‘Confidential’ Growth Memo Released Amid City Council Bickering

Two city officials Wednesday released a “confidential memorandum” written by the city’s growth management consultant, after council members charged that the document had been circulated only among a select group of officials, including Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman Ron Roberts.

Both Roberts, who heads the citizens advisory panel on growth issues appointed last year by O’Connor, and City Atty. John Witt released copies of the memo written by consultant Robert Freilich after council members Judy McCarty and Ed Struiksma demanded to see it.

The nine-page memo, which is largely a distillation of ideas discussed by the advisory group during the past year, had been sent March 24 to O’Connor, Roberts, Witt and two of his assistants, Planning Director Robert Spaulding, Assistant Director Mike Stepner, and Assistant City Manager John Fowler.

Designated ‘Personal’

On a cover letter to the memo, O’Connor’s and Roberts’ names were followed by the word personal in parentheses.

News of the document surfaced Tuesday evening when San Diego Tribune columnist Alison DaRosa questioned McCarty’s aides about whether the councilwoman had plagiarized her recently released ideas on growth management from it.

McCarty released a memo to O’Connor saying she “would appreciate being provided a copy of this memorandum inasmuch as Ms. DaRosa informs my office that several people have told her that my own proposals are very similar to those outlined by Dr. Freilich.” She denied using the Freilich memo.

She also asked about the memo at the end of Tuesday’s council session, but O’Connor responded that she could not discuss the matter. After the session, McCarty and O’Connor engaged in what McCarty called a “heated” discussion of the memo.

According to McCarty, O’Connor told her she should not have released a “Judy McCarty growth plan,” and McCarty defended her document as a starting point for discussion of growth.

O’Connor also told McCarty that she had not read the memo and had it in her purse, McCarty said. When a Times reporter asked for a copy of the memo Tuesday night, mayoral spokesman Paul Downey said no one on the mayor’s staff had seen the memo.

Wednesday brought a more scathing critique from Struiksma, who said that “yesterday’s revelation of the existence of a memorandum produced by Dr. Bob Freilich and outlining a growth management plan for our city has left me appalled.”

Criticizing a limited distribution of the information, Struiksma demanded to see any documents written by Freilich since July 21, when the city’s Interim Development Ordinance was given final approval by the council.

City officials who had received the memo said its limited circulation was intended to allow comment on Freilich’s “working draft” before its general release, and they played down the substance of it.

“It was sent to the limited distribution . . . so we could begin working on it,” said Curtis Fitzpatrick, the assistant city attorney who circulated the memo. “It wasn’t a confidential, keep-it-away-from-anybody-else kind of a memo.”

“It wasn’t any big thing,” Roberts said in explaining his release of the memo. “I could see that people were making a hell of a lot more out of it than there was. . . . It was probably the most boring thing I’ve seen in several months.”

Stepner said the document deals mostly with the framework of the growth management plan, which the city intends to offer voters in November, and contains little substance.

The memo includes discussion of environmentally sensitive lands, open space, community plans, zoning, vested rights of developers and other issues that have surfaced during growth management discussions.

In one section, Freilich appears to call for a cap of 3,951 dwelling units in the city’s planned urbanizing area, but adds parenthetically, “or insert another number that can be justified.”