Shaky Truces Fall Apart as North County Battle Cries Over Growth Sound Anew

It seemed as though a truce had been declared. By the middle of 1987, the battle over growth in cities along the booming North County coast appeared to have been fought and finished.

Now, however, it looks like the battle has just begun.

In Oceanside, slow-growth advocates are angry because they say the City Council has been lax in enacting a citizens’ initiative that was passed in April and puts a tough lid on the number of homes that can be built each year. The measure has prompted $75 million in lawsuits by developers, and slow-growth supporters vow a renewed skirmish that will undoubtedly spill over into the November council race.

A similar scenario also appears to be unfolding in Carlsbad and Vista, where the electorate sided with less strict managed-growth measures backed by their respective city councils.

In newly incorporated Encinitas, a staunch slow-growth council has been seated for nearly 18 months but has yet to put the finishing touches on a growth cap. As a result, impatient slow-growth activists in the community earlier this month announced plans to launch a petition drive to qualify a ballot measure of their own that would limit residential and commercial development.

Meanwhile, a regional coalition of development-control activists, the North County Slow-Growth Alliance, said it plans to encourage and back slates of like-minded candidates in council races across the region.

The Dispute Continues

“The war is still on,” said Howard Greenebaum, chairman of the North County Slow-Growth Alliance. “This is an issue that’s not going to go away.”

Greenebaum and other slow-growth boosters contend that efforts to ease the pace of development with ballot propositions has proven only marginally effective. The only way to truly get a grip on the development boom, they say, is to seat politicos who are unswayed by the development industry’s pleas for leniency.

“That’s just the only answer,” said Patsy Filo, a former Vista council candidate and staunch slow-growth advocate. “Growth initiatives just don’t seem to work. Even when they’re passed, there always seem to be loopholes that an unfriendly council can use.”

The recent explosion of development in North County dates back to the beginning of the decade. After the deep recession in the early 1980s, the national economy jumped skyward. Developers who had been biding their time in North County suddenly were able to obtain more equitable financing for their projects. A land rush of sorts was on.

Residents noticed houses and condominiums, apartments and shopping centers springing up seemingly overnight on the wide swaths of open space that dominated the North County landscape. New residents began to strain the infrastructure, from roads and highways to parks and beaches.

Activists in Carlsbad reacted first, putting a tough slow-growth cap on the November, 1986, ballot. The council responded by sponsoring a competing measure, which sprang from a growth-management ordinance approved by the city leaders several months before. After a bitter election battle, the council’s measure garnered victory.

Number Took a Nose Dive

Yet the number of home building permits being drawn almost immediately plunged. A record of more than 3,000 units were issued in 1986 as developers rushed to the building permit counter to beat the growth election, but only 662 permits were taken out in 1987, largely because of delays in processing developments through the new growth-management plan.

Slow-growth advocates in Carlsbad say the city now is posed for more boom years.

“If the economy remains good, I suspect that the number of housing units built here each year will be something around 2,000,” said Anthony Skotnicki, a Carlsbad slow-growth advocate. “That’s too many.”

Carlsbad Councilwoman Ann Kulchin, meanwhile, predicts the growth rate will be more on the order of 1,000 units a year. More importantly, she said, the necessary public facilities to accommodate that growth will be in place because of the council’s growth-management efforts. Developers are expected to either pay for or construct new roads and sewers before putting in new homes.

“I think people understand that we’re going to have to develop,” Kulchin said. “But they wanted deficiencies in public facilities and services handled before more development occured, and that’s what is happening.”

Despite such assurances, Carlsbad slow-growth stalwarts plan to push their candidates in the November council election, which features three open seats, including Kulchin’s.

They also are holding out hope a legal challenge might revive their slow-growth measure.

Although the citizens’ measure garnered 51% of the vote during the November, 1986, election, the council-backed proposition got a larger percentage and was deemed the winner. The reason why the council-backed measure received even more votes is that some Carlsbad residents voted yes on both issues.

A Vista Superior Court judge last year upheld the election results, but the matter is now before the 4th District Court of Appeal.

In Oceanside as well, litigation has marched in step with efforts to control growth. Five lawsuits have been filed by developers challenging the validity of a citizens’ measure that puts a strict lid on the number of homes that can be built each year. The lid restricts construction to 1,000 residential units in 1987 and then dips to 800 units annually through the end of the century. The first of those lawsuits is expected to go to trial early this summer.

