Oceanside Pushes to Get New Slow-Growth Law in Place

These are not placid days for the Oceanside City Council. With passage last month of a tough slow-growth initiative, the council has been grappling in recent weeks with the ticklish task of implementing the new law.

Mostly, the council has found itself stuck between the wishes of developers eager to see their housing projects go forward and a determined band of slow-growth advocates eager to put a lid on the city’s building boom.

In the latest chapter, the council faced off far into the evening Wednesday with backers of Proposition A, which puts a strict cap on the number of dwelling units that can be built each year.

Slow-growth advocates and the council, which unanimously opposed Proposition A in the April 21 special election, clashed over how to interpret the spirit and letter of the new ordinance during a four-hour hearing before about 200 residents. In the end, both sides came away beaten and bloodied, but determined to keep up the fight.

On Thursday, the council swept aside the rhetoric of the night before and agreed unanimously to extend a moratorium on the issuance of building permits for three months.

That action ran contrary to the advice of city staff members, who suggested that the moratorium--adopted by the council as a 45-day urgency measure after the election--be extended through the end of the year so that an intricate system for awarding building permits under Proposition A could be devised. Council members made it clear that they wanted the new law in place much sooner.

The move has Proposition A’s advocates worried that the council will begin to allot more building permits this year. Although Proposition A calls for a construction limit of 1,000 dwelling units in 1987 and 800 in each subsequent year through 1999, the city had already issued more than 3,000 building permits before the election a month ago.

City legal officials maintain that the city has the right to issue an additional 1,000 building permits this year, reasoning that the initiative did not go into effect until after the election. But slow-growth advocates contend that the council would be violating the new law if more homes are built this year.

“I’m absolutely incredulous that they’d try to give away another 1,000 units this year,” said Melba Bishop, a leader of the slow-growth forces. “I don’t know what calendar they’re using if they think 1987 began on April 21. It isn’t any calendar I’ve ever seen.”

Avoiding Litigation

But council members say there is more to their actions than first meets the eye. In particular, the council is worried that it needs to consider issuing more permits this year in order to avoid lawsuits by developers who have invested money to build streets and sewers but have been waylaid by Proposition A, Mayor Larry Bagley said.

“This may be one way of avoiding some very, very costly litigation,” Bagley said, adding that it still remains to be seen if the council will actually decide to issue more building permits this year.

In particular, he questioned whether the city would be able to put together the new system mandated by Proposition A and process eligible housing developments by the end of the year. Nonetheless, Bagley said the council wants to demonstrate that they are not “deliberately obstructing” the rights of developers.

“We’re not saying we’re going to issue permits,” Bagley said. “But we are saying we want a mechanism in place to process them.”

Bagley said council members are cognizant of the potential political pitfalls of their actions but feel that “someone’s going to scream” whatever direction the council takes.

Slow-growth stalwarts did just that when the council adopted a policy two weeks ago allowing a broad exemption for housing projects intended for low-income residents or senior citizens, as well as rehabilitation or remodeling projects. Under the council directive, more than 2,000 units currently in the planning pipeline could go forward unfettered by Proposition A.

Spirit of the Law

During Wednesday night’s meeting, Bishop and others brought complaints before the council, saying that city leaders had circumvented the spirit of the law.

While the initiative requires that a project for senior citizens or low-income residents be government-funded to be considered for an exemption, the council had effectively given the green light to projects that do not meet that criteria, slow-growth advocates argued.

Proposition A supporters also complained about the council’s decision to deem a private development planned on land currently occupied by Sterling Homes, a dilapidated Marine Corps housing complex slated to be demolished, to be a rehabilitation or remodeling project. Such projects are exempt from Proposition A. Bishop and others argued that the council was stretching the intent of the law to make way for the new development, called Eagle’s Crossing.

Bagley and other council members countered during the meeting that they were left little choice but to let Eagle’s Crossing go forward because the development was the subject of a complex deal with the Marine Corps and a private developer involving replacement housing built on Camp Pendleton.

As for the exemption for senior-citizen housing, Bagley pointed to several residents of developments catering to the elderly who claimed to have been misled by slow-growth advocates into believing Proposition A would exempt their communities.

Indeed, dozens of residents from several senior-citizen complexes scattered throughout the city complained during the meeting that their partly finished projects could become a financial burden. With home sites left undeveloped, property values of existing homes could be reduced, some elderly residents said. Others said they would have a tough time paying homeowners’ fees that could be inflated because fewer homeowners would be contributing to the upkeep fund.

“I firmly believe a lot of seniors never would have voted for Proposition A if they had known they were going to be cutting their own throats,” said Eileen Cook, resident of a subdivision hit by the new law.

Bishop countered that she and other slow-growth proponents had taken care to properly inform residents of the true intent of the law. Moreover, she said Thursday that she felt that the council had played “a political game” by packing the council chamber with “special interest groups” who had a beef with the new ordinance.

“The ordinance they are implementing is not the one we wrote, not the one people voted for,” Bishop said. “The council heard from 50 people on Wednesday night, not the 8,000 people who voted for Proposition A.”