the pro-A group, Citizens Against Bureaucracy, “and you had no permits last year, 100 this year and no guarantee of any next year, what would you do with those 100 permits? Why, you’d build mansions to get as much money out of them as you could. A businessman would be a damned fool to do anything else.”

Such unbalanced development, Cate says, “would be harmful to the city and harmful to senior citizens. We can no longer make it as a bedroom community and put up gates to keep people out.”

Lorch and Rice say their initiative is not aimed at keeping anyone out of San Clemente, but merely seeks to ensure that development does not overburden what they call the city’s aging infrastructure and understaffed Police Department.

“If the town’s not ready, the houses won’t get built,” Lorch said. “If they (development proposals) don’t get enough points, they won’t get any allotments. The impact on the existing city is just too great.”

The pro-B group, San Clementeans for Managed Growth, also disputes another charge leveled at its initiative by Measure A supporters--that the development evaluation board creates a new layer of bureaucracy that will be costly to taxpayers.

“It’s not another layer of government, this is the first layer: good planning,” Lorch said. “And it’s not a new agency--Measure B states that the board would consist of the Planning Commission members. What will cost the city money is when the developers pack up and leave after their homes are built--are they going to care what impact the houses have on the city then?”

City Manager James B. Hendrickson, who opposes Measure “B,” said that allocating permits on a points system would slow down the approval process by several months and would require the services of two full-time staff people. “That’s my best estimate right now,” he said.

Support for Developers

The pro-B forces bristle at what they think is undue support given by the city to the backcountry developers. “We never thought the city would take a stand against the community and for the developers like they have,” Lorch said. “We’re supposed to have representative government.”

The four backcountry developers--Costa Mesa-based Western Savings & Loan Assn., the Santa Margarita Co., Estrella Properties of Newport Beach and The Lusk Co.--have provided nearly the entire bankroll for the pro-A group. The Santa Margarita Co., developer of the 3,500-acre Talega Valley project, wrote a check for $26,500 to the group last week. The other three developers are contributing more than $10,000 each, said Rick Manter, vice-president of Nelson-Padberg Communications, a Costa Mesa firm hired to coordinate the campaign.

“We try not to mix in local politics, but obviously what’s at stake here affects us,” said Steve Maloney, division manager for Western Savings, developer of the 3,000-unit Rancho San Clemente project. “The issue isn’t just how many homes get built--a lot of people are eyeing what comes of it as expressing the heart and soul of the community. No businessman is going to want to invest his money in a stagnant community.”

Maloney said that low interest rates, the expectation of new fees on development to fund freeway building and the specter of a 500-unit cap has forced builders to stockpile so many permits that he doubted that developers would ask for more than 300 additional permits in either of the next two years. “Still, if there are no assurances that you can get your permits even if the project meets all zoning and building laws, the quality builders will go elsewhere and San Clemente will get what’s left over,” he said.

$13,000 Campaign

In contrast to what could be a $100,000 pro-A campaign, San Clementeans for Managed Growth will spend “less than $13,000” to promote Measure B, said Lorch, who, along with Rice and San Clemente Homeowners Assn. President Joseph Barton, loaned nearly $3,000 to the campaign. The largest donation--$1,000--came from the Laguna Greenbelt, a Laguna Beach environmental group. “We’re broke right now--but we’ve got about 100 volunteers going door to door, and we’re talking to a lot of people.” Lorch said. “We should be OK.”

Based on a record number of absentee ballot requests, City Clerk Myrna Erway estimates that as many as 45% of the city’s 17,000 voters will participate in Tuesday’s election.