Vista Site Picked Over Escondido for Courthouse : Justice: Lack of funds may mean that there will be a delay in constructing the new county facility.

A 51-room courthouse will be built in Vista--even though there are no funds to pay for it and the city of Escondido had offered $10 million toward the immediate construction of 22 new courtrooms--the County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday.

“We made an incorrect assessment of the county’s ability to make a decision,” said Ken Lounsbery, vice president of Lusardi Construction Co., which spent two years with Escondido officials in packaging that city’s proposal.

The competition between the two cities tipped in Vista’s favor partly after that city at the 11th hour offered to loan the county $3.8 million for the immediate installation of 14 relocatable, modular courtrooms alongside Vista’s existing 22-courtroom and jail complex.

However, the construction of a 51-room courthouse in Vista--after which the existing 22 courts would be converted to county offices--is contingent on finding money to build it.

County officials hoped that last year’s passage of Proposition A, which called for a half-cent increase in the county sales tax, would finance the construction of new courts and jails in San Diego County, but a Superior Court judge in Riverside County ruled that the proposition, which was approved by a simple majority, violated Proposition 13’s mandate for a two-thirds approval of new taxes. His ruling is being appealed.

Escondido officials believed the hold-up of Proposition A funds gave credence to their proposal, which called for the city to contribute $7.5 million in cash and property to the county to help underwrite the $32.5-million cost of the Escondido courthouse. The city also offered to buy the county’s Deer Park, just north of Escondido, for $2.5 million.

The additional funds to pay for the courthouse construction would have come from property tax increments generated by Escondido’s redevelopment projects that already are earmarked for the county and, in this case, would have been redirected by the redevelopment agency to help finance the construction of the courthouse in Escondido.

But county officials argued that, the $10-million cash-and-property offer notwithstanding, the county could ill afford to earmark the balance of $22.5 million to the project--money that is now consumed by the county’s general fund expenses.

Susan Golding, chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors, said her first leaning was to support Escondido’s proposal over Vista’s. “My personality is to do what I can, now. But we’re here today to create the best plan we can for the future,” she said. “I’d like to make one decision on this board that’s not a Band-Aid.”

She compared Escondido’s offer to one of matching funds, where an agency is offered millions of dollars only if it matches it with its own money.

“It’s the kind of gift we may not be able to afford to accept,” she said.

Moreover, Golding said, although Escondido’s courthouse proposal offered a short-term fix, it didn’t respond to the county’s need for a long-term solution to a courtroom shortage because 51 courtrooms will be needed by the turn of the century in North County, and more after that. The Escondido site offered no room for expansion, and Vista’s site does.

Supervisor John MacDonald, whose district includes both cities, moved to support the Vista proposal.

The Escondido proposal, he said, would force the county to operate two court facilities in North County, duplicating staff and overhead, and requiring the transportation of inmates from the Vista jail.

Vista’s offer to the county was simple and straightforward: it would buy 6 acres next to the existing courthouse complex and give it to the county for parking; it would waive about $750,000 in building fees; it assured the widening and other improvements to Melrose Avenue between California 78 and the courthouse, and it offered to loan the county up to $3.8 million for the immediate installation of 14 modular courtrooms.

San Diego County Superior Court judges had voted to support Escondido’s proposal because the new courtrooms would have been finished sooner to help resolve the county’s court crunch, while Vista’s municipal judges sided with the Vista city proposal because of the logistics.

Although supervisors congratulated Escondido for its creative approach to the problem, bitterness remained after the 2 1/2-hour hearing.

“I’m terribly disappointed,” said Lounsbery of Lusardi Construction.

“It’s like they’re hoping to win the lottery,” he said, referring to the county’s decision to rely on Proposition A revenue, if and when the measure is enacted.