Growth Cap Flexes Muscle in Oceanside : After First Year in Effect, Mixed Results Claimed

This coming Thursday, at about 9:30 p.m. or so, a bouncing baby will celebrate its first birthday in Oceanside. But this is no child in swaddling clothes.

It was last April 21 that voters in Oceanside convincingly approved a landmark ballot measure designed to put the brakes on residential development in the booming coastal community.

Dubbed Proposition A, the spanking-new slow-growth ordinance was the first of its kind in San Diego County, a solid demonstration of anti-growth sentiment among the citizenry and an aching defeat for the development community.

Spirited First Year

During the past 12 months, this gangly new kid on the block not only got on its feet, but began to run and even kicked a few folks in the shin. While supporters have heralded the measure as a solid achievement and contend results are already beginning to be seen, foes say Proposition A has only sent Oceanside plummeting on a downward spiral.

Builders in particular have taken aim at the new rules, which they contend unconstitutionally block their rights to develop property they own. Battered and bruised, developers filed 10 separate lawsuits challenging Proposition A and asking for more than $100 million in damages. All the litigation has resulted in the city running up a defense bill fast approaching $400,000.

But many Oceanside residents contend those costs are well worth the result they hope to see. Though a backlog of building permits has kept carpenters busy throughout the city the last year, it is only a matter of time before the pace of development in Oceanside begins to ease, slow-growth proponents say.

In the meantime, positive signs are already surfacing, backers contend. They point to a shift among the development community toward construction of large-lot custom homes, which are exempt from the new regulation, instead of the beehives of high-density condominiums and apartments that raised the ire of so many residents during the boom years of the mid-1980s.

Putting New Tool to Work

Amid all the hubbub, the City Council and staff have spent countless hours at the task of putting Proposition A into effect, a tedious assignment considering that the council to a person opposed the measure.

Though slow-growth advocates contend that the council has shot the new regulation full of holes, council members say they have enacted Proposition A correctly, arguing that the measure has become little more than a political football for their opponents.

They maintain that the city will be little different with the new ordinance in place, suggesting that the number of homes built each year in Oceanside under Proposition A will follow historic patterns.

“I don’t think it was any secret that a growth-control measure was going to become a reality in Oceanside,” said Councilwoman Lucy Chavez, a lifelong resident. “But I think it could have been a better growth initiative if everyone had gotten together and worked this out. Proposition A is a bit more politics than planning.”

The regulation has its roots in 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. Only 382 new residences were built in Oceanside during all of 1981, but more than 2,700 homes rose from the dirt in 1985. By 1986, residents angered by the flood of homes sprouting on the city’s rolling hills and the quantum increase in traffic along streets and highways began organizing an effort to curb the growth.

The result was Proposition A. Designed along the lines of similar slow-growth measures passed in almost 60 other cities nationwide, the initiative proposed a limit of 1,000 housing units in 1987 and 800 in each subsequent year through 1999. Projects would be judged on everything from architectural appeal to provisions for parks or open space.

Among the projects exempted from the cap were developments dedicated to serve senior citizens or low-income residents, remodeling of existing homes and developments with large lots, averaging 10,000 square feet or more.

The council countered with a measure of its own, Proposition B, a growth-management proposal forbidding development without the adequate provision of roads, parks and other public services. Despite a heavily financed battle waged by developers, the Oceanside electorate sided with Proposition A, which got nearly 57% of the vote.

Battle Lines Drawn

But within weeks the council had raised the anger of Proposition A proponents by approving measures that exempted several large developments from the annual cap, among them the massive, 4,800-unit Rancho del Oro in central Oceanside.

The council argued that such exemptions were entirely justified (Rancho del Oro, for instance, had negotiated an ironclad agreement with Oceanside officials several years ago prohibiting restrictions on the project because of changes in the city’s land-use ordinances).

A few months later, the city again angered slow-growth advocates by allocating 1,000 units for 1987, even though fearful developers had stormed City Hall in the weeks before the election to take out a record 4,158 building permits.

