San Clemente Vote Seen as Red Flag for Growth in County

The tough limit placed on new housing by San Clemente voters Tuesday reflects growing hostility countywide toward development, public officials and observers said Wednesday.

“If you had run a vote on the same issue countywide, probably the same percentage of reaction would be reflected,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Ralph B. Clark said. “I just think it’s the pulse, it’s the public’s feelings toward growth in this county.”

It’s “almost a motherhood question,” said Supervisor Bruce Nestande, whose district includes Mission Viejo and other sections of southern Orange County where new construction is concentrated.

And Paul Christiansen, a member of the Laguna Niguel Community Council, said: “I view the San Clemente vote as a real bell-ringer. It will wake up and alert the general citizenry that rapid growth is hitting here, too.”

In a city election Tuesday, San Clemente voters overwhelmingly approved Measure B, a citizens’ initiative that limits developers to a total of 500 new units per year in four backcountry projects that involve almost 8,000 acres.

Officials throughout Orange County said it was the first time local voters have enacted such a law. (The San Juan Capistrano City Council has limited growth to 400 new units per year.

(Indeed, several California cities--Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, San Diego and Monterey Park, among them--have adopted growth restrictions in some form. Some wanted them because of traffic problems, others because sewers and water supplies were inadequate to support rapid growth.

(Restrictions adopted in Petaluma, Camarillo and Livermore have withstood preliminary court challenges, but a restriction on condominium building in Monterey Park did not.)

Still, Orange County officials said they foresee no rush to clamp similar restrictions on other areas of the county as a result of the San Clemente vote. It is, however, being seen as a red flag for public officials who find themselves caught between conflicting public goals. On one hand, they say they are under enormous pressure to alleviate the housing shortage in the county. On the other, they say that more housing puts a strain on highways and other public facilities.

Christiansen pointed out that the Laguna Niguel Community Council Planning Committee, of which he is a member, gives tentative approval for about 50 new homes each week, “and we’re only about one-third built out. To preserve the quality of life we now enjoy, we have to find a balancing of all considerations, including such things as traffic capacity as well as the rights of private property owners.”

Short of buying the developers’ land, however, Christiansen said, there is not much an unincorporated community such as Laguna Niguel can do to slow growth.

“I think our (county) supervisor (Thomas F. Riley) is doing the best possible job he can under the circumstances,” Christiansen said. “But I’m concerned that some of the other supervisors may not have the in-depth concern for this rapid growth in south Orange County. Perhaps the solution is continued grass-roots education of elected officials; they tend to respond to voter power, as we saw in San Clemente.”

Nestande, however, said: “The people in San Clemente have to realize that if the vote had taken place 15 years ago, they wouldn’t be living there today. We have to provide a place for people to live if we want this county to continue providing jobs and services.

“But to me, what happened in San Clemente comes very close to reflecting my own viewpoint--that people want a moderate-density county with suburban amenities. They do not want to dramatically urbanize Orange County.”

Riley, whose district includes San Clemente and the fast-developing areas between Mission Viejo and the coast, said the vote Tuesday is an indicator of residents’ frustration with development that is not accompanied by adequate provisions for highways and schools.

However, he said, he has found less anti-growth sentiment in unincorporated areas outside San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano.

“I think you’ll find that the difference may have something to do with the density,” Riley said. “A city like San Clemente has more density of development than the county allows in the unincorporated areas.”

In previous years, however, northern Orange County, which is heavily developed, has had a reputation for supporting urbanization.

But now, Clark said, residents in the north are just as worried about growth.

“It’s not a north-south issue,” he said.

‘Psychological Effect’

Irvine Councilman Ray Catalano predicted that the slow-growth vote will have “more of a psychological effect than a real effect” on other parts of the county.

“It’s another manifestation of the fact that many people in Orange County are beginning to worry about the prudence of the Board of Supervisors’ entitlements (land-use) decisions,” said Catalano, who is a professor of social ecology at UC Irvine. “In San Clemente, the people exercised their leverage over their city. People round the county are increasingly saying that the board is out of control--they’re responsive primarily to the development community, as shown by their campaign statements (contributions) their public statements and their entitlements.”

Jon S. Brand, an Orange Coast College geography professor who is running against Riley, said he favors a moratorium on all tract housing in south county and contends that cities such as San Clemente and Irvine should limit their growth.

But Jan Wilson, spokeswoman for the Santa Margarita Co., one of the four big developers of the San Clemente backcountry, said the company doesn’t “see any trend that we’re concerned about at this point. It’s a situation that goes with the territory, and you just have to proceed with what’s best for the company and for the jurisdiction that you’re working with.”

‘Voters Misled’

Besides the Talega Valley project, still unapproved, in San Clemente, the company is developing Rancho Santa Margarita, a 16,000-unit 20-year project almost on the scale of Mission Viejo, and it has plans to develop on 7,000 more acres of ranch land near San Juan Capistrano in the 1990s, Wilson said.

Steve Maloney, division manager for Western Savings & Loan Assn., based in Costa Mesa, said: “The message was loud and clear: They don’t want to see development. I think the voters were misled, and after the city adopts its budget for the next fiscal year, some of the realities may hit home. They’re going to have to cut back on police and fire services, and on maintenance. The city has done well, thanks to the inflow of dollars from development.” Western Savings is developing the 3,000-unit Rancho San Clemente project.

Backcountry developers had contributed almost $100,000 to defeat the slow-growth initiative, and lawsuits if Measure B did win were mentioned during the campaign, Maloney said.

“The chances are extremely remote that one of the four developers, or all four together, would fail to file a suit,” Maloney said. “It would probably be in the near term rather than the long--I hate to see the city have to spend the money to defend it.”

San Clemente City Manager James B. Hendrickson said the city’s liability insurance policy would not cover the cost of defending a lawsuit brought by the developers.