Special Vote Set to Decide Growth Issue in Oceanside

The Oceanside City Council Wednesday night agreed to place two competing growth management initiatives on the ballot, making the burgeoning coastal community the latest addition to the list of cities wrestling with the issue of growth at the polls.

The council’s action, which followed a public hearing attended by nearly 300 people, clears the way for residents to vote on the measures in a special election April 21.

One of the initiatives backed by a citizens’ group would limit the number of homes built in Oceanside each year. The other is supported by the City Council and prohibits new development unless adequate public services are available.

Expressing views shared by his council colleagues, Mayor Larry Bagley warned the audience that the citizens’ initiative is fraught with peril.

“I am absolutely convinced that we are in for a hornet’s nest if we approve it,” Bagley said, noting that placing a cap on growth could make the city vulnerable to lawsuits from developers.

Moreover, Bagley argued that the initiative is a punitive action that offers no answer to Oceanside’s problems. “What (our version) tries to do is provide a solution, not just a reaction,” he said.

The citizens’ initiative is the brainchild of a group known as Oceanside Taxpayers for Orderly Growth. Its aim is to prevent residential development from outstripping available public facilities--streets and schools among them--by placing a cap on the number of homes that may be built in Oceanside each year.

Under the measure, which is modeled after similar growth-control initiatives passed in almost 60 cities nationwide, 1,000 housing units could be built in the city in 1987 and 800 units could be built in each subsequent year through 1999. At that point, the City Council would review the ordinance.

The proposed law calls for creation of a “Residential Development Evaluation Board” to rate project applications and determine which will be allowed to proceed under the annual quota. Criteria for approval include a project’s impact on public services, its architectural strengths, a developer’s provision of parks or open space, and the existence of energy-saving or other conservation features in the plan.

Among projects exempted from the annual cap would be remodeling of existing homes, projects in the city’s redevelopment area and developments dedicated to serve senior citizens or low-income residents.

Backers of the initiative, who first organized more than a year ago, contend that an annual ceiling on allowable dwelling units is necessary to stabilize the rate of growth and permit public services to keep pace with development. They fear that slow-growth campaigns in other North County cities are prompting more and more developers to do business in Oceanside, where 3,500 housing units were constructed in 1985.

“What we need is a sensible way to meter in growth and allow the attending infrastructure to catch up and stay even with our population,” said Don Rodee, an airline pilot who lives in the Morro Hills area of Oceanside and has spearheaded the citizens’ effort. “Under the current system, we’ve got no controls. Each development approved just compounds our problems.”

While the Orderly Growth group gathered the necessary signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot, the City Council late last year established a committee to come up with an alternative proposal. The council generally opposes the citizens’ approach, saying it would virtually shut down development and rob the city of developer fees needed to construct roads and other facilities.

In a report released this week, the committee suggests that the citizens’ approach would create a “cumbersome” new layer of government and would require “subjective” choices regarding which projects receive building permits each year.

The committee also protests the ordinance’s exemption of low-income and senior-citizen housing from the cap, noting that such projects “contravene the community’s goals to provide upscale housing opportunities.”

The alternative ordinance supported by the council would essentially commit city officials to follow Oceanside’s existing general plan. Recently, the council toughened the portion of the plan that deals with land use and revised the desired ultimate population of the city downward from 350,000 to 225,000.

In addition, the council-backed law would require adoption of new standards for upgrading of public facilities in Oceanside’s 17 neighborhood planning areas and would not permit new building unless adequate public services were in place.

In an effort to bolster community involvement in growth issues, the ordinance also would create an outreach program using public workshops to gather input from the city’s various and distinctive neighborhoods.

But as Rodee and his Orderly Growth allies see it, the council-backed version is merely a “diversionary tactic” designed to confuse voters and siphon support from the citizens’ alternative. In November, two competing slow-growth measures were on the ballot in Carlsbad. Although both initiatives passed, the city’s alternative, a less restrictive approach, won the most votes and was declared the winner. Backers of the other measure plan to challenge that verdict in court.

Elsewhere in North County, slow-growth rumblings are heard in Vista, San Marcos and Escondido--and a development moratorium remains in effect in Encinitas.