Slow-Growth Initiatives Ignore the Larger Problem

Do “slow-growth” initiatives work?

Convinced that local officials are unable or unwilling to cope with the problems created by California’s continuing population boom, local citizens are turning increasingly to ballot measures to slow down growth.

But after all the time, money and energy have been spent to qualify a growth-control initiative for the ballot, to run a successful campaign and then to make sure the measure is translated into an effective city or county ordinance, does it make any difference?

The experiences of several California cities indicate that initiatives sometimes help with specific local problems, like too many office buildings in Walnut Creek or protection of hillside acreage in Riverside, but they do little about the larger problems that threaten California’s future--problems like traffic congestion, air pollution, water quality, school overcrowding and lack of sewer and landfill capacity.

“These initiatives are local but the problems are regional,” said Steven Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

The “Petaluma Plan,” one of the state’s earliest and best-known growth-control efforts, provides an example.

In the early 1970s the pleasant, rural community of Petaluma, 40 miles north of San Francisco, found itself in the path of the suburban sprawl that was moving north along Highway 101.

Traffic grew worse, schools were on double session, sewers were inadequate and the water supply was questionable. Doctors and dentists stopped accepting new patients.

“The citizens just got up in arms,” Mayor Patricia Hilligoss said recently. “There was kind of an uprising here.”

In this case, the “uprising” did not take the form of a citizens’ slow-growth initiative but, instead, a 1972 City Council-imposed limit of 500 new housing units per year.

In 1973, a group of builders and developers sued Petaluma, claiming that the cap on new dwelling units was unconstitutional. But a federal appellate court upheld the Petaluma Plan, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the case.

Mayor Hilligoss said most residents are pleased with the plan, which has slowed the city’s growth and has made it easier to preserve some of Petaluma’s turn-of-the-century look.

‘Room for Children’

“I don’t think a person could get elected in Petaluma today if they didn’t go along with planned growth,” she said. “In fact, a lot of the citizens would like to see no growth at all, but you can’t do that. You have to have room for your children, if they want to stay here.”

But the plan has contributed to high housing costs--the Sonoma County Board of Realtors reported that the average Petaluma home sales price in June was $222,702--and there is a shortage of low- and middle-income housing. The growth cap also has had an impact on neighboring communities.

When builders were thwarted in Petaluma, “that sent them right up the freeway to us,” said Paul Skanchy, planning director in Rohnert Park, 9 miles north along Highway 101.

Soon Rohnert Park had its own problems--traffic congestion, crowded schools, inadequate sewer capacity. The sewer problem became so serious that the city had to impose its own growth limits, Skanchy said, and builders then pushed north to Santa Rosa and beyond.

Other Areas Hurt

So the controls that helped Petaluma caused trouble elsewhere and did little to solve such regional problems as foul air and traffic jams.

Much the same thing has happened in Lodi, a northern San Joaquin Valley community of 43,000 where the growing of fine wine grapes is made possible by cool Pacific Ocean breezes blowing through the Carquinez Strait.

Distressed because development was gobbling up vineyards and other valuable agricultural land, residents approved a 1981 initiative that created a “green belt” around Lodi and required a vote of the people before any project could be built there.

Since then, only four of 22 proposed projects have been approved. Last November, voters rejected all 10 proposals that appeared on the ballot. One developer spent more than $70,000 to gain public support for his project but won only 27% of the vote.

A group of property owners sued the city, contending that the initiative interferes with state annexation law. They won in Superior Court and the case is now on appeal. In the meantime, however, the Lodi City Council has agreed to limit population growth to 2% a year, even if the growth-control measure is declared invalid.

Price of Exclusivity

“The question is, do people have a right to live in a small town?” asked former City Atty. Ronald M. Stein. “If we didn’t have Measure H (the 1981 slow-growth initiative), we would become a bedroom community for Stockton and Sacramento, even for the Bay Area.”

