Planning Groups to Stop Giving City Advice

Alarmed by their discovery that the city will not provide legal help or pay penalties arising from lawsuits, two San Diego community planning groups are refusing to make recommendations to the City Council on development projects.

The boycott by the Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee and the Clairemont Mesa Planning Committee could spread as a result of a meeting Tuesday night at which representatives of most of the city’s 35 volunteer community planning groups agreed to raise the liability coverage issue with their members.

Because legal judgments could cost the losers millions of dollars, and the expense of hiring an attorney to wage a court battle can reach tens of thousands of dollars, trepidation is spreading among the unpaid volunteers, some of whom are concluding that the price of public service is too high.

Nothing to Preclude Suit

“We have no desire to have this situation, but we just cannot put our homes, our personal finances and our life savings at risk in order to advise the city,” said Maurice Bolduc, vice-chairman of the Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee, and a leading advocate of the boycott.

“Even if a planning group as a whole--or an individual member--does nothing wrong, there is nothing to preclude a suit being filed,” said Carol Landsman, chairman of the Community Planners Committee, which consists of representatives of the 35 planning groups. “We’re a litigation-happy society these days and that’s just a fact.”

The scenario mirrors a test of wills played out last September when the 26 volunteer planning groups in the county’s unincorporated areas threatened to stop working unless the Board of Supervisors agreed to provide them legal help and pay any judgments against them. The demands, and a virtual work stoppage by three county groups, came after two Valley Center planning group members were sued.

The supervisors, after first turning down the planners, voted Sept.

15 to protect them.

The city’s unpaid community planning group members are elected by their neighborhoods to review developers’ plans that require special permits or exemptions from rules that include zoning regulations and the city’s Interim Development Ordinance.

Their recommendations are considered advisory to the city’s Planning Department, Planning Commission and the council, which has the final say over such discretionary decisions. But council members can give great weight to the opinions forwarded by the planning groups.

Official Interest Sparked

In theory, a boycott deprives a community of the protection it sought in electing volunteer representatives to screen development plans. But it is unclear whether decisions by the Pacific Beach and Clairemont groups have had an impact because developers are not prevented from taking their projects on to later stages of the approval process.

The boycott and letters from various planning groups have sparked the interest of some city officials who are anxious not to lose public servants or community input on planning decisions, but there is little sympathy on the council for the volunteer planners’ plight, one council member’s aide said.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor has asked City Atty. John Witt to advise the council about how the planning groups can be protected from lawsuits. Councilman Bruce Henderson, who represents both Pacific Beach and Clairemont, suggested at a recent council meeting that developers be asked to sign waivers forbidding them from filing suit against planning group members. The idea has generated little support from his council colleagues.

The council’s Rules Committee, which discussed the matter in December at the urging of some planning groups, agreed to look into the enactment of a state law protecting the volunteers.

“The mayor is concerned about the planning groups. She has really worked to get them in the (planning) process,” said Paul Downey, O’Connor’s spokesman. “She wants to see what the city attorney says we can do. She’s eager to protect them but she’s not willing to say she’s willing to do anything to protect them.”

The city attorney’s office has repeatedly advised the planning groups that because their recommendations are merely advice, any lawsuit against them would be considered frivolous and thrown out of court.

But planning group members dismiss such talk as hollow.

“If the county can give protection, c’mon, the city can do it,” said Jim Madaffer, chairman of the Tierrasanta Community Council, which has discussed a boycott but is so far unwilling to adopt one.

“If (the city attorney) is so sure we’re not going to get sued, why doesn’t he give us indemnification (against legal judgments)?” Madaffer added.

The Pacific Beach planning group was the first to react to the Valley Center lawsuit by halting discretionary decisions last November. On Feb. 16, the Clairemont Mesa group did the same.

“We won’t be working on subdivisions, we won’t be working on zone variances and no IDO variances,” said Merlin Osterhaus, a member of the Clairemont group. However, both groups will continue discussing policy issues and updating community plans.

Tuesday, representatives from both panels brought their fears to the Community Planners Council to warn other groups of their potential liability, Bolduc said.

But some volunteer planners are so far unwilling to abandon their review responsibilities. The Greater North Park Planning Committee discussed the idea in December, when members registered their concerns with the council, but decided not to follow Pacific Beach’s lead. Members will discuss the situation again, said Landsman, who is chairman of the North Park group.

“I’m starting to feel personally more threatened, but I’m not willing to walk away from being involved in the community planning group as a volunteer,” she said. “I think it’s a public service.”

Madaffer’s group is also holding onto the hope that it can sway the city without adopting a boycott.

“While we consider that this issue of liability coverage is terribly important and the city has totally let us down, we don’t want to give up pursuing this thing through traditional channels,” he said.

But he issued one other warning: “If we get sued by somebody, we’ll turn around and sue the city.”