Huntington Beach Group Starts Campaign for Slow-Growth Law

Huntington Beach Tomorrow, a slow-growth organization, announced Thursday that it will begin a drive to pass an initiative that would bar major construction projects in the city unless they meet strict traffic-flow requirements.

Beginning in July, said Tom Harman, a Huntington Beach attorney and president of the group, HBT will circulate petitions identical to a countywide initiative begun last weekend by a group that blames developers and poor government planners for traffic-choked freeways and city streets in Orange County.

The Huntington Beach group, which claims 300 members, will have to gather about 9,500 signatures--or 10% of the city’s registered voters--to qualify the slow-growth initiative for the November ballot.

Douglas Langevin, a member of HBT’s board of directors, said the board voted unanimously to begin the drive Wednesday night at a meeting of about 50 members.

Leaders of Orange County Tomorrow, the county group seeking to brake the speed of development, unveiled the initiative Saturday. They said then that, to avoid any community becoming a haven for developers, their strategy includes having each of the county’s 26 cities individually circulate petitions for carbon-copy initiatives.

County officials have criticized the initiative, saying it will essentially block all construction projects and cause real estate values to skyrocket.

Like other city officials who oppose the initiative, John Erskine, Huntington Beach’s mayor pro tempore and executive director of the Orange County Building Industry Assn., predicted that the measure will nevertheless be overwhelmingly approved by voters.