Pleading the Case : North County Cities Compete to Attract $100-Million Justice Center

In about two months, county officials will ask interested North County cities to present their best argument why they should be home to a new, $100-million justice center.

At stake is not only the prestige of being the legal center of North County but such peripheral benefits as law offices, restaurants, boutiques and other business and commercial enterprises that may follow in tow.

Vista already has begun its campaign to keep itself the home of North County’s municipal and superior courts. Mayor Gloria McClellan has in recent weeks sent out about 400 informational booklets to public-opinion leaders to explain why an expanded courthouse should be built in Vista--beginning with the argument that the county already has invested $50 million in a 25-courtroom facility and adjoining jail in her city.

Escondido, which at first sparked the debate over court expansion by offering to build a courthouse for the county at discount prices, is not ready to sell itself to officials, but instead is rethinking its proposal and may suggest an altogether different site than the downtown one previously proposed.

Viewpoint of San Marcos

San Marcos city officials, meanwhile, say they don’t figure to bid on housing an entire courts complex, but would like to have a half-dozen courtrooms in a mini-courthouse dedicated to traffic court, small claims, probate and family-law matters.

And now Oceanside officials say they don’t want to be overlooked in the talks. Mayor Larry Bagley says his city may make its own bid for the courts project, depending on what exactly the county asks of the North County cities when a formal “request for proposals” is issued in about two months.

Still to be determined is what kind of a courthouse is to be built in North County, let alone where it should be built. All parties are waiting for the county to make that decision, at which time they will have several months to respond with their specific, detailed proposal.

County officials, sparked by Escondido’s proposal, earlier had talked of a new facility with fewer courtrooms than judges. Since the judges don’t use their courtrooms all the time, they could share courtrooms for efficiency’s sake, the logic went.

But a study recently completed by Ernest C. Friesen, a courts consultant, and Omni-Group, a facility planning consultant, recommended discarding that notion. It recommended instead building a courthouse with varying-size courtrooms to meet the varied needs of the judges--ranging from several large courtrooms with ample spectator seating, to smaller courtrooms and even so-called 15-seat “judicial conference rooms,” where meetings could be held where neither a jury nor spectators would be present.

Separation Was Considered

Also under discussion for a while was the idea of separating the courts. Vista, for instance, could have just criminal courts, with the civil courts elsewhere, or vice-versa. Or, Vista could have either the municipal or superior courts only, and the others could be in a different city.

But the component parts of the judicial system--ranging from the district attorney’s office to the clerk’s office to attorneys to the judges themselves--have balked at splitting the courts for a variety of logistical reasons.

The idea, for instance, of an attorney having one case in a municipal court and then having to drive elsewhere for a criminal court matter made little sense, consultants agreed. So too, the notion of separating civil from criminal matters wouldn’t work because the courts hear both kinds of matters any given day and it would be too difficult to assign courtrooms on a regular basis to either civil or criminal calendars.

Having divided courts would also cause all sorts of administrative headaches within the clerk’s, marshal’s and bailiffs’ offices, with some duplication of services.

The latest recommendation from consultants to the county staff is to have a single, 51-courtroom facility to serve North County into the next century. And the issue is, where to put it. A brand new, 51-courtroom facility could be built at a non-Vista site, and the existing courthouses could be used for other county needs, or a smaller facility could be built at Vista, which, when combined with the existing 25-courtroom facility, would provide the 51 total courtrooms needed to serve North County.

Vista Mayor McClellan is the loudest cheerleader in keeping the entire facility in her city. The reasons are obvious, she says: The jails already are located in Vista; to put a courthouse elsewhere would put criminal suspects and convicts on the freeway and, citing the consultant’s estimate, cost the county more than $1 million a year in transportation and related costs; the city is central to North County; the existing courts already are there; major widening projects are under way to improve traffic flow on Melrose Avenue, which fronts the courthouse, and California 78 will be widened with a new off-ramp to better serve the courts.