But Lodi has paid a price for exclusivity. Housing costs and land prices have skyrocketed and affordable housing is in short supply.

Projects that might have been built in Lodi have gone instead to nearby unincorporated communities like Woodbridge, where development standards are lower. But rapid growth in these surrounding communities is causing air pollution, traffic congestion and other problems that affect Lodi as well.

Sometimes a local initiative does not even solve a local problem.

In Walnut Creek, a prosperous community 30 miles east of San Francisco, slow-growth forces have passed two initiatives and have taken control of the City Council in recent years but have been unable to do much about the traffic congestion that caused them to organize in the first place.

Measure H, a 1985 initiative, prohibits most construction in Walnut Creek until traffic conditions have been improved at 75 gridlocked intersections. After a bitterly fought contest, the initiative was approved by 405 votes out of 19,541 cast. Many observers believe that the current surge of slow-growth sentiment around the state began with the Walnut Creek vote.

Slow-Growth Majority

Last year a slow-growth majority took over the City Council, and engineer Ed Skoog was elected mayor. But the new majority has found Measure H easier to pass than to implement.

New office building construction has been halted but traffic has not improved, largely because much of it is caused by commuters who drive from their homes in booming eastern Contra Costa County to jobs in Oakland and San Francisco. There is little that a local initiative can do to affect this kind of regional traffic problem.

Computer studies by city planners indicate that about half of Walnut Creek’s traffic is regional, not local, and “nothing we do, no matter how much money we throw at it, is going to get us to the Measure H standards,” said city spokesman Brad Rovenpera.

Without a regional solution, which is not in sight, Walnut Creek’s streets are likely to remain as snarled as they were before slow growth came to town.

The absence of regional planning is also evident in Riverside, where the city’s efforts to control growth may be overwhelmed by a countywide population explosion.

In 1979, Riverside voters approved Proposition R, which established a minimum five-acre lot size in a 5,200-acre, citrus-growing “green belt” and also tightly controlled hillside development.

In 1987, convinced that the City Council was nibbling away at the earlier restrictions, slow-growth advocates passed Measure C, which stripped the City Council of the right to exempt property from Proposition R limitations.

Measure C also prevented the city from annexing land without assurances that new developments would pay for roads, schools, sewers and other needed services. It effectively throttled plans to double the size of Riverside’s “sphere of influence,” a move that city officials had hoped would create a buffer between Riverside and the uncontrolled development that was taking place in the surrounding county.

But slow-growth successes in the city have had little effect on Riverside County, the fastest-growing large county in the state. The county’s population is more than 950,000, and the Southern California Assn. of Governments estimates that it will soar to 2 million by the year 2010.

Population boomed in Moreno Valley and other county communities because they offered thousands of $60,000 to $70,000 “starter” homes to families that were unable to afford Los Angeles, Orange County or even prices in the city of Riverside. Now those same houses are selling for $90,000 to $100,000 and first-time buyers are pushing farther east--to Banning, Beaumont and San Jacinto.

As these workers drive back and forth, on ever-lengthening commutes, they use city of Riverside streets, pollute city of Riverside air and create service demands that must be met with city of Riverside tax dollars.

No Answers

“Much of the concern that people express is over things we cannot control,” said Merle Gardner, Riverside’s planning director.

To try to deal with this problem, slow-growth supporters, organized as “Yes on Residents Controlling Growth,” have qualified an initiative for the November ballot that would limit population increases in unincorporated parts of the county to the statewide growth rate of the previous year.

Bill Havert, a local Sierra Club official who is co-director of the initiative campaign, said this would have generated about 2,500 new building permits in 1987, instead of the 10,000 that were granted by the county Board of Supervisors.

The measure would make further cuts in building permits if goals are not met for relief of traffic congestion and other growth-related problems.

