New General Plan Links Future Growth to ‘Quality of Life’ in Escondido : Development: After years of debate, a slow-growth council majority votes to limit population to about 150,000 and set standards for development.

After days and months and what seemed like years of debate, Escondido’s slow-growth council majority finally approved a revised General Plan that will hold the city’s growth to a population of about 150,000--half the size of the previous plan.

Adoption of the bulky document came late Thursday night, after individual hearings were held on appeals by property owners seeking a more intensive use of their land. In most cases, the appeals were rejected by a 3-2 margin.

The three council members seeking to hold the line on the city’s future size are Carla DeDominicis, Kris Murphy and Jerry Harmon, the so-called slow-growth troika formed two years ago when Harmon was reelected and Murphy and DeDominicis were newly elected to the council.

All three campaigned on the growth issue, pledging to slow development to a pace at which the city could provide adequate public services and to require new developments of any kind to pay for the city services and facilities they will require.

Key to the revised General Plan are “quality-of-life standards” that city leaders will use to judge all future development. Projects that would adversely affect the city’s quality of life would be turned down or redesigned to conform to the standards set forth in the plan.

Parks, open space, trail systems, adequate schools, an efficient street system, police services and other city necessities and amenities are included in the standards that will guide the city’s growth. The city’s population is now about 103,000.

Escondido is the first city in the county to endorse the quality-of-life standards, although several, including San Diego, are in the process of adopting similar growth-control criteria.

Mayor Doris Thurston and Councilman Ernie Cowan voted against the plan. Although both agreed that it would make Escondido a fine place to live, they warned that city revenues and developer contributions would not keep pace with the huge amount of money that open space and other amenities called for in the plan would cost.

Thurston, who has announced that she will not run for another term on council, said that city residents should be given the chance to vote on the plan, which sets strict guidelines on the city’s rate and amount of growth for the next 20 years.

She cited a Rand study in Los Angeles that polled voters on what services they wanted and would be willing to pay for.

Fighting crime was the first priority in the Rand study, Thurston said. Education ranked second and recreation came last.

Last year, city spending increased by 19%, but the Escondido Police Department received only a 9% increase, the mayor said.

“I’m afraid that they are out of touch with reality,” she said of the slow-growth trio.

Councilman Harmon said that neither Thurston nor Cowan has formally asked to put the General Plan to a vote. Harmon said he would oppose such an action because the 1 1/2-inch-thick document “is so complicated that it would take a tremendous amount of time and education among voters before they could vote on it sensibly.”

Thurston also criticized the financing section of the plan that calls for the city to shoulder an $83.3-million cost of providing city services and facilities for current city residents, while requiring developers and new residents to pay their share of the costs during the coming two decades.

Sales taxes from automobile dealers and retailers in North County Fair shopping center may decline in future years as competition from present and planned retail and auto parks in other cities saps Escondido’s retail market, she warned. Without growing city sales tax revenues, financing of the new General Plan could falter.

“I’m afraid the system will break down,” she said. “I hope that I am wrong.”

Tim Huntley, city special projects administrator, conceded that economic forecasts into the distant future “can always be questioned” but noted that the city had hired five consultant firms and spent hundreds of staff hours plotting the city’s financial future.

“Our estimates are not just off the cuff,” Huntley said. “They all point to sufficient revenues to finance the needed operating and capital expenditures over the life of the General Plan. They also indicate that Escondido will continue as the leader in North County market retailing.”

Randy Mellinger, deputy city planning director, pointed out that, although the public participation part of the General Plan is finished--after more than 80 public meetings over three years--work is just beginning for city staff.

The thick document will be returned to the City Council in a few weeks with revisions to its maps and text to reflect council-ordered changes, he said. Then, after the document has been formally approved, implementation ordinances must be devised to put the plan into action.

“We got everything we wanted and more,” Councilwoman DeDominicis said. “This is a decent document which ties the rate of growth to the provision of public facilities. I think 90% of the community is very comfortable with this plan.”

Daley Ranch/Shea Homes principals have filed a multimillion-dollar suit against the city and its three slow-growth council members in an attempt to overturn the revised densities that cut their 5-square-mile residential development from 3,265 housing units to 1,700.

DeDominicis said the new General Plan land-use policies are flexible and allow developers to negotiate a development agreement with the city that includes additional developer-funded public projects in return for increased development rights.

“This General Plan is a community document,” DeDominicis said. “And it can be changed. But it will only be changed to the benefit of the community.”

Escondido has been struggling to revise its 1972 General Plan since 1986, when a citizens’ committee and an outside consulting firm first clashed over growth goals for the city. Citizens favored an ultimate population cap of about 186,000 and limits on industrial and commercial acreage. The consultant--Sedway-Cooke & Associates--backed higher ultimate residential and job-producing densities, calling for an ultimate Escondido population of up to 296,000.

After 40 public hearings to receive comments from residents and technical experts, the draft plan was presented to city officials in July, 1988--one month after a slow-growth majority was elected to the City Council.

The new council appointed a growth-management oversight committee to begin again. The committee was charged with further paring of the plan to an ultimate population range of from 150,000 to 165,000; adding realistic standards to improve quality of life in the community and reducing the amount of industrially zoned land to fit the lowered population goal.

Among the quality-of-life improvements proposed in the most recent plan are a citywide system of hiking and horse trails, more park and open space, and improved recreational facilities.