IDO Has Been Both Successful and ‘Degrading,’ Council Is Told

By the numbers, San Diego’s controversial Interim Development Ordinance has been a success because it has kept housing starts at about 8,000 residential units during the first year of its existence, council members were told Tuesday.

But, by other standards, administering the emergency ordinance has been difficult and, at times, humiliating for the public, the council and the city’s staff, Assistant Planning Director Michael Stepner said.

“To be quite honest with you, I think the experience has been degrading for everybody who has been involved, from the public to the industry, to the council, to the staff,” he told council members at their regularly scheduled meeting.

Financial and Political Bind

Asked after the meeting to elaborate, Stepner said he was referring to the financial and political bind the IDO created.

Would-be developers, especially those with small projects, were forced to come before the council and ask for a variance to proceed with their projects, said Stepner, who was acting planning director when the IDO was written.

“People have gotten up and talked about their hardships, the money that they have on the line, illnesses . . . “ he said. “People are requesting these units in a way they haven’t before.”

As for the council, Stepner added, the IDO has posed a political problem. “Every time they grant a variance, they are accused of giving away the store,” he said.

Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who originally voted for the IDO but has since been a persistent critic of the measure, said during Tuesday’s meeting that confusion over the IDO’s complicated formula has made the city look “idiotic.”

“Relations between people and the city were affected,” McCarty said. “Job positions were lost. Savings were lost. We lost credibility.”

“I think all that needs to be written down for future generations who get a brilliant idea,” she said.

No ‘Developers’ Paradise’

Councilman Ron Roberts, however, emphasized the bottom line of the IDO, saying that, despite the confusion, the ordinance demonstrated that city leaders are taking steps to curb growth.

“The presumption that is continually stated in some of the written press and certainly in the popular media is that things have run amok and you can’t trust the council,” Roberts said, “that everything has been turned over and this is a developers’ paradise.”

“The fact of the matter is that this staff and the council have done a pretty damn good job in managing growth,” he said.

Fear that booming growth will overwhelm city streets, sewers and schools prompted the council to pass the IDO late last June during one of the longest council sessions on record. The council decreed that the city would give out building permits for no more than 8,000 residential housing starts, a dramatic cut from the 15,000 of the year before.

But that goal appeared to soften when council members learned that the IDO couldn’t be applied to developments with vesting tentative maps.

Then there were special exemptions given to developments in the so-called planning pipeline and subsequent council votes that released hundreds of additional units--particularly along the Interstate 15 corridor--from IDO strictures if actual construction did not commence until the measure expires at the end of October.

Slightly Above Cap

Council members also granted a number of variances because developers pleaded hardship under the temporary measure.

But, even with the variances and exemptions, the intent of the measure has been observed, statistics show. Under IDO procedures, 7,063 units have been approved, and another 1,124 units have been given building permits because they were exempt and the developers went ahead with their projects, for a total of 8,187.

After hearing the news, council members voted Tuesday to continue allocating residential units by neighborhood while the IDO winds down its final months.

Mindful that at least one proposal on the November ballot calls on the city to limit growth by using a similar building cap, Stepner asked council members to use a different method to allocate residential units than the one adopted under the IDO.

The ballot measure, sponsored by Citizens for Limited Growth, ties the number of units allowed to be built during any year to environmental goals established in the measure, such as construction of streets and a secondary sewage treatment plant.

If all the goals are met by local government, builders could be allowed to construct up to 9,000 residential units annually; but, if the goals are not met, the measure eventually calls for a cap of as few as 4,000 units.

Linda Martin, co-chairwoman of the citizens group, said Tuesday that she was “not impressed” by the IDO numbers because council members have voted to allow large housing projects to proceed after the ordinance expires. Among those projects: the 5,600-unit Carmel Mountain Ranch and Miramar Ranch North, with 4,650 homes.

“Maybe they did hold it down in the last year,” said Martin. “ . . . But the point is, they really broke the faith by approving all of those exemptions in the other areas of the city.”