Even if the initiative passes, its effect may be blunted by agreements between developers and county officials that would exempt more than 100,000 new dwelling units from terms of the measure. These “developer agreements,” sanctioned by state law, immunize builders against the effects of growth-control measures if they agree to build new roads, sewers and other infrastructure.

Riverside Growth

So it is possible that even passage of a countywide slow-growth initiative will do little to cool the Riverside County population explosion. And that explosion could destroy most of the city of Riverside’s attempts to manage growth.

Countywide growth management has been successful in a few places--notably Santa Cruz County in Northern California, and Ventura County in the south.

Seven of the 10 cities in Ventura County have growth controls of some kind and “green-belt agreements” channel new development into the cities, leaving open space between them.

But tight budgets and developer pressures have forced the county Board of Supervisors to consider breaching these agreements to allow development in some of the empty land.

The San Diego area may come up with a sort of hodgepodge version of regional growth management if two “quality-of-life” initiatives on the city and county ballots are approved in November.

San Diego, the state’s second-largest city, has had a growth-management plan since 1979 but has had trouble coping with problems resulting from the continuing economic boom of recent years.

San Diego’s population, now slightly more than 1 million, has increased by more than 233,000 in the last decade, and the San Diego Assn. of Governments is forecasting an additional increase of more than 100,000 by 1995.

San Diego Newcomers

The county population, now about 2.3 million, is expected to grow to more than 3 million by the year 2000, according to the association’s forecast.

Newcomers were arriving in the city at the rate of 1,000 a week until recently. In each of two recent years, more than 18,000 new dwelling units were built.

This growth spurt has produced the usual problems--traffic congestion, polluted air, crowded schools and overburdened sewer systems. This is especially true in the older neighborhoods near downtown, where growth was directed by the 1979 plan.

Development “is changing the topography of San Diego,” said Linda Martin, co-chairman of Citizens for Limited Growth, a slow-growth group. “The mesas are all built on and now the developers are going after the canyons.”

In 1986, San Diego voters sent a message that slow-growth sentiment was on the rise when they approved an initiative reversing a City Council decision to allow development on 5,100 acres of land that was to have been left for “urban reserves.”

Citizen’s Committee

Taking heed of that changing mood, Mayor Maureen O’Connor appointed a citizens’ advisory committee to work with the Planning Department to fashion a new growth-management plan.

Meanwhile, in June, 1987, the City Council approved an interim development ordinance that limited new residential units to 12,000 over the next 18 months.

But when the council exempted 6,000 controversial acres from the interim ordinance, furious members of Citizens for Limited Growth decided to proceed with their own slow-growth initiative.

Operating out of a small office across the street from a popular nude bar, the group spent $100,000 to gather 85,700 signatures on petitions--35,000 more than they needed--and placed an initiative on the November ballot.

The measure would allow construction of 7,000 to 9,000 residential units in the first year after passage, gradually reducing that number to 4,000 to 6,000 in the fourth year. That limit would be maintained until “quality-of-life” standards have been met for traffic congestion, air and water quality, sewer capacity and solid waste disposal.

The initiative also would prohibit most development in canyons, hillsides and other “sensitive lands.”

The City Council is expected to place a less stringent alternative on the November ballot, one that would allow about 38,000 new units to be built over the next five years. This measure is likely to be supported by a well-financed group of establishment figures calling themselves the “Coalition for a Balanced Environment.”

‘Quality-of-Life’ Measure

A separate “quality-of-life” initiative, which would apply to unincorporated county areas, will also be on the ballot, and the Board of Supervisors is expected to counter with its own, more flexible measure.

If both a city and a county initiative pass, then the San Diego area will have some sort of regional growth management plan. There seems to be a growing California consensus that such an approach is needed.

At a recent statewide growth-management conference in Los Angeles, there was widespread agreement--among builders and developers as well as representatives of slow-growth organizations--that only regional controls would work. But there was also general agreement that local governments would not yield much power to regional agencies willingly.

