Slow-Growth Plan Earns Ballot Spot

A citizens’ initiative to limit growth in the unincorporated areas of the county has gathered enough signatures for a place on the November ballot, county Registrar of Voters Connie B. McCormack announced Friday.

McCormack said that a 5% random sample of 90,599 signatures found that 82% belonged to registered voters. That would give the Rural Preservation and Traffic Control Initiative about 74,600 valid signatures, far more than the required 58,599.

The issue will be placed before the Board of Supervisors on July 26. By law, the supervisors must either adopt the initiative’s language as an ordinance or agree to put it on the November ballot.

The initiative would put a numerical cap on residential growth, limit commercial and industrial growth and give citizens serving on official planning groups the power to veto projects that do not conform with the county General Plan.

The November ballot may prove to be crowded with growth initiatives, both in the city of San Diego and for the unincorporated areas governed by the Board of Supervisors. The supervisors this week approved two of their own propositions for the ballot, with one more still under consideration.

Bill McNeely, a leader in the Rural Preservation movement, said that only the citizens’ initiative has “teeth that will slow growth . . . by preventing overbuilding in the countryside.”