McCarty Asks Council to Put 2 Slow-Growth Initiatives on Ballot

San Diego City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, in a surprise announcement just two days after voters created a managed-growth majority among her colleagues, proposed that the new council place two growth-control initiatives on the June, 1990, ballot.

McCarty, generally a member of the council’s pro-growth wing, said Thursday that the council action could spare both organizations now sponsoring the measures costly and divisive signature-gathering campaigns. The groups, Prevent Los Angelization Now! and the San Diego 2000 Committee, each must gather more than 51,000 signatures of registered voters to place the measures before voters next June.

McCarty said the public will never be convinced that the council has adopted its own growth controls as long as citizen groups continue to propose initiatives.

“Let’s just cut the talk and put them on the ballot and let the people decide,” she said in an interview.

But Peter Navarro, chairman of PLAN, said his organization first wants to determine whether the newly constituted council is willing to adopt all or most of his organization’s initiative before it engages in a costly battle with what he called a “builder-backed” growth measure.

“It’s a ploy,” Navarro said of McCarty’s proposal. “My reading is that the building industry now is scared to death that the council will, of its own volition, enact our measure or something similar to it in January.

“Under that assumption, what they’d like to do is delay that another six months and spend another $4 million to crush us again,” he said.

Navarro noted that the San Diego 2000 Committee’s Traffic Control and Comprehensive Growth Management Initiative, which he claimed is a weakened version of his group’s plan, contains a “killer clause” that would nullify any conflicting initiative that receives fewer votes, even if it receives a majority of votes cast.

San Diego 2000 Committee leaders could not be reached for comment Thursday, but the organization has said that it is not backed by the building industry.

McCarty said: “What’s Mr. Navarro afraid of? I thought he wanted a vote of the people. I thought I was doing everybody a favor.”

In 1988, developers spent nearly $3 million to defeat two growth-control initiatives aimed at the city of San Diego and two more that would have covered the county’s unincorporated areas. In that election, polling showed that the presence of two conflicting growth measures split the slow-growth vote and sent both to defeat.

McCarty’s memo to her colleagues, which urges that the City Council not act before new members Linda Bernhardt and John Hartley are sworn in next month, could be seen as a sign of the change that has washed over the council in the wake of victories Tuesday by environmentalists Bernhardt and incumbent Abbe Wolfsheimer.

Coupled with Hartley’s stunning upset of pro-growth Councilwoman Gloria McColl in the September election primary, the results give the council a managed-growth, environmental majority for the first time in perhaps two decades. Councilman Bob Filner is expected to be part of that coalition, and Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilmen Wes Pratt and Ron Roberts are seen as possible fifth votes.