Battle Over Initiatives : Judge Orders Carlsbad Building Permit Ban

A Vista Superior Court judge Wednesday ordered Carlsbad city officials to stop issuing building permits until a dispute over a slow-growth initiative is settled in court.

Judge David Moon put a moratorium on all new housing construction until April, when the city and a citizens group face off in court over the growth-control measure.

Concerned Citizens, the organization that sponsored the slow-growth effort, is seeking a court order that would force the City Council to enact the initiative, which won a majority of the vote in November but was declared a loser because a rival measure got more votes.

Moon ordered Carlsbad officials to stop handing out development permits after an attorney for Concerned Citizens expressed fears that builders would rush to begin construction before the matter is resolved April 21.

“I told the judge, ‘Look, while we’re standing here waiting for a hearing, those developers are going to want to move,’ ” said Thomas Smith, an attorney for Concerned Citizens.

Under the slow-growth initiative, a cap would limit construction of new dwelling units to 1,000 during 1987, 750 in 1988, and 500 annually until 1996. Smith and other slow-growth advocates are worried that the city might exceed the 1,000-unit cap before the court battle is concluded.

City legal officials said they were troubled by the judge’s ruling. They plan to ask the City Council on Tuesday for permission to return to court and argue against the moratorium.

Ron Ball, Carlsbad’s assistant city attorney, said the city is well short of the 1,000-unit threshold. Moreover, only about 800 units will be eligible for building permits before the end of April, according to Ball.

A vast pool of more than 8,000 units is stuck in the city’s planning pipeline, piled up on a bureaucratic reef that was created when the city enacted a growth management ordinance last year. Most of those units will not be eligible for building permits until well after the April hearing, Ball said.

The citizen-backed slow-growth measure, Proposition G, got 51.5% of the vote in the Nov. 4 election, but the City Council refused to enact it because a rival measure, Proposition E, got more votes.

Proposition E included a stipulation that, if both propositions passed, the one receiving the higher number of votes would become law. Because of that so-called “killer clause,” Proposition E was the victor with 57.9% of the vote.

Backers of Proposition G maintain that the city has no authority to interfere with the initiative process. Moreoever, a killer clause can only be used if the two measures are in conflict, they say.

As slow-growth advocates see it, Proposition G in no way contradicts Proposition E, a measure designed to help insure that city services keep pace with future development.

City officials, meanwhile, have argued that the two ballot measures do conflict, in particular because Proposition G would slow growth so severely that the new facilities mandated by Proposition E could not be built.