Council Backs Plan to Limit Construction : Growth: Critics say the cash-starved city of San Diego will never establish the requisite taxes and fees and building will grind to a halt.

Embracing strict new development policies that critics claim would shut down construction in San Diego, the City Council on Thursday endorsed a plan to limit building while it embarks on a 20-year plan for solving its huge deficiency in roads, parks, sewers, jails, police stations, libraries and other public services.

Under the plan, which was given conceptual approval Thursday, new construction would be limited to the amount of population growth that could be accommodated by existing roads, parks, sewers and the like, and the facilities scheduled to be built in each year of the 20-year plan.

“You’ve finally got an ordinance that will be a very strong growth-management ordinance,” said Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who voted for the measure along with Council Members Abbe Wolfsheimer, John Hartley, Wes Pratt, Linda Bernhardt and Bob Filner. Council Members Ron Roberts, Bruce Henderson and Judy McCarty opposed it.

But, as it has in the past, the council failed to address exactly how it will pay for the estimated $1.75 billion in facilities, prompting critics to say that the cash-starved city will never establish the taxes and fees needed to build the new facilities, so construction will grind to a halt.

“It’s a cap is what it is,” said Julie Dillon, president of the Building Industry Assn. “It’s another form of cap, a very artful form of cap, a very sophisticated form of cap.”

The council also adopted strong measures to protect the 12,000-acre area in the city’s northern tier set aside for future development, mandating that builders could construct no more than one home every 10 acres in the largely agricultural area.

Current city policy allows one home for every 4 acres, a limit that has prompted proposals for more than 3,265 homes that would cover nearly 75% of the reserved area despite voter enactment in 1985 of Proposition A.

That law requires public approval before any land in the largely agricultural area is rezoned for construction, but the passage of time and the attractiveness of large lots have made it economically possible for builders to plan estate homes for the area.

The council deferred action on perhaps the most controversial issue to come before it during an emotion-charged hearing that lasted more than seven hours, choosing to further debate a plan to raise nearly $1 billion by establishing fees on all forms of construction.

The so-called “citywide impact fees” would be used to build and improve facilities used by all San Diegans--police and fire communication equipment, Balboa and Mission Bay parks, a new central library, city equipment stations--but builders have warned that the hefty fees and others being considered by the council would drive many of them out of the area.

Consideration of the fees was put off when Filner and Bernhardt, strong backers of the plan, suddenly left the meeting shortly before 7 p.m.--Filner to teach a class at San Diego State University and Bernhardt to catch a plane, aides said. Henderson, who opposed much of the plan, also walked out.

Filner and Bernhardt’s departure led to a charge from Roberts, a strong opponent of the new measures and fees, that the pair had “snuck out” to avoid voting.

Perhaps the most crucial tenet of the plan approved Thursday is that new growth not worsen congestion on the most city roads and freeways beyond agreed-upon levels for off-peak times and rush hours.

New development would pay for all the costs of the population increases that it brings. Developers unwilling to wait for the city to finance facility improvements could spend the money to do it themselves, a concept that Dillon said would be economically impossible if, for example, the right to build depends on the widening of a major road or freeway.

The plan also calls for a creation of an “environmental tier” of open space. It also favors improvements in public transit over road widening and makes special allowances to promote affordable housing.

Environmentalists, builders and San Diegans from all walks of life spent nearly four hours testifying at the public hearing on the city’s preeminent issue Thursday, with both sides clamoring for much the same thing: preservation of the region’s much-coveted quality of life.

Growth-control advocates blamed the huge population increases of the mid-1980s for many of the problems now faced in the city’s inner core and its exploding fringes--traffic congestion, crime, a shortage of parks and poorer water quality, to name a few.

“I ask myself, why has my quality of life deteriorated, and the answer comes back: growth, uncontrolled growth,” said one resident.

But opponents said that overly strict standards would drive housing prices to even less-affordable levels, shut down construction and the badly needed developer fees that come with it, and leave the city worse off than it is now.

Already, Dillon claimed, existing development restrictions have reduced the number of building permits authorized from 19,180 in 1986 to 6,235 in 1989, and produced a corresponding rise in home prices.

“If growth management means a reduction in building permits, you’ve already accomplished growth management,” she said.

All the provisions adopted Thursday must come back before the council at various times for codification as city law, prompting growth-management activist Peter Navarro to warn that his group, Prevent Los Angelization Now!, would reintroduce its growth-control ordinance “at a moment’s notice if things go sour.”