Carlsbad Growth Policy Offered as Regional Model

A blue-ribbon committee charged with developing a regional approach to the county’s growth issues heard a plan Friday that would establish a county planning board and require each city to adopt a growth-management plan.

Carlsbad Councilman Mark Pettine presented his proposal to a committee formed by the San Diego Assn. of Governments. The group is in charge of implementing Proposition C, an advisory measure approved by voters last November supporting a regional agency to draft and oversee a growth-control plan.

Using Carlsbad’s growth-management plan as a model, Pettine suggested that each city in the county require the construction of public facilities to keep pace with development.

Under such a plan, each city would be allowed to maintain local land-use authority and evaluate its own needs for schools, police and fire service, sewage systems and open space, Pettine said.

Regional Issues

In addition, Pettine said, a special county board should be formed to deal with regional issues that are beyond any one city’s ability to solve. Guidelines on how to deal with air quality, water availability, transportation, solid-waste management and energy would be established by the county board, Pettine said.

To ensure that management plans in neighboring cities are not in conflict, Pettine recommended that the county be divided into five regions, each with its own planning group.

“If two border cities are trying to upgrade a road, and one city wants to have six lanes and the other city wants two lanes, you’re going to have problems,” Pettine said. “The subregional planning unit would bring leaders from both cities to the table to work out the differences.”

Although plans to implement Proposition C are only in a preliminary stage, some county officials expressed support for parts of Pettine’s proposal.

“It’s got a lot of merit,” said Supervisor Brian Bilbray, the committee chairman who also authored the ballot measure. “Some of his considerations we need to take a serious look at. One point in particular, the subregional planning concept, is something we may be able to use.”

Whether at the local or county level, Pettine said, the underlying principle behind growth-management plans is to set and comply with “performance standards.”

A city, for example, would set a traffic volume limit for a road. If a proposed development would generate traffic exceeding that standard, it could not be approved unless the road is improved to accommodate the increase.