Panel OKs Scaled-Back Santa Clarita General Plan : Growth: Almost two years in the making, the new guidelines would limit population in the valley to 270,000 by the year 2010.

Los Angeles County planning commissioners, brushing aside objections from developers, approved a sweeping plan Monday to sharply reduce the expected growth of the Santa Clarita Valley for the next 20 years.

The new general plan, approved on a 4-1 vote by the Regional Planning Commission, would allow developers to build less than a third of the 38,000 housing units they have proposed.

The plan would uphold a county policy to limit the Santa Clarita Valley’s population, now about 150,000, to a maximum of 270,000 by 2010.

The plan must still be approved by the Board of Supervisors, and developers whose projects were not included in the plan Monday said they would push for their projects during public hearings before the supervisors, possibly in late summer.

The commissioners said the plan would provide a good foundation for management of future growth in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Commissioner Betty Fisher, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said she approved of the plan’s goals but questioned how strongly it would be implemented. Rather than develop a firm plan, she said, the county had produced an advisory document that could be amended later.

“I just have a problem with putting this plan into action,” Fisher said.

“It’s certainly not perfect,” said Commissioner Sadie B. Clark, “but nothing is.”

Almost two years in the making, the new general plan sets broad guidelines for development in the booming Santa Clarita Valley, one of the fastest-growing regions in the county during the last decade.

Planning commissioners decided to create a new general plan in 1988 because the Department of Regional Planning was struggling to process a backlog of 43 proposed amendments to the old general plan.

Those proposals, for more than 38,000 units, would have pushed the Santa Clarita Valley’s population past 270,000 residents in this decade.

County planners said the valley does not have the infrastructure, from roads to fire stations to libraries, to support such rapid growth. “We just can’t add more and more residential developments in the Santa Clarita Valley for a number of reasons,” Jack Edwards, administrator of regional planning, said Monday.

The new general plan does not reject or approve specific developments, but instead designates whether land is appropriate for residential growth, parks, industry or other uses. Developers would still be able to ask the planning commissioners to hold hearings on each of the 43 development proposals.

But the land-use designations approved Monday indicate where development is most likely to be allowed. Planning Director James E. Hartl said the guidelines separate viable projects from others unlikely to be approved.

Even some potentially desirable projects were not included in the general plan because they would overload the current infrastructure, planner Lee Stark said. One project not included is a proposed 1,157-space mobile home park needed to accommodate mobile homes from parks that are expected to close in the next several years, he said.

At a series of well-attended hearings on the general plan that began in December, developers repeatedly touted their projects, promising that the projects would pay for roads, schools, parks and other amenities in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Among the potential winners in the aftermath of Monday’s action was Newhall Land & Farming Co., the valley’s largest developer, which would be allowed to build about 6,000 of nearly 9,000 units it had proposed in Valencia.

Among the losers was the Dale Poe Development Corp., which had hoped to build 4,632 units, but would be allowed about 1,200 under the new plan. But Jeff Stevenson, a Dale Poe vice president, said the company would stress the potential benefits of the project to the Board of Supervisors.

For example, Stevenson said, the company recently agreed to give three school sites and contribute $6.5 million for new schools to the mushrooming Newhall School District if it were allowed to build certain projects. The company also is negotiating a pact with the William S. Hart Union High School District, he said.