School Trustees Unanimously Oppose Zone Plan

San Diego city school trustees agreed Tuesday to ask the City Council to exempt their property from controversial protective zoning regulations, setting the stage for another fight with community groups when the council considers the issue.

The trustees approved a proposal that asks for an exemption from an “institutional overlay zone” proposal, which is to be considered at a council meeting Tuesday.

The zoning regulations would allow the council to delay any attempt to change the use of an institution--such as a school, museum, library or church--to give community residents the opportunity to find another institutional use for it.

Passage of the measure could delay the San Diego Unified School District’s attempt to raise revenue for school construction and expansion by selling or leasing six closed school sites to developers.

Residents near Dana Junior High School in Point Loma and Farnum Elementary School in Pacific Beach--two of the closed schools--hope the zoning regulations will block the program, which they say will replace publicly held property with private housing. The Institutional Overlay Zone Task Force, a citywide group, is also seeking enactment of the measure.

School board attorney Tina Dyer said that the board’s proposal offers residents a string of public hearings at which they can voice their opposition and provides the city with the opportunity to buy closed schools for use as parks at a fraction of their value--as required by state law.

The institutional zone idea, which is supported by the city’s Planning Department, was unanimously rejected by the Planning Commission, Dyer said.

Critics noted that the board’s proposal applies only to leases lasting more than 20 years. They said that the public hearing process offers them little time to act and no protection against the district’s ultimately leasing the site.

“Nowhere in this (plan) do you see preservation of institutional sites mentioned,” said Jim Kelley-Markham, steering committee member of San Diegans for Managed Growth.

They were also angry that much of the document had been written by a joint city-school district task force that met secretly for the last nine months.

Only one resident, Karen McElliott, a member of the Mira Mesa-Scripps Ranch Citizens for Schools, praised the proposal. Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch, where some of the district’s most overcrowded schools are located, would benefit from the revenue raised by the leases.

Trustees, who desperately need revenue to finance an estimated $139 million in building projects by the turn of the century, unanimously approved the proposal.

“I think the institutional overlay zone is a threat to our property management program,” Trustee Jim Roache said. “We are not here to provide parks and institutions for the City of San Diego. That is properly the purview of the City of San Diego.”