McClellan simply can’t figure why the county would now turn its back on Vista and move elsewhere, but still stick it with the jail and a courthouse facility that would be used for other functions. “We believe that the expansion of the Regional Justice Facility at the Vista site is the only financially responsible use of increasingly scarce taxpayer funds,” she wrote in a cover letter to the booklet she sent to judges, county supervisors and other civic and criminal justice leaders in the county.

To help win county concurrence, Vista has offered to throw in 6 acres free to provide ample, free parking so the county won’t have to build a parking structure elsewhere, and is willing to help float a revenue bond to finance the court construction. The county would repay the cost of the expanded facility with proceeds from Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax increase approved by county voters by a bare 50.6% majority last June. The measure is expected to generate $1.6 billion in revenue to the county for courts and jails expansions.

That measure is being contested in court by opponents who argue that a two-thirds voter approval was necessary for passage, but county officials say they are confident they will prevail and the money will start coming in to county coffers.

Escondido is the other major player in the courthouse site selection contest, having originally offered to finance the private construction of a courthouse across the street from its new City Hall, smack in the middle of its downtown. The city would in turn lease the courthouse building back to the county and lower the overall price tag by $6 million--the amount of money the city agreed to repay the county because of the county’s loss of property-tax revenue when the city established a redevelopment agency.

Officials have since decided that such a financing agreement wouldn’t work and that the county would pay for the construction of the courthouse itself, using proceeds from Proposition A, and Escondido would offer some other financial incentive to bring the courts to Escondido.

Escondido Mayor Doris Thurston says she is no longer convinced that the courthouse should be built in downtown Escondido anyway, given warnings about the amount of traffic the courthouse would generate in the already congested downtown.

So Thurston is now suggesting--the idea has yet to go to the City Council for public discussion--that an Escondido courthouse is better suited at the site of the existing Police Department headquarters, on Valley Parkway halfway between downtown and Interstate 15 on the city’s west side and across the street from a public transportation center now under construction.

The city’s police and fire chiefs already have said they want to move out of their existing headquarters and share a single public safety center at Grape Day Park, next to the new City Hall. Last week, the City Council agreed to fund a $50,000 study to look into the idea of a joint police-fire station headquarters. Such a new facility would leave the old Police Department site vacant, and Thurston says it would be the ideal location for a courthouse, given its proximity to the freeway and the transportation center and because it would not create traffic downtown, where shoppers are already wary of traveling because of congestion and parking problems.

Further, she notes: in the city’s agreement with the county involving the county’s loss of property-tax revenue, it offered the county either $6 million or to outright build the county a 60,000-square-foot office building to replace the county’s aging health and welfare office across the street from Palomar Medical Center, or to give it the old Police Department headquarters.

So then, the county could get an ideal courthouse site free from Escondido and use Proposition A funds to finance its construction, Thurston argues.

Not Lobbying

Since Escondido is still not sure what courthouse proposal to put forward, Thurston says the city is not publicly lobbying, as is her counterpart McClellan, for support.

She says she is not bothered by McClellan’s politicking for the courthouse. “She’s a fine mayor,” Thurston says of McClellan, “and that (lobbying) is her modus operandi. Mine is to study the issue closely and look at what is best for our city and the county, and to wait for the county’s request for proposals.”

Thurston argues that Escondido, unlike Vista, doesn’t need to sell itself as an ideal site.

“We don’t need to put out a brochure,” Thurston said. “Our city is selling itself because of all the things that have already happened here.” She points to the North County Fair regional shopping mall, the city’s consolidated auto sales park, the new City Hall and plans for a large cultural arts complex.

“Gloria is dogged about promoting Vista,” Thurston said. And, for good reason, the Escondido mayor admits. “Their industrial park makes ours look pallid. I compliment Gloria for what Vista has done, but I don’t think they need the courthouse.”

For her part, McClellan believes her city holds all the cards, but she says she won’t take any chances. “Our city finally has its act together, and the booklet we’ve sent out shows that,” she said.

“Some people still look at Vista like there are hayseeds here. That idea has got to go. I’ve been here long enough to know that used to be true, but it isn’t any longer.”

Distribution of the 400 booklets, she says, is intended to let the rest of the world know Vista is turning itself around. “That reminds me,” she said. “I’ve got to get some more printed.”