Group Seeking Growth Limits Starts Petition Drive for Ballot Initiative

The battle over future growth in Orange County escalated Thursday as a citizens group started a drive to qualify a ballot initiative that would bar major new construction near congested intersections unless builders pay for traffic improvements.

The improvements--such as left-turn lanes, computerized signalization and street widenings--would be required wherever a new development causes an extra half-second delay at an intersection or causes rush-hour traffic to dip below prescribed speeds.

For example, the rush-hour speed on some suburban arterial highways would have to be maintained at about 22 m.p.h.

The Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Amendment and Ordinance, as the initiative is officially labeled, would allow three years for the improvements to be completed. Developers would pay for them by contributing to a special trust fund.

Also, the measure would require that police and fire personnel be able to respond within five minutes on a minimum of 85% of the emergency calls they receive.

“We’re talking about quality of life, not just traffic improvements,” said Belinda Blacketer, a Laguna Beach lawyer who helped write the measure.

The 7,000-word initiative was signed by Blacketer and other initiative proponents during a press conference Thursday morning at the County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana.

Proponents must collect the signatures of 66,000 voters registered in Orange County by mid-January to qualify the measure for the June, 1988, ballot.

They plan to circulate 26 separate but nearly identical initiatives to qualify the measure in each of the county’s 26 cities. The signature gatherers in the cities will ask voters to sign two petitions--one for the unincorporated area of the county, the other for the city in which the voter lives.

After nearly three months of talks with representatives from the Building Industry Assn., Santa Margarita Co., Irvine Co. and county officials, initiative proponents said Thursday that they had been subjected to unfair demands and proposed deal-making.

Russ Burkett, executive director of Orange County Tomorrow, the parent group that organized the initiative drive, said county officials had kept asking for time to evaluate the measure but never gave initiative supporters copies of county assessments of the impact of the citizens’ initiatives.

Instead, Burkett said, Orange County Tomorrow co-founder Tom Rogers was “ambushed” with quotations from the county staff assessment three weeks ago at a chamber of commerce meeting in Orange.

The assessment strongly criticized the measure and said it would cost more than $1.3 billion to implement because of provisions calling for improved fire and police protection, parks and flood control. Also, it would jeopardize more than $400 million in state and federal grants expected to match local government road-improvement spending.

In addition, Rogers said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez had originally agreed to ask the board to place the measure on the ballot so that signature-gathering would be unnecessary, once a document could be drafted that was more acceptable to him. Rogers said that Vasquez later refused to supply suggested changes, thus removing himself from taking the measure to the board.

Vasquez said Thursday that he had declined to offer proposed changes once it became clear that Rogers was unwilling to identify a funding source for the flood control and other requirements or to remove them from the initiative.

Rogers also said that Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young, who is a developer, and other building industry officials had offered to “go along” with the measure if proponents would support placing a sales tax increase on the ballot, next to the initiative.

“I said no way,” Rogers recalled, “because I was afraid that they would both go down in flaming defeat.”

County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish said: “It’s a shame they (initiative proponents) have to cast the county as the villain, but I guess they need to do that in order to get their people out on the streets, working.”

Irvine Co. Vice President Thomas Nielsen said his firm has not taken a position on the initiative but remains “unconvinced” that an initiative “is the right way to go” toward solving the county’s growth-related problems.

Acknowledging that they’re now nearly two months behind schedule, proponents said Thursday that the meetings with developers were useful in improving their document. They said it is now less likely to be overturned in court.

However, they said the Board of Supervisors will probably try to confuse votes by placing a rival, weaker measure on the ballot.

Supervisors declined Thursday to say what they will do.

Burkett said he had the support of the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and other environmental groups and homeowners associations. Also, he said dozens if not hundreds of volunteers will be collecting signatures in the next few weeks.

He said the campaign will use no paid signature-gatherers and is taking campaign contributions through a registered political action committee.

Also, Burkett said that some city councils, such as those in San Clemente and Irvine, are considering placing the measure on citywide ballots without waiting for signatures.