Unlikely Mix of Politics Is Behind Bid to Slow Growth

Two years after an unlikely mix of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats first met at the Balboa Bay Club to talk about limiting growth in Orange County, a law firm has begun drafting a countywide initiative on their behalf for the June, 1988, ballot.

Those involved in the effort say a signature-gathering drive to get the slow-growth measure on the ballot may be only months away.

Building a consensus within a group that includes a former shopping center developer and one of the more liberal politicians in the county has not always been a smooth process, participants say. But slowly, in meetings conducted largely behind closed doors, the outline of an approach acceptable to the entire coalition has emerged.

Traffic Flow the Key

Participants in the discussions confirm that control of traffic flow appears to be the key to the proposed initiative. But requirements for new roads, schools and even fire and police services before development occurs also may be a part of the measure, according to Terry Watt, a planning analyst and paralegal at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, the San Francisco firm retained to draft the ballot language.

In the most recent meeting of the slow-growth coalition two weeks ago, about 50 people gathered at a Tustin restaurant under the sponsorship of Orange County Tomorrow, a grass-roots organization formed to combat urbanization. They discussed a moratorium on building permits, neighborhood votes on major development projects and open-space requirements, as well as prohibitions against impairing traffic flow.

After the meeting, Watt, a former Newport Beach resident who advises groups such as Friends of the Irvine Coast and Stop Polluting Our Newport, said it had become clear that there now “is consensus on the key issues.”

Among the participants at the Tustin meeting were former county Republican chairman and shopping center developer Tom C. Rogers and Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, a Democrat attacked often but unsuccessfully by Republicans as an ally of Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and Hayden’s wife, actress Jane Fonda.

Both former Supervisor Bruce Nestande and his successor on the board, Gaddi H. Vasquez, spoke at the meeting. They said they felt compelled to address the group because of the participants’ combined political clout and the seriousness of the slow-growth movement in Orange County.

Nestande suggested that the supervisors soon may adopt their own ordinance limiting growth in unincorporated areas of the county. Currently, county staff members are drawing up a plan under which developers would be required to provide for roads to serve their projects before building permits are issued. If that approach fails, Nestande said, the board may pursue other methods of limiting growth.

Vasquez, who was named last month by Gov. George Deukmejian to replace Nestande and is attuned to the need to build support for his campaign for election next year, promised the coalition that he would be “accessible.”

A Pivotal Rule

In Rogers’ view, the new supervisor wants to play a pivotal role in any compromise that makes a ballot measure unnecessary.

While Vasquez skirts the issue of his role in such a compromise, he says he believes that avoiding the divisiveness of a ballot measure, in favor of action by the supervisors, would be wise.

“I would certainly prefer that, if we can come up with a specific plan,” Vasquez said.

The possibility that county officials will preempt slow-growth advocates with their own ordinance is welcomed by some members of the slow-growth coalition, according to Russ Burkett, a San Juan Capistrano investor and GOP activist who helped Rogers organize Orange County Tomorrow.

Burkett, a former San Gabriel Valley aerospace engineer, said he fled freeways and urban blight for south Orange County only to discover that the planned San Joaquin Hills freeway would go right by his front door.

Handful Do the Work

“People are lazy,” said Burkett. “There’s a lot of talking and discussion going on, but only a handful are doing the work. If they can get the Board of Supervisors to do something palatable, then that saves us a lot of energy and a lot of money.”

Indeed, some aides to county supervisors say board members, whose campaigns are heavily financed by developers, would feel embarrassed by a ballot measure. In 1978, similar sentiment after a successful petition drive led the board to adopt a campaign finance ordinance written by the same activists who had collected signatures qualifying the measure for a ballot test that never came.

But some slow-growth advocates believe the Board of Supervisors will be too slow to act.

Laguna Beach lawyer Belinda Blacketer, whose father was a building contractor, has prepared broad ballot language of her own and has submitted it to the San Francisco firm drafting the coalition’s proposed initiative. Her language would affect everything from construction to schools and hazardous wastes.

Said Blacketer: “I listed it all, because I believe the county is fast coming up to capacity with the services it can provide. And I believe there will be 27 separate initiatives--one for the county, and one for each of the 26 cities.”

‘A Delaying Tactic’

Among Blacketer’s previous slow-growth victories were a successful campaign to limit building heights in Laguna Beach and a legal attack that temporarily reversed county approval of an Aliso Viejo subdivision. Political action, she says, is more effective than court battles.