“Everybody is happy to have organizations like SCAG (the Southern California Assn. of Governments) write brilliant reports and stimulate provocative discussions, as long as they don’t threaten to actually do anything,” one conference participant said.

There has been talk among slow-growth supporters of a statewide initiative, but these volunteer activists are too busy with their local battles for that to happen soon.

Statewide Initiative

Solana Beach attorney Dwight Worden, who has drafted many California growth-control initiatives, thinks it will take five years for slow-growth advocates to realize that local measures are not enough and a statewide initiative is needed.

Some argue that slow-growth initiatives already have served a useful purpose.

They point to planning efforts under way in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino County and many other places--steps that might not have been taken without the prodding of slow-growth advocates and the threat of ballot initiatives.

“The success of the movement can’t be judged solely by successful initiatives,” the Sierra Club’s Bill Havert said. “We’ve already achieved one important thing--to make growth a subject of public debate, which it certainly wasn’t before.”

THE SLOW-GROWTH MOVEMENTPETALUMA

Slow-Growth: City Council-imposed limit of 500 new housing units a year.

Results: Suburban sprawl has been halted but housing costs are high, there is a shortage of low- and middle-income housing. Development has gone to neighboring communities.

Mayor Patricia Hilligoss: “There was kind of an uprising here . . . I don’t think a person could get elected in Petaluma today if they didn’t go along with planned growth. In fact, a lot of the citizens would like to see no growth at all, but you can’t do that. You have to have room for your children, if they want to stay here.”

RIVERSIDE

Slow-Growth: 1979 city initiative established a minimum five-acre lot size in “green belt” and restricted hillside development. An initiative in 1987 stripped the City Council of the right to exempt property from limitations and required that new developments must pay for roads, schools, sewers and other services.

Results: City of Riverside growth controls have been overwhelmed by booming population in surrounding county, the fastest-growing in the state. (County population is now more than 950,000). County voters will consider an initiative to limit population growth in November.

Bill Havert and John Roth, co-directors of “Yes on Residents Controlling Growth,” the organization sponsoring the November initiative:

Havert: “The success of the movement can’t be judged solely by successful initiatives. We’ve already achieved one important thing--to make growth a subject of public debate, which it certainly wasn’t before.”

Roth: “If anybody had told me I would be advocating controls over the free market system” before this experience, “I would have told them they were nuts. But I found the system isn’t working--developers are calling the shots and the best interests of people are not being served.”

LODI

Slow-Growth: 1981 measure created “green belt” and required public vote before any project could be built on that land.

Results: Only four of 22 proposed projects have been approved. Small-town atmosphere has been preserved but housing costs and land prices have skyrocketed, affordable housing is in short supply.

Beryl Georguson, 17-year resident active in the slow-growth movement: “So far, Measure A has achieved what it meant to achieve. . . . (But) housing is still being built and advertised, encouraging people to come to Lodi to live. That creates a problem.”

Evelyn Munn Ed Skoog

WALNUT CREEK

Slow-Growth: 1985 initiatives established a height limit and prohibited most construction until traffic congestion can be relieved.

Results: Office building construction has been halted but traffic has not improved, largely because much of it is caused by commuters.

Mayor Ed Skoog: “The moratorium will last until we get the level of traffic the city said it wanted.”

City Councilwoman Evelyn Munn: “We don’t want to stop growth, we want to manage growth, which we are doing.”

SAN DIEGO

Slow-Growth:City of San Diego has had a growth management plan since 1979 but traffic congestion, air pollution, lack of sewer capacity, other growth-related problems have worsened. “Quality of life” initiatives, sharply curtailing growth in both city and county, will be on the November ballot. Twelve of the county’s 18 cities already have controls of some kind.

Results: Passage of both initiatives would give San Diego area a semblance of regional growth management.

Tom Mullaney, co-director of Citizens for Limited Growth: “I could see we were losing the battle. While we were saving one canyon, we were losing nine others” to development.