Map Change Could Spur Development : Council Act May Have Violated Prop. A

“An error is just an error until you refuse to correct it, and then it becomes a mistake.”--A comment by Dennis Ainsworth, a member of the Rancho de Los Penasquitos Planning Board to the San Diego City Council on April 21.

“An error is just an error until you refuse to correct it, and then it becomes a mistake.”

--Comment by Dennis Ainsworth, a member of the Rancho de Los Penasquitos Planning Board to the San Diego City Council on April 21.

Moments after Ainsworth delivered that homespun aphorism last week, the San Diego City Council, seeking to correct what had been described as a simple line-drawing mistake on a map, voted to change the boundary of the Penasquitos East Community Plan.

However, city Planning Department officials, mayoral candidate Maureen O’Connor and Sierra Club leaders argue that the council, in trying to solve one problem, may have created an even bigger one that violates Proposition A, the stringent growth-management initiative approved by San Diego voters last November.

Through its action, those officials say, the council appears to have authorized development on part of a 43-acre parcel of property formerly intended to remain undeveloped until 1995--a seemingly unintentional gaffe stemming from considerable confusion over the precise location of key property boundary lines. Moreover, the impact of the council’s action, those officials add, may reach far beyond that particular 43-acre site, perhaps opening the door to development of hundreds of acres now off limits to construction.

“If the question is whether the council knew exactly what it was doing, I’d say the answer is definitely no,” one top Planning Department official said.

Nearly two weeks after the council’s action, the issue still is dominated more by confusion and questions than by certainty and answers. The precise location of the boundary lines, the ramifications of the council’s decision, whether Proposition A requires a public vote on the boundary change, the reason why the issue bypassed the city’s normal review procedures--those questions and others are as murky today as when the council voted, 6-1, to alter the Penasquitos boundary line.

“I didn’t understand it then and I’m not sure I do now,” said Councilman Mike Gotch, the only council member who voted against including the 43-acre Carmel Rancho 2 tract within the Penasquitos community boundary, which clears the way for future housing development. Councilman and mayoral candidate Bill Cleator missed the council vote.

Both O’Connor and the Sierra Club have requested that the council reconsider its action next week. However, because a two-thirds vote of the council--six of the eight votes--is required for reconsideration, that option appears dim.

In a letter mailed Thursday to City Atty. John W. Witt, O’Connor argued that “dramatic new information”--in particular, confusion over where certain map lines begin and end--requires that the issue be reconsidered.

“The fact that the public was not given proper notification that the matter was being considered and it bypassed normal procedures should be investigated,” O’Connor wrote Witt. “Proper checks and balances were ignored in what could be considered a dangerous precedent-setting maneuver.”

In seeking the boundary change, Carmel Rancho’s owners argued that a simple mapping error resulted in the property, located just west of Black Mountain Road, being precluded from development. Specifically, that argument hinged on the difference between two boundary lines--one listed on the Penasquitos community plan map and the other in the city’s general plan.

The community plan line ran along the property’s eastern border--thereby excluding the entire parcel from development--while the general plan line is farther west. In short, the property owners--and Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who pushed for the boundary change--argued that the general plan line should be used to define where development could occur, adding that the only reason that was not the case already was a line-drawing error.

The Rancho Penasquitos Planning Board also favored the boundary change because, according to board chairman Richard Budenholzer, “this just looked like a simple mistake.”

“What we’re looking at . . . is moving the Rancho Penasquitos community plan boundary line to conform with the general plan boundary line,” Wolfsheimer said during the council debate. “This is a housekeeping measure because there was an error.”

However, what council members, city attorneys, Budenholzer and others apparently did not realize at the time of last week’s vote is that the 43-acre site does not fall between the two map lines, but rather is roughly divided in half by the general plan line. By its action, the council cleared the way for development of the entire tract--even though city planners now believe that about 40% of the property is west of the general plan line and thus is in the city’s so-called “future urbanizing zone,” property set aside for development later this century. Under Proposition A, any proposed removal of land from the future urbanizing category requires public approval.

Chief Deputy City Atty. Fred Conrad told the council members last week that it was within their “prerogative to clarify where the line” should be drawn. Conrad, however, admitted Thursday that he believed that the Carmel Rancho property fell within the general plan line rather than being bisected by it.

“I’ll be damned--that’s news to me,” Conrad said. “Of course, we really didn’t have the opportunity to examine the maps. This was Abbe’s baby. I drew up the (boundary change) resolution based on . . . information from her office.”

Wolfsheimer could not be reached for comment Thursday. However, her council representative, Linda Bernhardt, explained that she, too, believed that all 43 acres were within the general plan line.

“If the line divides the property, that’s different from what our understanding was,” Bernhardt said. That impression was based, she added, on information from the Planning Department--a contention that various city planners dispute.

John Thelan, the attorney who represented the property owners before the council, said Thursday that he could not comment on the boundary line dispute until he speaks to the owners today.

However, during last week’s debate, Thelan had characterized the council’s action as simply a clarification of where the map lines should be drawn, not a means of shifting land from the future urbanization to “planned urbanizing” zones.

“I don’t think a matter of clarification or confirmation has anything to do with Proposition A,” Thelan said during the April 21 debate.

The Sierra Club and others, however, argue that the council’s decision has everything to do with Proposition A.

“Even if there was a mistake about where the lines are drawn, the mechanism for solving that problem, as a result of Prop. A, is going to the public,” said Jay Powell, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator. “Our fear is that the council not only violated Prop. A, but that they realigned the lines in a such a way that a lot of other property could be affected, too.”

City planning officials share that fear. Noting that land other than the Carmel Rancho parcel falls between the community plan and general plan lines in Rancho Penasquitos, one top planning official estimated that more than 200 additional acres of land could be affected by the council’s ruling.

“The council may have opened a very big door here,” Powell said. Indeed, last week, the owner of property adjacent to the Carmel Rancho site approached the council about the possibility of having his property similarly recategorized.

City planners, Conrad, council members and others believe that much of the mystery surrounding the issue today stems from the manner it which it was brought--rushed, some allege--to the council for action.

“This certainly points out that you shouldn’t do things like this in a hurry,” Conrad said. “But that hasn’t impeded our legislative body from doing exactly that.”

The proposed boundary change initially appeared on the council’s April 14 consent agenda, which is normally reserved for innocuous and relatively minor administrative matters. After complaints from environmentalists, the council’s debate was postponed for one week.

In addition, although the Carmel Rancho property had been reviewed by various city officials in recent years, the proposal received little scrutiny, no public notice and was not analyzed by the Planning Department before it reached the council. Planning officials explained that because Wolfsheimer’s office, not the Planning Department, asked the council to consider the request, they did not prepare a report on the subject, as normally occurs on such matters.

Last week, Gotch warned his colleagues that the unusually rapid consideration of the proposed boundary change “gives credence to the sentiment out there that . . . we’re trying to slip something by when the public isn’t looking.” It would have been more logical, he argued, to delay the issue until the council undertakes a comprehensive citywide review of the boundary line between the future urbanizing and planned urbanizing zones in June.

“I’m very upset about the way this thing came before us,” Gotch said Thursday. “It was a mistake to treat an issue this significant this way, and that’s the reason for all the confusion and questions we face now. The fact is, I don’t think that anybody really knows what really happened last week.”