Initiative Duel Vowed on San Diego Growth : Politics: Builders, slow-growth advocates square off for another battle over the city’s future.

Setting the stage for another costly, bruising campaign on growth control, the San Diego 2000 Committee, a coalition of builders and civic leaders, announced Tuesday that it had submitted petitions to qualify its growth management initiative for the November ballot in both the city and county of San Diego.

The coalition’s slow-growth adversary, Prevent Los Angelization Now!, responded that it would revive its signature-gathering campaign to place a rival measure on the same ballot in the city of San Diego.

Both groups delayed their own ballot initiative drives begun late last year pending San Diego City Council deliberations on a separate growth management plan. On April 4, the council gave conceptual approval to a strict plan limiting construction while it embarks on a 20-year program of solving its deficiency in roads, parks, jails, police stations and other public services.

Developers condemned the program as a sophisticated building cap and said it could shut down home construction in the city.

Revival of the ballot initiative competition between the two organizations could mean another bitter electoral campaign like the 1988 battle that resulted in voter rejection of four growth-control measures on the November ballot. Two of those measures were sponsored by PLAN’s predecessor, Citizens for Limited Growth. The council and the county Board of Supervisors also placed measures on the ballot.

The building industry raised more than $2 million to defeat all four measures.

It was unclear Tuesday night how passage of any of the initiatives would affect the ordinances being developed by the City Council.

The San Diego 2000 Committee, whose “Traffic Control and Comprehensive Growth Management Initiative” is largely a product of the building industry, said in a prepared statement that “our success in collecting 174,916 signatures shows that the people of San Diego strongly support San Diego 2000’s comprehensive regional approach to relieving traffic congestion and managing growth.”

But Peter Navarro, chairman of PLAN, responded that the “building industry today declared war on the City Council, which is trying to adopt a sensible growth management plan.” He said that the building industry is “attempting to once again divide and conquer the electorate with a phony initiative.”

Paul Downey, spokesman for Mayor Maureen O’Connor, said that “if (both groups) want to go ahead and do that, every citizen has the right to file an initiative. But by the time we get to November, it’s (O’Connor’s) intention to have an ordinance on the books.”

By submitting its signatures Tuesday, San Diego 2000 fell within the 180-day time period allowed for collection of petitions to qualify an initiative for the ballot.