95,000 Sign Petitions on Growth : Only 66,000 Needed to Get on the Ballot

After a 5 1/2-month petition drive, more than 95,000 signatures were filed Tuesday with the county registrar of voters in an effort to qualify a far-reaching slow-growth measure for the countywide ballot in June.

Leaders of Citizens for Sensible Growth and Traffic Control filled a coffin with petitions bearing the signatures and drove it to the Santa Ana office of the county registrar of voters in a black hearse.

“We want to signify the end of politics as we know it--we hope it represents the demise of the hold that the developers have had on supervisors,” said Tom Rogers, co-founder of Orange County Tomorrow, the grass-roots organization that drafted the initiative.

Check on Validity

Registrar Don Tanney said he hopes to determine within 17 working days how many of the signatures submitted to him are those of registered voters residing in Orange County. If about 66,000 fit that description, the measure will be certified for the ballot.

“We are optimistic that it will reach the ballot,” said key initiative sponsor Russ Burkett of San Juan Capistrano.

The initiative would slow the pace of development in Orange County by imposing tough traffic-flow standards and minimum-response times for public-safety agencies. It would also require the developers to set aside more land for parks.

On Tuesday afternoon, tables were set up in the parking lot at the registrar’s office, and volunteers continued collecting signatures until 4:40 p.m. Then Burkett and other initiative supporters called out the number of each stack of petitions--96 bundles in all--as it was handed over the front counter in the registrar’s office.

Burkett said there were 95,635 signatures.

In the parking lot, San Clemente Mayor Tom Lorch cautioned a crowd of about 50 initiative supporters that supervisors or developers will probably place a rival measure on the ballot.

City Measures

In 1986, city councils in San Clemente and Carlsbad placed slow-growth measures on the ballot after citizens groups succeeded in initiative efforts. In San Clemente, the initiative received more votes and became law, while the council-supported alternative won out in Carlsbad.

Even before the signatures were filed at the registrar’s office Tuesday, the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Assn. had begun screening a $90,000, professionally produced videotape it intends to show to major employers. The video attacks as “myth” the widespread belief that development causes congestion and portrays developers as a major source of fees used to finance new roads and freeways.

The BIA previously unveiled a public-relations campaign featuring posters and pamphlets based on similar themes.

The Orange County BIA’s parent organization, the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, has been raising money for a legal defense fund that Orange County developers say they will tap to challenge the initiative in court.

Under one plan being discussed, according to a BIA member, developers would ask a judge to bar the initiative from the ballot because it is legally flawed.

For many years, the courts were reluctant to rule on the legal merits of initiatives before they were approved by voters. Four years ago, however, the BIA successfully sued to block a vote on a ballot measure in Irvine. The citizens group behind that measure has appealed lower-court rulings and is awaiting a decision by the California Supreme Court.

“What has happened was totally expected,” Bruce Nestande, vice president of Costa Mesa-based Arnel Development Co. and a former county supervisor, said of the signature filing Tuesday. “It expresses a legitimate outrage against the transportation problems in Orange County. But I hope that the public and private sector can get together. . . . We have to work our way through this initiative and turn it into a positive solution, and I’m not sure how to do that.”

Nestande said he hopes that the Board of Supervisors will “take actions during the next few days and weeks that will lead to a more comprehensive solution than a bunch of lawsuits and political campaigns.”

In supervisors’ offices Tuesday, a behind-the-scenes battle was being waged over whether to delay a scheduled vote today on agreements with six developers that would circumvent the proposed ballot measure. The agreements, similar to some previously approved and others that are still pending, would exempt construction of more than 38,000 new homes from changes in the county’s land-use policies.

One supervisor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a vote on the agreements within 24 hours after the filing of the signatures would be “a public-relations disaster.” However, others appeared to be determined to proceed with the vote.

Slow-growth activists planned to attend today’s board meeting to protest the development agreements.

As if to demonstrate the bandwagon effect the slow-growth issue has fostered, Santa Ana Councilman Ron May announced Monday that he will run this spring for the seat held by Supervisor Roger Stanton. May accused the incumbent of failing to heed the public’s concern about traffic and congestion.

The initiative is the latest in a series of slow-growth measures that have surfaced in California and other states in recent years. In Los Angeles, voters in 1986 approved Proposition U, which reduced by half the allowable square footage of new construction on about 70% of all commercial and industrial property within the city.

The Orange County initiative dates back to 1985, when an unusual alliance of liberals and conservatives met at the Balboa Bay Club to discuss growth-related issues. The alliance, calling itself Orange County Tomorrow, included Rogers, Burkett, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, Laguna Beach Councilman Robert F. Gentry and several grass-roots activists, such as Belinda Blacketer, a lawyer for Laguna Greenbelt Inc., an environmental group.

Last year Blacketer, lawyer Gregory A. Hile and others began drafting a proposed ballot measure then referred to as the “Quality of Life” initiative. After several revisions, a series of 14 meetings were held with developers, and some of their objections to specific sections of the initiative resulted in more changes.

Signature-gathering in support of the initiative finally began last September. Secret meetings aimed at reaching a compromise that would have ended the initiative campaign were held throughout the petition drive.

Times staff writer Dave Lesher contributed to this story.