Council Panel Skeptical : Fee on All Property in City Is Proposed to Help Parks

Seeking once again to find a way to pay for badly needed improvements to city parks, City Manager John Lockwood on Wednesday proposed raising $135 million by assessing every parcel of property in the city a fee that would be devoted solely to Balboa Park, Mission Bay Park and other regional parks.

The proposal to create a highly complex “citywide assessment district” was met with skepticism by members of the San Diego City Council’s Rules Committee, which delayed consideration of the plan until July 6, 12 days before the council is scheduled to consider a new master plan for Balboa Park.

The measure is “potentially dead on arrival,” said Mayor Maureen O’Connor, chairman of the committee. “It has difficulty breathing at this point. But you never know--someone may resuscitate it on the council.”

Lockwood’s plan involves devising a formula to calculate the benefit that each parcel of property derives from the city’s parks and assessing property owners accordingly, said Patricia Frazier, the city’s director of financial management. The city has 400,000 separate parcels of property.

The project would cost $50,000 for a feasibility study and $800,000 to implement--$400,000 of which would be devoted to a parcel-by-parcel examination of city property to determine the assessment.

Fee Based on Use of Land

Because the fee would be based on the way each parcel of land is used--instead of the value of the land--it would not be considered a tax and would be legal under the terms of Proposition 13, Frazier said.

There is a provision within Proposition 13 that provides for assessment districts, Lockwood said.

“Whatever we do would have to be legal and would have to comply with Proposition 13.”

It is currently impossible to even approximate the cost to each property owner of an assessment district, Frazier said. But in theory, residential, industrial and commercial land would be assessed at different rates.

The assessments would raise $45 million for Balboa Park, $45 million for Mission Bay Park and $45 million for the city’s other regional parks.

Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick, who told the committee that he opposes the idea, said the plan could be implemented without voter approval. But Lockwood suggested that an advisory vote should be scheduled for the November, 1989, ballot. O’Connor said she would “never, ever do something like that without putting it on the ballot.”

Latest Attempt to Find Money

However, Earl Cantos Jr., deputy to state Board of Equalization Chairman Ernest Dronenburg, said it is unclear whether the plan would require voter approval. If even an advisory vote were held, a majority vote against the plan would kill it, Frazier said.

The assessment district proposal, which the council turned down last year in favor of seeking voter approval to sell general obligation bonds, is the city’s latest attempt to find money to halt the crumbling of buildings along Balboa Park’s historic Prado and to end the erosion of Mission Bay Park beaches. For the first time, however, the funding proposal adds the creation and improvement of other regional parks to the needs list.

In November, voters turned down Propositions B and C, which would have raised $93.5 million and $73.9 million, respectively, for the city’s premier parks. Needing 66.7% for passage, the measures received 59% and 62%, respectively, of the vote.

The proposal is separate from a recommendation to raise $15.4 million for new parking garages in Balboa Park by adding a 25-cent surcharge on ticket prices at the park’s museums, theaters and the San Diego Zoo. That plan, contained in the latest draft of the Balboa Park master plan, has drawn the opposition of the cultural institutions and O’Connor.

‘Uncomfortable’ With Idea

Though the rules committee did not kill the assessment idea, its members immediately criticized it.

“It really reeks of being an end-run around Proposition 13, and I’m really uncomfortable with it, even though I’d like to see those parks get that money,” said Councilman Ron Roberts, who represents District 2.

Roberts also criticized the plan’s $800,000 price tag and District 1 Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer asked why past studies could not be used to save the $50,000 cost of a new feasibility study. Lockwood explained that past studies did not examine exactly the same plan.

“It’s $800,000 down the drain. . . . That’s money that could be going to the parks themselves,” Roberts said.

Even Fitzpatrick, the assistant city attorney, told the committee, “Quite frankly, I’m not sure it can be done. I’m not sure that even in this computer age, it can be done.”

O’Connor said the delay until July will give her the opportunity to press a joint request with San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos for $40 million in state funds for each city’s parks system.

Lockwood’s report states that the assessment plan is not unprecedented. Rancho Cucamonga has enacted a district to finance $7.3 million in park improvements, and Los Angeles is considering a similar measure in the Wilshire area to pay for a portion of its subway system.