O’Connor Asks Council to Drop Home-Building Curbs

Mayor Maureen O’Connor proposed Wednesday that the City Council virtually abandon citywide home-building caps, imposing them only in emergencies and targeting them at individual neighborhoods or regions.

Before a room packed with scores of representatives from both sides of the growth-control controversy, O’Connor also proposed that the city extend the life of its current, temporary, protections for environmentally sensitive lands while city planners write a tougher, permanent set of restrictions.

At a special meeting called to plot a new growth-management strategy in the wake of the defeat of two slow-growth measures Nov. 8, O’Connor argued that voters want the council to adopt most of the elements it offered them when it placed Proposition H--the less far-reaching of the two measures--on the ballot.

‘A Good Plan’

“We don’t have to start over,” the mayor said. “We have a good plan.”

But O’Connor said one element that must be pulled from that plan is home-building limits, which she and most council members believe were rejected when voters soundly defeated Propositions H and J.

O’Connor proposed that the council allow its 18-month home-building cap, the Interim Development Ordinance, to expire Feb. 21, and replace it with a monitoring system that would inform council members of construction in each city neighborhood every month. Under the IDO, residential construction was capped at 8,000 homes annually.

If the pace of residential construction appeared to be exceeding the 7,590-home limit proposed in defeated Proposition H, the council might consider reimposing a cap in certain neighborhoods where growth is greatest, O’Connor said.

Vague About Cap

In rare circumstances where growth was out of control in many neighborhoods, the city might have to reimpose a citywide building cap, said Tim O’Connell, O’Connor’s land-use adviser.

O’Connor was vague about how the council would decide when to cap a neighborhood’s growth, saying only that it would rely on community planning groups to report when construction was outstripping the availability of schools, parks and roads to support growth.

“The triggering factor will be this council’s decision about how it’s affecting the neighborhood,” she said.

The mayor’s plan also included an extension of the Resource Protection Overlay Zone, a set of regulations limiting construction on the city’s wetlands, flood plains and canyons, until permanent restrictions can be written by planners.

Criticized Restrictions

Slow-growth activists have criticized the restrictions, which also expire Feb. 21, as inadequate because thousands of acres along the I-15 corridor were exempted to allow development of major housing projects.

O’Connor also proposed adopting a permanent plan to preserve single-family neighborhoods by banning replacement of single-family homes with multifamily units. The current, yearlong ban expires in August.

As they have throughout the city’s arduous labor on a new growth-control plan, slow-growth activists and building industry representatives immediately disagreed on O’Connor’s proposal.

“To me that sounds like a housing cap,” said Stephen Coury, a spokesman for the Building Industry Assn., which opposes any plan containing construction limits. “I don’t see the need for an arbitrary cap of any kind.”

Limit Backed

But Peter Navarro, economic adviser to Citizens for Limited Growth, told reporters that “it’s very clear that people want some kind of limit on building, and I am frankly astonished that the council is backing away from controls on building.”

Navarro referred to the results of a poll commissioned by the city earlier this month. Pollster Michael Casinelli told the council Wednesday that 56.8% of the 603 city voters sampled in his survey voted for Proposition H, Proposition J or both. The rest voted against both propositions, he said.

In a separate analysis released Tuesday, Citizens for Limited Growth claimed that 63.4% of city voters supported at least one of the measures.

But Councilwoman Judy McCarty noted that 59% of Casinelli’s sample told him that they wanted residential construction, housing prices and rental rates governed by “supply and demand market forces, and not regulated by legislation.”

Several Plans Offered

O’Connor’s plan was just one of several submitted by council members, who continue their attempt to balance the defeat of the slow-growth ordinances with poll results showing strong support for managed growth. Council members McCarty, Ron Roberts and Abbe Wolfsheimer all submitted plans on how to proceed with growth control.

The council will begin to consider the suggestions Dec. 13, at the same meeting at which it is scheduled to approve nine contracts governing construction of thousands of new homes, mostly in the city’s northern tier.

O’Connor said any new regulations would not apply to the projects because the developments were approved by neighborhood groups and the council before the growth-control measures were proposed.