Fast-Growing Penasquitos, Bernardo : 2 Ranchos Lose Pleas for Building Bans

Two of San Diego’s fastest-growing communities--Rancho Penasquitos and Rancho Bernardo--asked for building moratoriums Monday, but a City Council committee turned them down, at least for now.

Although it acknowledged that roads and schools are overcrowded and that there is a scarcity of parks and libraries, the council’s Land Use and Transportation Committee voted to give developers, residents and the city bureaucracy more time to find solutions.

In the case of Rancho Penasquitos, the administrators were given four months to respond to an 11-point proposal made by Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who represents the Rancho Penasquitos and Rancho Bernardo areas and is chairwoman of the committee.

Her proposal, endorsed unanimously by the four-member committee, sets forth tasks ranging from requiring the city manager’s office to accelerate the timetable for the construction of needed public facilities such as new roads and a new library to looking at whether developers’ fees should be increased.

In addition, a city-developers-citizen task force will be formed.

At the urging of Councilman Mike Gotch, who called the developments in Rancho Penasquitos a “recipe for a nightmare,” the city administration will investigate whether a “prepay” program of public improvements is feasible.

Gotch said that, in Rancho Penasquitos, it may be necessary to require financing for public improvements before construction begins, rather than relying on the city’s traditional “pay-as-you-grow” method of financing, in which developers pay at the time they build their subdivisions.

The city manager’s office was directed to respond in 30 days with a schedule showing about when the various components of the 11-point proposal will be completed.

Matters were comparatively simpler for Rancho Bernardo, the 24,000-resident community just north of Rancho Penasquitos along Interstate 15.

Although Rancho Bernardo residents are equally frustrated about increased traffic, their main concern is that the number of approved but not yet built subdivisions exceeds the maximum of 16,700 residential units specified in its community plan, used as a blueprint for growth.

Rancho Bernardo leaders say that, by their count, the total is now 17,100 and that, therefore, a moratorium is necessary.

What the council committee voted for, however, was not a moratorium, although its decision could prove nearly as far-reaching.

At Wolfsheimer’s recommendation, the committee approved having the city manager’s office review the method used to pay for Rancho Bernardo’s public improvements, such as new roads and parks, including studying whether developers’ fees should be raised.

But the committee also voted to place a condition on developers that may stop them, at least temporarily, from proceeding with their projects. Technically, the committee approved placing conditions on developers’ tentative subdivision maps until a review and update of the Rancho Bernardo community plan is finished.

That plan is now being reviewed, and Wolfsheimer said after the meeting that it should not take more than three more months to complete. From a practical viewpoint, she acknowledged, such a stipulation would not affect developers because it takes them more than three months to go from the tentative map stage to actual construction.

But Mike Stepner, assistant planning director, said after the meeting that it is unclear how the tentative map restrictions would affect projects already on the city’s development slate and that the Rancho Bernardo community plan review could take six months or more to complete, thereby stopping development.

The restrictions, Stepner said, could affect 2,000 units in two proposed developments--Westwood Valley and Battle Mountain--that have yet to reach the tentative map stage and which Rancho Bernardo residents are fearful will receive city approval before the community plan update is finished.

Other city officials and developers said it may take several days and an analysis by the city attorney’s office before all the ramifications of the tentative map restrictions are clear.

Confusion over the impact of the restriction led Councilwoman Judy McCarty to vote against the proposal.

Turnout was heavy for the moratorium hearings Monday. Rancho Bernardo residents chartered two buses. Rancho Penasquitos leaders recounted the horrors of living with overcrowded schools, heavily congested streets, frustrating freeway waits and inadequate libraries and parks.

Dennis Ainsworth of the Rancho Penasquitos community planning board said that growth and its effects are the most-talked-about subjects in Rancho Penasquitos. “People are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore,” he said.

Others, such as Alan Dickey, a member of the community planning board and a chief moratorium proponent, accused developers, whom he described as “professional arm-twisters,” of having “undue influence on some members of the City Council and the city Planning Department. . . . How else could such poor planning occur?”

He charged that the city planning staff was “blind to reality,” calling its stand against a moratorium on the basis that more growth is needed to provide revenue to pay for public improvements “insulting.”

“The community plan has not been closely monitored, and, as a result, in the last several years we’ve had mismanaged growth rather than managed growth,” Dickey said.

Although the community is nearly 20 years old, it has no permanent library, relying instead on a small temporary facility. City plans call for construction of a permanent library in 1995, a situation that “amounts to negligence on the part of the City Council, Planning Department and developers,” he said.

A moratorium, Dickey said, would allow time to “sit down with developers and evaluate shortcomings.”

But representatives of developers said a moratorium would not only signal a “failure of public policy” but would make conditions worse, as payments from developers for scheduled improvements would cease.

“Moratoriums don’t solve problems . . . they tend to delay viable solutions,” said Kim Kilkenny, attorney for the Construction Industry Federation, which represents some of the largest home builders in San Dhego.

“Development pressure,” he said, “would be pushed to other communities.”

Kilkenny said that developers already pay more than their way by providing the public improvements that are a condition of construction.

“The problem is a cash-flow, cash-management problem,” said Kilkenny, to which Gotch responded that perhaps part of the solution to Rancho Penasquitos’ problems is for developers to pay for improvements far in advance of construction.