Initiative Seeks Slow Growth in Orange County

Angrily blaming developers and politicians for Orange County’s traffic jams, a citizens’ group Saturday unveiled a proposed June, 1988, ballot initiative that would bar major construction projects countywide, except where average vehicle speeds are at least 30 to 35 m.p.h. and where vehicles can make it through an intersection on one cycle of a traffic light.

County officials immediately branded the measure as unworkable, and John Erskine, executive director of the Orange County Building Industry Assn., said it would amount to a “moratorium” or freeze on almost all large construction projects.

Still, Erskine, a Huntington Beach councilman, and officials such as Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young have said that Orange County voters will overwhelmingly approve such a measure.

Signature Requirements

Sponsors of the initiative said they expect to begin gathering signatures in three weeks, after a legally required 21-day period for public comment. They will have 180 days in which to gather 66,000 signatures countywide and an additional 10% of the registered voters in each of the county’s 26 cities.

If it were to become law, sponsors said, the proposed initiative would be the most far-reaching in a series of growth control measures adopted in communities throughout the state, including Proposition U, approved by Los Angeles voters last November, and restrictions on housing construction adopted in San Clemente last year.

The proposal would apply to commercial buildings that generate more than 130 daily trips and occupy more than 10,000 square feet and to new, single-family residences on lots of less than one-half acre.

In addition to requiring specific traffic-flow performance on streets and highways, the proposed Orange County measure would set minimum police and fire crew response times that would have to be achieved before a developer could obtain a building permit, plus minimum levels for flood control and availability of park facilities.

Rejecting complaints from developers and political figures that the initiative would freeze construction, send real estate prices soaring and eliminate jobs, sponsors said they will also take the politically unprecedented step of waging separate election campaigns on behalf of 27 identically worded initiatives in each of the county’s 26 cities and the county’s large unincorporated area to cover all bases.

Otherwise, sponsors said, growth controls on a countywide ballot could apply legally only to the unincorporated area, and individual cities could become havens for development, with spillover traffic.

Referring to Orange County’s reputation for attracting new residents and business, Costa Mesa Councilman Dave Wheeler, a lawyer who helped draft the proposed initiative, said Saturday:

“We won’t allow anyone to kill the goose that lays the golden egg . . . not the developers, not the politicians who have refused to stop what’s happening. This puts them on notice that the people are not going to accept the status quo.”

The proposed measure calls for “level of service C” for road links between new developments and the nearest freeway. The rating is defined in federal planning manuals as generally meaning free-flow traffic of 30-35 m.p.h., according to sponsors of the proposal. Level “D” would be required for intersections, meaning that motorists should be able to proceed after waiting for one light change, sponsors said.

In South Orange County alone, sponsors said, 19 of 24 major intersections on streets such as El Toro Road and Moulton Parkway in Mission Viejo would flunk such a test, thus effectively barring major projects until congestion is relieved.

In North Orange County, major arteries such as Beach Boulevard would also fail to meet the initiative’s requirements.

The meeting was called by Orange County Tomorrow, a 2-year-old organization formed to discuss growth issues in the county. Its members includes a mix of liberals and conservatives, among them Laguna Beach Councilman Robert Gentry, the county’s first openly gay public official, and San Juan Capistrano rancher Tom Rogers, a shopping center developer and former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party.

The organization has worked on the initiative for almost two years. At Saturday’s meeting, however, supporters said they had organized a separate campaign committee called Citizens for Sensible Growth and Traffic Control.

“We’re only asking that the county obey its own rules,” Rogers said. The service levels mandated by the initiative are already spelled out in county planning documents, but have never been enforced, he said.

“There’s a feeling that people have lost control,” said Norm Grossman, an engineer. “We do this out of love for the county rather than fear of the future.”

Sponsors said they expect many legal challenges but denied that they are hamstrung by last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring compensation for landowners who can no longer develop their property because of new regulations.

Supporters of the initiative said the court decision, which involved a Glendale church camp that was not permitted to rebuild after a fire, would not affect controls on undeveloped land or new uses of existing residential and commercial sites.

The audience at Saturday’s meeting was mostly supportive; representatives from the Laguna Greenbelt Political Action Committee announced that the committee was contributing $2,000 to ballot qualification drive.

Shirley Grindle, co-author of Orange County’s only previous initiative, a 1978 campaign reform measure, strongly urged the slow-growth advocates to go forward, saying, “The Board of Supervisors brought this on themselves. They have had years to do something about the problem and failed.”

Meanwhile, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose South Orange County district would be most affected by the initiative, said in an interview before Saturday’s meeting that the measure’s traffic standards “could not be met, even in our finest hour” on streets near freeway access points.

And Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, chairwoman of the Orange County Transportation Commission, argued that the county’s new Development Monitoring Program will prevent further development abuses.

For example, Wieder said, the county program recently led to an agreement between developers and county officials in which major new road construction will occur east of the Santa Ana Freeway before new housing tracts are built.

Wieder said traffic management strategies, such as flexible work hours at big companies, should be used widely before the approach taken in the proposed initiative.

Traffic engineers and urban planners gave the initiative mixed reviews.

In some respects, the initiative’s traffic limits are only slightly stronger than existing regulations in some cities. In Newport Beach, for example, a law requires that new development be offset by road improvements that will at least maintain current service levels.

Rich Edmonston, Newport Beach traffic engineer, said his city’s law has worked well for more than 90 development projects. He cited a 66,000-square-foot addition to Fashion Island in Newport Center, which was not approved until the Irvine Co. agreed to fund reconstruction of the intersection at MacArthur Boulevard and San Joaquin Hills Road and the addition of a third northbound traffic lane.

However, Edmonston acknowledged that the Newport Beach City Council has exercised its authority to exempt projects from the law, and this has led to a scheduled November, 1988, citywide vote on an initiative that would impose stronger controls.

Edmonston said that measuring compliance with any traffic control initiative is difficult because traffic conditions can deteriorate between the time a developer gets financing for a project and the time it’s done.

Steve Hogan, traffic engineer with the county Environmental Management Agency, said he doubts that the traffic conditions mandated by the initiative could be achieved in many areas, either because traffic is already too congested, or physical improvements would cost more than anyone would pay.

Irvine Councilman Ray Catalano, who teaches urban planning at UC Irvine and who has often sided with slow-growth advocates, said the initiative would work well in South Orange County, where open space could be preserved while development proceeds slowly.

But he said it could not work in the densely populated, urbanized northern section of the county, where land is almost used up and all streets have already been built.