“Suing is sort of a delaying tactic,” Blacketer said. “But it doesn’t solve the problem.”

Blacketer is among several slow-growth advocates who want to press simultaneously for initiatives in the county and in each of the county’s 26 cities, partly to make it more costly for developers to mount legal challenges.

Watt, who worked for an Orange County planning firm before deciding she was “frustrated at working for development interests,” said her firm and the coalition are considering initiative language that could be used for both city and countywide ballot measures. The first few lines could be modified to fit each of the cities, she said, and voters would be asked to sign qualifying petitions for both measures--city and county--simultaneously.

Bill Speros, an Irvine heating and air conditioning contractor opposed to the planned San Joaquin Hills freeway, said slow-growth proponents are in the process of identifying “a core group” of potential initiative supporters in each city. Speros and his anti-freeway organization, the Committee of Seven Thousand, currently are involved in a lawsuit aimed at forcing a citywide vote on Irvine’s participation in a county freeway financing program.

Costa Mesa Councilman David Wheeler, a lawyer and activist from the Mesa Action community organization that helped elect slow-growth council members, said he believes cities should become part of the initiative drive because “they are supposedly built-out but continue to grow every year anyway.”

Jim Aynes, a Mesa Action board member who campaigned for Wheeler in Costa Mesa, was one of the original opponents of the Pacific Amphitheater, a target of citizens’ traffic and noise complaints.

“I was disappointed in the reaction I got from the city when I went over to express my views on it,” Aynes recalled. “Now I’d like to see something that basically does not allow the higher-density type buildings until the infrastructure is in place.”

Foothills Communities Assn. President Carol Shrider, a real estate broker who led a successful grass-roots effort last year against a freeway extension through North Tustin, believes public opinion strongly supports initiatives at both city and county levels.

“I think the problem is countywide,” she said. “Whether an initiative is a bottom-line necessity remains to be seen. But representative government hasn’t been working . . . The public has to take the process back and tell government how to do things better.

Harnessing Opinion

“I’m just a nobody, citizen-type,” said Shrider. “But I really believe in harnessing public opinion.”

Rogers, who believes that Orange County should have tried harder to retain its rural and suburban character, says he and Burkett have paid most of the cost of Orange County Tomorrow’s two-year anti-urbanization campaign--$10,000 to $15,000--out of their own pockets. He concedes that a ballot initiative would be costly to both opponents and proponents and would draw from contributors statewide, possibly pushing the price tag beyond $1 million.

In recent years, slow-growth advocates have had considerable success politically, even with modest funds.

Among the players in the countywide initiative effort, for example, is computer engineer Allan Beek, who lost his own bid for a Newport Beach City Council seat but whose Gridlock organization upset the Irvine Co.’s planned expansion of Newport Center at the polls last year. Beek is now launching a new initiative drive aimed at limiting high-rise construction in Newport Beach.

Tom Lorch and Bryan Rice, who led the successful drive for a slow-growth ballot measure in San Clemente last year and were elected to the city council, are also behind the countywide initiative effort.

Initiative Challenged

San Clemente already is facing a series of lawsuits filed by developers challenging the city’s slow-growth initiative.

Rick Rowe of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, who lost a council seat by 187 votes last year, is worried that slow-growth advocates may try to fashion an initiative that will be too complex for voters to embrace. “It has to be simple,” said Rowe, “and I think traffic is on everyone’s mind.”

Watt agrees, pointing to litigation over a growth-limiting measure approved last year by Walnut Creek voters. Her law firm is appealing a Superior Court ruling striking down that measure on grounds it constituted zoning action at odds with the city’s general plan.

Rogers fears, however, that success at the polls will not translate into success in fact.

First, he says, there’s no guarantee that slow-growth ordinances will be vigorously enforced, or that they will even work.

Draws Mixed Reviews

For example, Santa Clara County has a growth-limiting ordinance linked to traffic flow that has drawn mixed reviews. Some officials concede that it has not curtailed congestion in developing, outlying areas any more than adding car-pool lanes, coordinating traffic signals and other transportation improvements.

Secondly, Rogers said, “There’s nothing to stop a developer from building his own city and incorporating it. I guess then the people who lived there would have to deal with it.”

Said Burkett: “There is no single, perfect solution, no magic bullet. But the talent is there to get some kind of growth restraint on the books.”

Referring to the slow-growth advocates, Burkett added: “It would be a mistake of major proportions to sell these folks short.”

WHAT THE INITIATIVE BACKERS ARE SAYING