Meanwhile, Oceanside slow-growth activists have also been upset, criticizing the City Council at every turn as it has gone about the task of enacting the new measure. In particular, activists say the council, which unanimously opposed the slow-growth measure, has allowed too many exceptions to the annual cap on units.

“Basically, they’ve approached it from a standpoint of how can we make this thing not work, not how can we make it work,” said Melba Bishop, a former councilwoman and slow-growth leader in Oceanside. “We stuffed it down their throats and they said, ‘You can make us eat it, but you aren’t going to like what comes out.’ I think that’s what they’ve done to us.”

Mayor Disagrees

Mayor Larry Bagley counters that council members have worked hard to properly interpret the new slow-growth law, although neither he nor his colleagues like it much. Moreover, he and other council members argue that Bishop and her peers are politicizing the growth issue in their zeal to oust the council during the November election.

“Our position is we’re interpreting this measure according to logic, according to the dictionary and according to state law,” Bagley said.

In addition, Bagley said the measure was counter-productive, causing developers to rush the building department in the months before the April, 1987, election. Primarily because of that spurt, more than 5,000 building permits were issued during 1987.

But slow-growth advocates like Bishop contend the council easily could have reined in much of that growth.

“There’s no legislation in this country that can’t be messed with by the politicians and bureaucrats,” Bishop said. “What I think is lacking in Oceanside is a commitment to controlling growth. You can’t legislate integrity. And there’s a lack of integrity on the part of politicians in Oceanside when it comes to implementing a policy they don’t like.”

Vista’s Filo agreed, saying activists in her community will likely again challenge council members they deem to be pro-growth.

“The people who run for council say in their commanding speeches that they’ll do this and do that, control growth and attack the traffic problem,” Filo said. “Then when they get elected, nothing happens. The councils, including the one in Vista, are the No. 1 problem in North County when it comes to growth.”

In Encinitas, however, the line between council members and community activists on the growth issue is far finer.

The council appears poised to adopt strict slow-growth regulations as part of a General Plan that is being hammered out. At the advice of a consultant, noted Bay Area land-use attorney Dan Curtin, the council wants to incorporate a growth cap in the General Plan, then have a citizens’ group put the proposal on the ballot in order to immunize it from tinkering by future city leaders. The General Plan is due for adoption late this summer.

Nonetheless, some slow-growth backers in the community remain dubious. Ray Jenkins, a former council candidate, has submitted a petition to the city clerk so that he can begin gathering signatures for a slow-growth initiative that would restrict both commercial and residential development.

“We don’t want to buy a pig in the poke,” Jenkins said. “We’ve sat for 18 months and have not seen any numbers from the council. If they can come up with something legitimate, we would not hesitate to put our proposal in the drawer. But first they need to put their numbers where their mouths are.”

Some council members suspect Jenkins may be using the issue as a campaign ploy, a charge the one-time candidate resolutely denies.

“We felt we were being patient and open-minded about this,” Jenkins said. “If we wait much longer, we’re in danger of letting another year go by.”

Council members, however, say it is only a matter of time before their measure is adopted. Instead of seeing Jenkins’ initiative hit the ballot, they hope to enlist his help to gather signatures on a ballot measure that would canonize the council’s slow-growth cap.

“We’re on the same side, we have the same goals,” Encinitas Mayor Rick Shea said. “It’s usually never advantageous to splinter your forces if you’re working for the same goal.”

Shea said he and other council members are still considering Jenkins’ proposal to limit commercial construction. Under that plan, any commercial development of more than 48,000 square feet would be submitted to a vote of the electorate and no new construction could occur on crowded El Camino Real, Encinitas Boulevard or Olivenhain Road until traffic congestion is eased.

Some council members predict that the lid they put on residential growth will be stricter than Jenkins’ proposal, which calls for an annual limit of 400 units in 1989, 350 in 1990 and 300 a year thereafter through 1998.

“We are a declared slow-growth City Council, we have been working really hard to come up with a plan, the city is spending a significant amount of money to do that, we are on a fast track and a number of people have been involved,”

Councilwoman Anne Omsted said, “Any way I look at it, I see that we’re doing the best we can for the city. I’d like to see (Jenkins) pull this initiative off.”