LOCAL ELECTIONS BALLOT MEASURES : Oceanside Charter Provides the Most Heat

Oceanside’s penchant for knock-down, drag-out politics is likely to spice up Tuesday’s election as city voters decide Proposition H, a ballot question concerning dollars and democracy.

The proposition would make Oceanside a charter city, a change in governmental format that would bring either political reform or higher taxes or greater home rule or the destruction of rent control--depending on which side is to be believed.

Under the charter, the City Council would be increased from five to seven members, with a directly elected mayor and the creation of special council districts. Council members would be limited to two four-year terms.

“The people seem to understand the charter is just a power play,” said Nancy York, a tax attorney and a leader of the No on H Committee.

Her political rival, Brian Graham, chairman of the Committee for the Charter, responds that his committee “is accused of being pawns for the City Council, developers, of everything since the great flood. . . . They’re grabbing at straws.”

The Oceanside charter question is the most controversial of the local propositions in North County, although voters in Carlsbad, Poway and Fallbrook will also decide measures involving schools, hillside development and a directly elected mayor.

Those propositions are:

* Proposition J in Poway, which would allow churches to be built in the city’s hilly residential areas by lifting a General Plan provision that confines church sites to areas with a slope of less than 10%. Several church groups have sought unsuccessfully to build in hilly areas.

* Proposition K in Poway, which asks whether city voters want to directly elect their mayor rather than have the job rotated among City Council members. If the proposition is approved, the first mayoral election will be held in November.

* Proposition L in Carlsbad, which would raise $7.5 million for the Carlsbad Unified School District to build and equip a high school science building and library-administration center to handle growth at Carlsbad High School. Built for 1,200 students, the school now holds 1,750 and expects to reach 2,500 by the end of this decade.

* Proposition M in Carlsbad, which seeks $2.5 million to build a new library and multipurpose facility at Valley Junior High School. Both Propositions L and M would rely on continuing previously approved bond measures to generate the added funds. Together, the propositions would add a tax of $22 a year per $100,000 of assessed valuation on homes over the next 10 years.

* Proposition N in Fallbrook, which seeks $35 million in bonds to build a new high school and renovate the existing one, which was designed for 1,800 students but now holds 2,200. It would cost homeowners $25 a year per $100,000 in assessed valuation to pay off the bonds.

Voters in Oceanside crushed a charter proposal in 1986 by an opposition vote of 61%, but the issue has returned, along with some familiar suspicions and accusations.

The city’s five council members now are chosen in at-large citywide elections, and the mayor is picked by a council majority. Three of the members live in the same area, Fire Mountain, a fact that has buoyed arguments for dividing the city into council districts to assure that elected representatives come from all parts of Oceanside.

Proposition H would divide Oceanside into four council districts, but three council members, including the mayor, would be chosen in citywide races.

Proposition supporters acknowledge that Oceanside doesn’t have to become a charter city for a quasi-district election plan to be put on the ballot. But they claim a charter provides the best framework for such changes.

Like the overwhelming majority of municipalities in California, Oceanside is now a general law city, meaning it operates strictly by state rules. Becoming a charter city would give it somewhat broader authority over taxation, the role of key city staff members and the conduct of its affairs.

Charterhood backers such as Graham see the plan’s centerpiece, the district system, as a blow for democracy. Graham said power used to be centered mostly in the city’s downtown, but that growth has shifted much of the population east of Interstate 5.

“We don’t have true representation of the governed when most of the council is from the same area,” he said.

Graham also maintains that creating smaller council districts would eliminate the need for candidates to raise big campaign war chests--often with contributions from developers--to run in expensive citywide races.

(San Diego switched to district-only council elections, but learned early this year that campaign spending was not reduced.)

Although Graham touts districts as spreading representation around, critics see the charter as a sham to keep power from truly being distributed.

As York reckons, the combination district/at-large election scheme still could allow a four-person council majority to live in one area. That would happen if big money got three candidates from the same area elected in the citywide races. And, whoever is that area’s district council member would make four.

“They’d control everything,” York said.

Further criticism of the district plan comes from Joyce House, co-chairwoman of the No on Charter Committee, which is aligned with York’s group.

House, recalling growing up in Chicago, believes districts foster “empire building. The vote trading scares me. You get into back-room politics that way.”

Another key dispute over Proposition H is whether a charter city would open the floodgates to local tax increases.

“They can put on new taxes,” York said. “They can invent taxes; they’re limited only by their imagination.” She maintains that charter cities, unlike general law cities, can raise certain taxes without a public vote.

Graham acknowledges that there is ambiguity over the tax issue because state Proposition 62, a successor to Proposition 13 in 1978, prohibits new taxes without voter approval, but some charter cities have created special taxes anyway.

As for Oceanside, Graham said, “I wouldn’t presume to say what the City Council is thinking” about the possibility of new or increased taxes.

At any rate, the tax specter doesn’t seem to be frightening the business community. The 800-member Oceanside Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Proposition H, as has the local Republican Club and the Oceanside Merchants Assn. (Graham is the latter’s president.)

The chamber’s chief administrative officer, Stebbins Dean, said business people are hardly eager for more taxes but feel the city should have the ability to raise additional revenue to solve its problems.

“If (a charter) means an additional ability to raise taxes, so be it,” Dean said.

Proposition H adversaries also differ on whether a charter would have an impact on the existing rent control for mobile home parks in Oceanside.

York suspects that district elections would help mobile home park owners do away with rent control by locating most of the mobile homes in one council district, meaning the significant mobile home park voter turnout could heavily influence only one council seat.

However, Graham dismissed that fear, arguing that the mobile home vote could still play a large role in the citywide and mayoral races.

Although there’s been the usual campaign wailing--Graham complained of “personal attacks, half-truths and outright fabrications”--the issue has been remarkable in that, contrary to York’s early prediction, it has cost little.

So far, less than $10,000 has been raised and spent by the two sides combined.

Yet there has been one memorable goof made over money. In April, Graham claimed in the pro-Proposition H ballot argument that changing the city’s election system would save the city $3.5 million over the course of 10 elections.

It turned out his math was off, and the figure is more like $810,000, by his estimate.

“It was a simple error,” he said. The correction was made before the sample ballot pamphlet was printed.