Supervisors OK Robinson Ranch Pact

In a 4-1 vote, the Board of Supervisors Wednesday approved a hotly contested development agreement protecting the 628-unit Robinson Ranch housing project from future land-use restrictions.

However, the board delayed for two weeks a vote on a similar agreement covering 4,610 residential units in Coto de Caza.

The Robinson Ranch agreement--the eighth such development agreement approved by supervisors in recent months--requires the William Lyon Co. to pay for $3.1 million worth of road improvements in Saddleback Valley.

Stanton Dissented

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton cast the dissenting vote, arguing that no more development agreements should be approved until legal challenges against the slow-growth initiative and against previously approved development agreements have been resolved.

“The lawsuits are going to create uncertainty in the bond market,” Stanton said. “I just think we should wait.”

The Coto de Caza vote was postponed when Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose district includes both projects, said residents had raised concerns about exact construction locations and types of structures to be built.

The Coto de Caza proposal will be considered when those concerns have been addressed, probably in two weeks, Vasquez said later.

The Robinson Ranch agreement, opposed by supporters of the slow-growth initiative, is the first development agreement to be approved since March 1, when the supervisors voted to place the initiative on the June 7 ballot. That vote followed a petition campaign in which 96,000 signatures were gathered to get the initiative on the ballot.

All five supervisors have expressed opposition to the initiative, which strictly ties development by private firms to the availability of adequate roads and municipal services.

Initiative proponents have accused supervisors of trying to circumvent it through the development agreements. The agreements guarantee a developer’s right to build for up to 20 years, provided the developer meets certain conditions, including payments of fees for roads and other improvements.

“I find it incomprehensible that you would continue approving these agreements with the initiative on the ballot,” David Kidd, an Irvine resident, told the board. Kidd later identified himself as an activist in the slow-growth movement.

Elisabeth Brown, president of Laguna Greenbelt, a citizen group that also supports the initiative, told the board that the agreements are no more than a “a gift to the developer, . . . a device invented by the development lobby and a sympathetic Legislature to tie the hands of future elected and appointed decision makers.”

Brown said a coalition of groups would file lawsuits by the end of this week against three development agreements that had already been approved by the board.

Before Wednesday’s vote, Terry Watt, an urban planning lawyer with a San Francisco firm that was hired last week to represent Irvine and Laguna Beach in litigation over the development agreements, told the supervisors that her clients wanted the board to reject the Robinson Ranch agreement.

“We want to pursue our legal options,” she said later, when asked why the cities were opposed.

Vasquez insisted that the developer agreements “meet the spirit and the intent” of the slow-growth initiative and differ only in that the agreements provide money for roads and other improvements.

During Wednesday’s debate at the regular board meeting, a Saddleback Unified School District official supported the Robinson Ranch agreement, saying it would help provide funds for local schools.

Both the Robinson Ranch project and the Coto de Caza project are part of the Foothill Circulation Phasing Plan, which calls for developers to contribute $240 million for new roads in the area.