O’Connor Writes Own Plan to Cap City Growth

San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor told fellow City Council members Friday that she wants a strict growth-management policy passed immediately. Her plan would put an even lower building cap on residential units than would a citizen-sponsored initiative to be voted on in November, but she would allow “vested” development to proceed without city interference.

In a memorandum made public late Friday, O’Connor called on the City Council to provide a growth-management plan with a “more stringent” proposal on environmentally sensitive lands “than is currently before us.” That refers to a plan developed over many months by the Citizens Advisory Committee. The council is to begin final hearings on that plan next week.

She also called for “a lower annual net cap on building permits than that in the Quality of Life Initiative,” a citizen initiative that calls for annual limits starting at 6,000 to 8,000 new residential units the first year and reducing that to 4,000 to 6,000 units annually.

However, the mayor’s detailed statement on growth controls concedes that about 32,000 housing units that already have received city approval would not be affected by the new building cap.

Tim O’Connell, the mayor’s adviser on land-use matters, said O’Connor “is taking the only realistic path” in allowing developers who have obtained some sort of city approval of their residential projects to proceed without interference.

“She is saying, ‘Let’s quit pretending that we have any effective control over these vested projects,’ and is addressing the development over which the city still retains control,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell said city planners have yet to come up with firm figures on how many housing units have prior city approval and are exempt from city controls as the City Council begins its final round of hearings next week on the growth-management plan.

If the 32,000-unit estimate of vested housing units is correct, O’Connell said, the annual cap might be as low as 2,000 to 3,000 units a year on approvals of new housing units.

In an eight-point program, O’Connor proposed that the city’s growth-management plan be placed before the city’s voters every three years for approval. She called the vote a “fail-safe mechanism” that would ensure that, “if the voters want stricter control due to more rapid growth than anticipated, or fewer controls in the face of a severe economic recession, they should be able to decide that every three years.”

She also proposed that a financing plan that would provide funds for all public improvements needed by present and future San Diego residents be presented to voters for their approval within three years.

Traffic congestion should be controlled, O’Connor proposed, by setting an acceptable level of traffic flow and refusing to approve any development that would reduce the service below that acceptable level.

Kim Kilkenny, spokesman for the building industry and a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee that proposed a less restrictive growth-management plan to the council, said the mayor’s proposals and “the whole process is very upsetting.” O’Connor and the council are rewriting the committee’s recommendations entirely, he said, and, “personally, I fail to see how the mayor could manage to make some of these restrictions any more stringent.”

O’Connor also proposed that single-family neighborhoods be protected from the intrusion of apartments and duplexes, unless the community gives its approval, and that the approach to providing more low-income housing be more committed throughout the city.

She proposed that, if a majority of voters approve more than one growth-management measure on the ballot, the more restrictive provisions should be enforced, a stipulations that Kilkenny said “is absurd and conflicts with state law,” which provides that the measure receiving the most votes should prevail.

O’Connell said that, as a charter city, San Diego is governed by city election laws, which can be changed by council vote to allow what O’Connor is proposing.

The mayor concluded by urging that the city’s growth-management plan be approved immediately “to protect neighborhoods from a possible building rush in the next 120 days,” before the measure is decided at the polls, and that the plan be crafted well enough to survive any legal challenges in court.

Kilkenny’s comment to the latter proposal: “Whatever happens, there are going to be lawsuits and a lot of attorneys are going to get wealthy.”