Advisers Clash Over Exemptions in Plan to Protect Sensitive Lands

Environmentalists and developers on a San Diego advisory panel clashed Tuesday over key elements of a proposal to protect sensitive lands from urban growth.

The point that aroused the most emotion during the meeting of the Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Growth and Development was the recommendation as to how the City Council should grant exemptions and variances from the proposal, which was written to protect flood plains, wetlands, significant archeological sites and animal habitats from encroaching development.

Environmentalists and slow-growth advocates wanted to make it difficult for developers to obtain exemptions by asking the council to require a seven-vote majority for such a move. That number would constitute a “super vote” of the nine-member council.

Angry Over Compromise

But land-use attorney Paul Peterson countered by asking the committee to consider asking the council to use a simple majority of five votes.

Eventually, the committee struck a compromise--it recommended that the council use a six-vote minimum to grant exemptions.

But that middle ground still angered the ardent slow-growth members on the panel, and they lamented that the environmentally sensitive lands proposal was being ruined.

“I think they (developers) are trying to hold down, reduce the effects of this measure,” said Dave Kreitzer, a committee member and chairman of San Diegans for Managed Growth, the group that came up with the sensitive-lands measure.

“It is to their advantage to water it down as much as possible,” Kreitzer said. “What’s happened so far is not very encouraging.”

The sensitive-lands proposal would shape the way San Diego grows by restricting development of more than 40,335 acres of slopes and 7,653 acres of flood plains and coastal wetlands that make up about 25% of the city’s acreage. There are no figures for how much of that land remains undeveloped.

San Diegans for Managed Growth originally hoped to put the full-strength proposal before voters this year but failed to gather the necessary signatures on nominating petitions.

The group decided to forward its measure to the city’s Growth and Development Committee, asking the panel to incorporate it as part of an updated blueprint on how San Diego should grow.

The group, consisting of developers, community representatives and slow-growth advocates, has been hashing over the details of the blueprint for more than a year. It is expected to finish its work next month and send the results to the City Council for approval and a subsequent spot on the Nov. 8 ballot.

City officials are hoping the blueprint will be popular enough to defeat a much harsher rival measure that will also be on the November ballot.

Sponsored by Citizens for Limited Growth, the rival measure calls for a tough limit on the number of new homes, apartments and condominiums that can be built in San Diego unless local government meets a number of environmental and slow-growth criteria--such as construction of a $1.5-billion waste-water treatment plant.

After Tuesday’s committee meeting, however, environmentalists warned that the changes suggested by land-use attorney Peterson and backed by development interests on the citizens panel could backfire.

‘A Developer’s Proposal’

“I think Peterson’s making a serious mistake,” said Peter Navarro, a panel member, slow-growth advocate and economics professor at the University of San Diego.

“It’s going to be obvious to the City Council and to the general public, which will see this as a developer’s proposal,” Navarro said.

Peterson defended the changes he suggested.

“The people who sponsored the sensitive-lands initiative treat it as if it is the Bible,” he said. “Because they promulgated it, they feel it is gospel. . . . They feel they have the truth.

“The fact is there are many of us on the committee who do not feel it is the truth,” Peterson said. “There are pulls and tugs, and they are the property rights of homeowners and developers.”

At Peterson’s urging, the committee adopted language in the proposal that used the word variance instead of exemption for any project excused from a part of the provisions of the proposal.

Choice of Word Challenged

Environmentalists took issue with that, saying the word variance is purposely softer than exemption , which they used in the original initiative text.

“I would much rather have the word exemption ,” Kreitzer said during panel debate. “ Variance sounds like a pat on the derriere. Exemption sounds like you’re being carved with something.”

Lynn Benn, a city Planning Commission member and local environmentalist, also moved to have words such as feasible and substantial removed from the proposal. She and other environmentalists argued those words provided the “wiggle room” for developers and land-use attorneys to get around the intent of the measure.

But that move was voted down as well. During discussion, land-use attorney Jim Milch argued: “I don’t believe these words are wiggle words any more than sensitive .”

The committee is schedule to meet June 1 and June 8 before handing the blueprint over to the City Council.

Another key battleground--whether development projects in the so-called planning pipeline should be excused from the sensitive-lands provisions--will be discussed at the next meeting of the panel.