“I don’t know any calendar that starts on April 22 except the calendar that’s used by the Oceanside City Council,” said Melba Bishop, a former councilwoman and staunch Proposition A backer. “There was no real effort to live up to either the letter or spirit of the ordinance by this council, who didn’t want it in the first place.”

Mayor Larry Bagley, an archrival of Bishop who campaigned aggressively against Proposition A, sees it differently. He blames the new regulation for causing the avalanche of development permits that were issued in the first few months of 1987.

“Proposition A has been just about what we expected,” Bagley said. “I hate it because it is not really being productive. It’s counterproductive. I’m absolutely convinced we would not have issued that many permits if it never had arisen.”

Bagley also worries that the stringent growth-control measures might be scaring off the “quality developers” Oceanside had only begun to attract in recent years. “I’m sure they’ll finish up what they have and leave,” he said.

Councilman Walter Gilbert, meanwhile, worries that the city stands to lose--and lose big--if developers prevail in the spate of lawsuits against the city.

The suits are likely to be argued in court soon. Because San Diego County is now operating under an experimental “fast track” system of civil litigation, the Oceanside lawsuits will probably overtake other slow-growth legal battles languishing in the courts to become precedent-setting cases in California.

“I wasn’t against slowing growth down,” Gilbert said. “But I think we could have arrived at some sort of method whereby we could have slowed down some, but not so drastically, allowing developers who already had millions of dollars of improvements in the ground to go forward.”

Decry Changing of Rules

Indeed, developers argue that Proposition A simply was not fair to them, changing the rules in the middle of the game.

Barry Ross, president of Robinhood Homes in Chula Vista, said his firm had put in nearly all of the streets, sewers, sidewalks, curbs, gutters and storm drains required at Del Oro Hills, a master-planned community of 1,200 units, when Proposition A hit.

The mixed-use project of single-family homes, apartments and condominiums had been poised to be finished in a few years, but it now will take far longer, Ross said. That delay means extra costs to carry the land and improvements, he said.

“Our goal after this thing is over, and I don’t know when that will be in the 1990s, is to break even and hopefully make some money,” lamented Ross, whose firm has a $12-million lawsuit against the city.

Though Ross and other developers with projects nearly on the ground are too far along to make changes, some builders have begun to tinker with their plans in an effort to utilize the exemptions to Proposition A.

In particular, developers have started to shift toward planning projects with larger lots exempt from the provisions of Proposition A, according to city planning department staffers. Since the ballot measure became effective, developers have received permission to build more than 1,150 homes on the bigger lots.

“We haven’t seen many developers trying to get exemptions for senior or low-income housing, but we’ve seen quite a few coming in for the larger lots and not even attempting to go through the (Proposition A) allotment process,” Assistant City Manager Jim Turner said. “Our feeling is we’ll see more and more of that kind of thing.”

‘Tool to Improve Housing’

Wic Burgeson, a longtime planning commissioner and one-time opponent of Proposition A, said he has been pleased by the measure, which gives officials “another tool to improve the quality of housing in Oceanside.” Many developers who have come before the Planning Commission seeking exemption for projects with the 10,000-square-foot lots have been forced to add amenities to move forward, he said.

Slow-growth advocate Bishop said she, too, is happy to see the shift toward larger lot sizes, which are needed in Oceanside to offset the high-density projects that proliferated before Proposition A. But Bishop also said she is troubled that so many of the lots have already been approved, adding to the burden of growth she sees as plaguing the city.

Indeed, some city officials predict that Proposition A will eventually yield an annual rate of growth that matches or exceeds the historical trends in Oceanside. Until the record year of 1987, about 1,600 homes were being added to Oceanside’s housing stock each year. With the various exemptions, especially to the massive Rancho del Oro project, Oceanside will likely post a similar growth rate in the years to come, some officials predict.

“I don’t think it’s going to change all that much from what it would have been,” Chavez said. “But it will be more spread out and, I hope, we’ll get a better quality of development.”