Growth Initiative Tied to Traffic Struck Down

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that a local ballot measure tying development to improvements in traffic conditions is unconstitutional.

Striking down a slow-growth initiative approved by San Clemente voters 63.5% to 36.5% in June, Judge John C. Woolley ruled that the measure illegally requires developers to solve traffic problems their projects did not cause.

“The initiative is facially defective,” Woolley said in his written opinion. “Its plain meaning requires property owners to mitigate conditions not only caused by their development (a proper goal) but also to cure the inadequacies of those who developed their property before them.”

Identical Initiatives

Initiatives that are almost identical to Measure E will be on the Nov. 8 ballot in Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa and San Juan Capistrano.

Measure E states that when a major development increases traffic congestion by 1% or more at an intersection or highway link, improvements will be required to bring traffic flow up to certain standards. That, Woolley said, could result in the “last parcel of land to be developed (bearing) the entire expense” of public facilities in a particular area.

Land-use lawyers said Wednesday that, to their knowledge, no other California city uses a growth-control approach exactly like San Clemente’s.

Solana Beach attorney Dwight Worden, who has helped write many of the slow-growth measures around the state, said most of them set overall limits on building permits that can be raised or lowered, depending on traffic levels and other “quality-of-life” standards. But most, he said, do not place a burden on individual property owners.

Growth-control measures on the November ballots in San Diego and Riverside call for annual caps on building permits.

No Decision About Appeal

Dan Spradlin, the lawyer hired by San Clemente to defend the initiative, said he would discuss Wednesday’s ruling with the City Council before making a decision on whether to appeal.

The ruling was sought by a partnership controlled by Lusk Co. of Irvine, which did not want the initiative to apply to its proposed 253-acre, 1,290-home Marblehead project atop 100-foot bluffs along the ocean in San Clemente.

The San Clemente City Council recently decided that parts of Measure E were too complex to administer and unenforceable, much to the dismay of slow-growth activists.

The Orange County Superior Court ruling comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a San Francisco law that imposed developer fees for transit improvements in the city’s central business district.