S.D. Growth Plans Legal, Witt Says

City Atty. John Witt on Wednesday gave the City Council the green light to consider three growth management plans despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that cities can be liable for monetary damages if their land-use policies are too strict.

Witt, in a three-page memo to Mayor Maureen O’Connor and other members of the City Council, said the high court’s decision Tuesday involving a Glendale church’s lawsuit against Los Angeles County “will have little, if any, effect on the city’s planning and zoning process.”

“As to future regulation, including the controversial subject of growth management, land-use policies and procedures will continue in San Diego in a normal fashion,” Witt wrote.

Witt’s memo comes as council members are preparing for a special session June 22 at 7 p.m. in Golden Hall to consider competing growth plans proposed by O’Connor, Councilman Ed Struiksma and an environmental coalition that includes members of the Sierra Club. The coalition’s proposal, the most restrictive of the three, has been endorsed by Councilman Mike Gotch.

In the year since O’Connor was elected on a slow-growth platform, debate among city officials has shifted from whether to limit growth to how to limit it. The growth management plan written in the mid-1970s and championed by then-Mayor Pete Wilson stressed accommodating rather than limiting growth.

Witt said the high court decision says that a property owner is eligible for damages if a court finds that a city or county has been unreasonable in restricting the use of his land. Previously, the only remedy under California law was for the unreasonable restriction to be lifted.

“The law remains that a regulation must not deny an owner all reasonable use of his property under the circumstances,” Witt said. “ . . . There is nothing new in all this. My office has often advised you that the regulation you impose must be reasonable.”

The decision, Witt noted, did not define what is an unreasonable land-use regulation. The Glendale case involved an interim flood control ordinance that kept the church from building on a 21-acre parcel in a canyon. A lower court had already found that the action constituted a “taking” of the property without compensation.

Witt noted one key section of the court’s decision, which said:

“We limit our holding to the facts presented, and of course do not deal with the quite different questions that would arise in the case of normal delays in obtaining building permits, changes in zoning ordinances, variances, and the like which are not before us.”