Council Adopts Loose Outline on Growth Control

The San Diego City Council adopted the broad outlines of a long-sought comprehensive growth-management policy Tuesday, formally agreeing that public facilities must be provided “concurrent with need” and moving to protect much of the city’s hilly terrain from development.

But the council deferred decisions on the most difficult and controversial questions of the protracted and bitter growth debate: whether to halt development in communities until public facilities are built and how to pay for the $1.65 billion in such construction that government and developers cannot finance.

Those questions, which the council will start addressing within 60 days, created a sharp division Tuesday between the new plan’s authors, council members Judy McCarty and Bob Filner, and their chief critic, Councilman Ron Roberts.

McCarty and Filner, proclaiming that the city now has the growth-management plan it has needed for years, said that the city Tuesday declared its approach to growth control for the first time since the current general plan was adopted in 1979.

“I think there is (a plan), one that’s based on facilities, is environmentally sound but flexible and preserves single-family neighborhoods,” Filner said.

“We now have established the policy that development in any community will not outpace the availability of public facilities” such as roads, schools, parks and fire stations, McCarty said.

But Roberts said the council had, at best, adopted a “work plan,” a series of intentions coupled with a large number of initiatives already being readied by government departments.

“Where’s the substance?” Roberts asked after the council meeting. “Ask yourself: Tomorrow, how is this city going to be different from how it was yesterday?”

After spending nearly two years writing and campaigning for a growth-management plan, council members were left with nothing but existing interim measures when voters crushed slow-growth Proposition H--and a rival, citizen-backed measure, Proposition J--at the polls Nov. 8.

Initiative From Unlikely Allies

Since then, the questions of how to regulate home construction, protect the city’s topography and reduce traffic remained the subject of discussion and memoranda until unlikely allies Filner and McCarty proposed their three-page initiative Jan. 19. Mayor Maureen O’Connor also signed on to support their plan.

By eliminating the growth caps that may have torpedoed Proposition H; taking steps to preserve single-family neighborhoods; compromising on environmental protections and embracing initiatives on traffic control, trash recycling, water reclamation and open-space preservation that were already under way, Filner and McCarty were able to set the agenda for Tuesday’s hearing.

Their effort was further aided by the fact that the two come from opposite ends of the council’s growth spectrum. Filner is one of the council’s toughest environmentalists, and McCarty has compiled a strong pro-development record.

Although representatives of the Building Industry Assn. and the Sierra Club objected to aspects of the plan Tuesday, they did not register the kind of vehement opposition they showed toward Proposition H.

The council also approved a series of recommendations from the Planning Department, agreeing to phase out the city’s interim growth cap by May 21, and to undertake a pilot project to map the environmentally sensitive lands in an 18.6-square-mile parcel in the northwestern part of the city.

About 4,500 of the estimated 13,000 requests for building permits that have built up during the 18 months of the interim growth cap would be granted during the phase-out. By May 21, the city would develop a permanent growth policy and a way of monitoring development.

After May 21, development would proceed unchecked, but would be closely monitored to assure that it did not outstrip a community’s ability to handle population growth.

Interim Ban Stays

The growth plan’s major components include:

- A policy preserving single-family neighborhoods from encroachment by small, multi-unit buildings. Tentative maps of the neighborhoods to be preserved will be brought to the city’s planning groups for review, then sent to the council. Until then, an interim ban on replacing single-family homes with multifamily buildings will remain in force.

At Roberts’ insistence, however, the Planning Department was directed to quickly establish a procedure to review requests of homeowners seeking exemption from the ban.

- An order to City Manager John Lockwood to prepare a policy that developers must build public facilities as part of residential development, turning them over to the city. The policy will go to the council’s Transportation and Land Use Committee and then to the council for approval.

Lockwood was also directed to report on ways to finance the city’s huge shortfall in public facilities, particularly in urbanized areas, where the need is estimated at $1.05 billion. Developers cannot be counted on to pay for those facilities because inner-city neighborhoods are about 85% built out.

The most controversial suggestion, that “new development in a community should not be approved” until facilities meet general plan standards or can be provided concurrent with need, was set aside to be discussed within 60 days. Lockwood, Planning Director Robert Spaulding and building industry representatives said that such a requirement would be extremely difficult to meet in urbanized communities and might halt all development there.

Not Yet Enforceable

Filner and McCarty agreed that, until a specific growth-control plan is adopted, their policies on providing public facilities will not be enforceable.

- Strengthening of the environmental protections now in force to include most of the city’s steeply sloped hillsides, important historic and archeological sites and areas containing rare habitats and vegetation.

However, the areas exempted from the existing environmental restrictions will remain exempt. Other areas can be proposed. The city could authorize development on protected land in exchange for environmentally sensitive land elsewhere.

- A series of environmental “goals.” Among these are adoption of a traffic management plan by July, implementation of a water reclamation plan and establishment of a citywide curb-side trash recycling program within three years. All three measures are being developed.