New Open Space for County : Bond Issue Could Provide $45 Million for Parkland

San Diego County builders and slow-growth advocates--almost always in opposing political camps--are uniting behind a unique proposal that could provide more than $45 million to buy parkland and open space in the county.

That amount would be the county’s share of a statewide bond issue sponsored by a coalition of environmentalists frustrated by what they see as the Deukmejian Administration’s unwillingness to expand California’s parks and wildlife system.

If it qualifies for the June, 1988, state ballot, the measure, backed by the Planning and Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and, in San Diego, the building industry, would be the first bond issue placed on the ballot by citizen initiative since 1914.

Most Uses Specified

The measure would provide $776 million for parkland, open space and wildlife habitat statewide, with much of that money earmarked in the proposal and thus not subject to change by the Legislature or government administrators.

To gain support for the initiative drive and the measure, its sponsors, calling themselves Californians for Parks and Wildlife, have spread the bond issue’s wealth among more than 60 projects divided between Northern and Southern California and targeted for every corner of the state.

In many cases, projects were listed in the initiative in exchange for local groups’ pledges to gather a certain number of signatures or dollars in support of the measure, said Gerald Meral, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League and coordinator of the campaign. The technique prompted one observer familiar with the campaign to describe the measure as “an environmentalist’s pork-barrel initiative.”

“We figured we should try to get the support of a lot of local groups, and it’s no surprise that the only way we could get that support is if they were sure they would get funded,” Meral said. “There is general public support, but unless your local group is going to get funded, they’re not that enthusiastic about going out and getting signatures.”

The proposal could bring more money to San Diego than the county has received from the four most recent statewide parks bond issues combined, said Robert Copper, director of the county Department of Parks and Recreation.

“This is really the first significant capital money available since the demise of land and water conservation funding by the federal government in 1980,” Copper said. “This amount of money would enable us to set aside a number of resources we’ve been looking at and will help provide the land on which active park and recreation facilities could be built.”

Four San Diego area projects would receive a total of $35 million--$10 million for the San Dieguito River, $10 million for expansion of a Tijuana River preserve, $10 million for the purchase of urban canyons, and $5 million for Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The county and various city governments would also share $10 million or so on a per capita basis, and millions more could come to San Diego County through the Coastal Conservancy, the California Parks and Recreation Department and other agencies.

Bipartisan Backing

The measure’s statewide sponsors expect the proposal to receive strong bipartisan backing, and nowhere is that kind of support more evident than in San Diego.

San Diegans for Parks and Wildlife, a campaign organization formed to guide the effort for the measure in the county, has a banker as chairman, a builder as vice chairman and one of the county’s most active environmentalists as treasurer. To coordinate the gathering of the 125,000 signatures San Diegans have pledged to collect for the initiative, the committee has hired the firm that ran the successful 1984 campaign for Proposition A, the city’s growth management initiative.

Statewide, the campaign will need to collect at least 375,000 signatures between June and November to qualify for the ballot.

Peter Q. Davis, president of the Bank of Commerce and chairman of the San Diego committee, said the proposal appeals to environmentalists because it would preserve open space, and to builders because it would allow the government to buy their land rather than take it.

“What we’re trying to do is set aside some land now that will never be available if we don’t get it pretty soon,” Davis said. “We’re not trying to do it through zoning it downward to the detriment of the landowners. We’re saying, ‘Let’s put our money where our hearts are. Let’s pay the people and set it aside.’ ”

Robert Bennett, president of Carmel Mountain Ranch and vice chairman of the committee, said the bond issue is the “best way” to preserve land for open space.

Bennett said he intends to gather signatures for the initiative, and he said the Building Industry Assn. will urge builders and their subcontractors to find one employee each to spend a day obtaining signatures. Bennett said the BIA may also hold a joint fund-raiser with the Sierra Club--which would definitely be a first.

“This is one of the few times the Sierra Club and the building industry have been holding hands on an issue,” Bennett, a BIA board member, said.

Unusual Alliance

Bob Hartman, a prime mover behind the 1984 growth management initiative, against which builders spent more than $700,000, described the new alliance as an unusual one that he thinks will benefit the industry and conservationists alike. He said the traditional system of requiring developers to give the public part of their land as open space has not provided sufficient greenbelts and, in some cases, has pressured elected officials to approve large developments that they would not otherwise have allowed.

“Since there’s been so much concern about growth and the impact of growth on open space, this is an effort to work together to have a positive program in place,” Hartman said. “There has to be some way to institute a program where property owners can be compensated for their property.”

Much of the money in the initiative is targeted for the purchase of land as open space that will not necessarily be developed as active parks, with lawns and ball fields. But Davis said open space greenbelts such as the one planned for the San Dieguito River Valley are crucial to maintaining San Diego’s quality of life amid rapid development.

“The San Dieguito River can still be saved,” he said. “It will be a short time before that river bottom is totally taken over and, if not developed, probably polluted and lost as an opportunity for a park and wildlife preserve.”

County Supervisor Susan Golding, the prime backer of a regional park for that area, said the $10 million set aside for San Dieguito would be well below the full amount needed to create the park she envisions. But she said the money would enable the county to buy some land that might otherwise be developed.

“Once the land is gone, it’s gone,” Golding said. “It’s too expensive to ever purchase again.”

Solid Support

Though support for the proposal seems solid in San Diego, the initiative drive is causing some discomfort in the Legislature, where lawmakers are used to divvying up park money among themselves and taking credit with their constituents for park expansion in their districts.

Assemblyman Bill Jones (R-Fresno), who has authored a $350-million parks bond bill, said he worries that placing a bond issue on the ballot by initiative would set a bad precedent.

“It throws an awfully wide loop in bringing in every project imaginable,” Jones said. “Parks bonds are very popular. But the price tag may be around $750 million, and when you’re looking at bills for bonds on transportation, for additional funding for education and Medi-Cal, I question whether going out and asking different groups to gather signatures based on the fact that if you gather so many signatures we’ll put you on our bond measure is an appropriate manner to go about this process.”

Linda Adams, an aide to Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno), who is carrying a $450-million parks bond measure, said Costa is “concerned” that the Planning and Conservation League’s measure could take away authority that traditionally rests with elected officials.

“The Planning and Conservation League is setting the priorities for the state,” Adams said of the initiative. “They’re saying we need $12 million to acquire redwoods, we need $19 million for Indian Canyon, we need $15 million to acquire agricultural lands in Marin County. Well, maybe that’s not the priority of the Legislature or the governor.”

Exactly, said Meral, the spokesman for Californians for Parks and Wildlife. He said his group, which sponsored a bond measure last year that died in the Legislature, feared that dollars for open space and parks would be at the end of the list when lawmakers and the governor negotiated over which bond issues to place on the 1988 ballot.

“We thought our chances for getting any real money for these purposes were just too small,” Meral said. “We could have gone through the process again, but it just didn’t look very hopeful.”

PROPOSED PARKLAND SITES

The proposed California Wildlife, Coastal and Park Land Conservation Bond Act of 1988 includes $35 million for these San Diego County projects:

$10 million to the county for wildlife habitat in the Tijuana River Valley, probably between the eastern boundary of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Sanctuary and Interstate 5.

$10 million to the county for land as open space in the San Dieguito River Valley in the area between Del Mar and Lake Hodges.

$10 million to the county for a program to purchase canyons for open space in urban areas throughout San Diego.

$5 million to the state for expansion of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park.