Commentary : Which Growth Proposition Is the Best? : Prop. J: ‘Ensures Quality of Life’

San Diego voters want a comprehensive growth-control measure that will promote reasonable growth, prevent Los Angeles-style traffic congestion and air pollution, preserve dwindling open spaces, provide adequate public facilities, promote affordable housing and protect neighborhoods.

The question is: Which ballot measure will best achieve those six goals, and the answer is Proposition J, the Quality of Life Initiative. Here’s how:

Growth

Since 1980, half a million newcomers have poured into San Diego, making it the fastest growing metropolis in California and one of the fastest in the nation. If this runaway growth continues, over a half million more people will flock here in the next decade and turn San Diego into a severely congested, crime-ridden, overcrowded suburb of Los Angeles.

The City Council measure, Proposition H, merely accommodates runaway growth by setting a phony “cap” on residential housing construction. The “cap” is phony because it is based on an population forecast, which predicts continued runaway growth.

In contrast, the Citizen’s Initiative, Proposition J, promotes reasonable growth by establishing limits on development that will slow growth to roughly the same rate as the rest of California. This slower, more reasonable, and less damaging rate of growth will allow a sustained economic expansion for all of San Diego’s businesses and industries.

Los Angelization

According to the San Diego Assn. of Governments, San Diego’s freeways will resemble “the most heavily congested freeways of Los Angeles” by the year 2005. San Diego also has the nation’s second dirtiest air for deadly ozone, raw sewage spills occur an average of once every three days, water shortages are predicted within two years, and landfills will be used up by 1995.

Proposition H originally contained tough standards to solve these problems, but, at the behest of the building industry, Councilwoman Judy McCarty convinced the council to eliminate these standards. This has resulted in the key weakness and single most glaring omission of Proposition H.

In contrast, Proposition J firmly ties the rate of development to five Quality of Life standards, which will prevent Los Angeles-style traffic congestion and air pollution, ensure an adequate water supply and require sufficient sewage and solid-waste disposal capacity.

Dwindling Open Space

More than 85% of the environmentally sensitive canyons, hillsides and open space, which give San Diego its unique natural character, have been destroyed. Such destruction is epitomized in “cut-and-fill” developments like Carmel Mountain Ranch and Lopez Ridge: Bulldozers chop off hilltops, use the dirt as fill for canyons, and turn the landscape into a stark series of mesas.

Besides obvious aesthetic harm, cut and fill eliminates sensitive habitat areas and natural drainage systems. Adding environmental insult to injury, cut-and-fill developers also cram these artificial mesas with high-density housing units without any regard for the ability of the surrounding roads, facilities and environment to accommodate such densities.

Propositions H and J offer a similar protections for environmentally sensitive lands with one big difference. Proposition H is riddled with loopholes crafted by a pro-development council faction led by Ron Roberts and Ed Struiksma. The worst is one that allows the council to exempt any project if that project can get six votes--a loophole the council approved by six votes.

Public Facilities

As home buyers in communities such as Rancho Penasquitos and Scripp’s Ranch are well aware, developers typically build houses first and crucial public facilities such as parks and libraries last. To address this “timing” issue, Proposition J requires that public facilities will be available at time of need. In contrast, council members Roberts, Struiksma and McCarty eliminated such language from Proposition H, and all that remains is an objective with no implementing language.

Affordable Housing

While more than 15,000 housing units were built in 1987, only 268 were designed for low-income residents--mute testimony to the building industry’s commitment to profits rather than people.

Under Proposition J, affordable housing will be built first, because Proposition J gives top priority in its permit allocation system to affordable housing. However, under Proposition H, affordable housing will be built last--if at all. Proposition H merely exempts low-income housing from its building cap but offers no incentives for it to be built.

Neighborhood Protection

While the crime rate has been falling in California and the rest of the United States, it has been rising dramatically in San Diego. Today, crime and gang violence together with encroachment of high-density apartments and condos pose the greatest threats to single-family neighborhoods.

In the cruelest of jokes, Proposition H purports to “protect” single-family homes but only if those homes are in areas classified as “protected.” As a practical matter, this will leave thousands of homeowners in communities like North Park, Clairemont and Hillcrest out in the condo cold. In contrast, Proposition J strongly preserves neighborhoods by requiring that any new development have a favorable or neutral impact on the community. This will prevent high-density housing, which breeds crime and ruins property values.

In summary, the well-crafted citizen’s initiative, Proposition J, outperforms the loophole-laden City Council’s measure, Proposition H, in all six key dimensions that concern San Diegans: reasonable growth, “Los Angelization,” open-space preservation, provision for adequate public facilities, affordable housing and neighborhood protection. That is why more than 85,000 San Diegans signed petitions to put it on the ballot, and that is why the Sierra Club, San Diegans for Managed Growth and the broader public are supporting Proposition J and opposing Proposition H.