Slow-Growthers Want Planning Panels Purged

Charging that San Diego’s influential community planning groups are stacked in favor of development interests, a citizens group that favors a “managed” approach to growth Thursday demanded reform for the 31 advisory panels.

At a press conference, Prevent Los Angelization Now! urged the council to reserve 60% of the seats on each panel for neighborhood residents who have no links to the development industry.

It called for written disclosure of planning group members’ economic interests in development projects that come before the committees and mandatory abstention from voting on those projects for anyone with even an indirect economic interest. Existing city policy applies only to project developers.

The group also would bar anyone from holding a seat on more than one planning group, as is occasionally the case now.

Proven Influential

“We believe the playing field in San Diego, in terms of planning, has not been level for a very long time,” said Peter Navarro, chairman of the organization, which succeeded Citi zens for Limited Growth, whose growth-limitation measures for the city and county were defeated by the voters last November.

“These community planning groups, particularly in the fastest-growing (city) areas, are often dominated by development interests and used for political purposes,” Navarro said.

Though technically advisory to the San Diego City Council, planning-group decisions have proven to be influential in many council decisions on development projects. Under the council’s new system of district-only elections, which makes council members electorally responsible only to their own districts, they may carry even more weight.

Susan Biegeleisen, who conducted a review of planning group rosters for PLAN, claimed that the survey showed that developers hold nearly 50% of the seats on planning groups in the city’s urbanizing areas, “where most of San Diego’s growth is occurring.”

The report claimed that the Miramar Ranch North, North City West and Pacific Beach planning groups are dominated by residential and commercial developers, in some cases because members holding seats reserved for residents have ties to the development industry.

Mike St. Clair, a member of a citizens group attempting to block construction of hundreds of homes on the northern shore of Lake Miramar, said he was prevented from joining the Miramar Ranch North planning group by a bloc of developers on the panel who favor the building project.

However, PLAN’s definition of development industry members includes landowners, real estate agents, architects, loan officers, real estate attorneys, construction workers, landscapers and subcontractors--as well as secretaries and accountants in those types of firms.

Another View on Reform

“If you’re a janitor working for a title company, you probably shouldn’t be classified as a development industry representative,” said Carol Landsman, chairman of the Community Planners Committee, which is composed of representatives from the city’s 31 planning groups.

Landsman also said that prohibiting building industry members from holding a majority of seats on the planning groups is “irrelevant” because that will not guarantee a the slower rate of growth that PLAN is seeking.

For example, she said, two PLAN members, architect Jim Kelley-Markham and apartment owner Tom Mullaney, would be denied “resident” seats on planning groups because of their ties to the development industry, despite their slow-growth sentiments.

Landsman said PLAN should seek reform of individual planning groups it believes are biased in favor of development or in violation of council policy. But the planning groups, in a year-long review of policies governing them that ended in May, strongly favored a flexible council policy that allows the composition of each planning group to reflect the makeup of the neighborhood it represents.

Biegeleisen’s report also claimed that nearly 27% of members of planning groups in the city’s urbanizing northern tier do not live in those areas but are allowed to serve on the planning groups under the council policy because they own property or businesses in the area.

With more than 93% of those members having ties to the development industry, the system allows additional development industry influence on the planning groups, the report charged.

The group also called for better enforcement of council policy and planning group by-laws.