Escondido Council Speaks With 1 Voice: ‘Slow Growth’

On this Fourth of July, Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon may finally feel liberated.

In a city where politics were historically and decidely pro-growth, Harmon has toiled as the underdog champion of slow-growth.

But now, with the appointment Monday night of a new councilman and the swearing in of Harmon as the city’s first directly elected mayor, the one-time maverick finds himself leading a City Council every member of which is an avowed slow-growther. Reflecting a strong voter backlash against growth in Escondido, local politics have done an abrupt turnabout in two years, and Harmon says he’s enjoying nothing short of a political fantasy.

“I must admit,” said Harmon, who was first elected to the City Council in 1974, and who served most of that time as a lone voice for slow growth, “that having five members pulling in the same direction is beyond my fondest expectations. I never thought it would turn out that we’d have a solid, five-vote majority to accomplish some things that are long overdue.”

The frosting on Harmon’s cake was the election last month of slow-growther Sid Hollins--who beat a two-term pro-growth incumbent--and the appointment Monday night of former planning commissioner Richard A. Foster as the council’s fifth member. Foster takes over Harmon’s seat, given Harmon’s election to mayor, over the only other candidate, former council veteran and pro-growther Doug Best.

Harmon succeeded Doris Thurston, who was--as her predecessors--appointed as mayor by fellow council members but did not seek reelection at the completion of her council term because she moved to Cardiff. Escondido voters have now decided to elect their mayor by popular vote for two-year terms.

Rounding out the current council are two-year council members Carla DeDominicis and Kris Murphy, who were elected in 1988 with Harmon’s support--and who gave Harmon the majority council support he had lacked for 14 previous years.

Foster, 37, who is a field operations director for Health Examinetics in Rancho Bernardo, is no newcomer to city politics. A 30-year Escondido resident, he directed Harmon’s earlier political campaigns and most recently managed the election campaigns of DeDominicis two years ago and Hollins in June.

Foster’s selection was not a political payoff, Harmon and DeDominicis said.

“Quite the contrary,” Harmon said. “If anything, he’ll now, finally, have to pay his dues. He’s been involved for some time in helping us get elected. We’ve been the ones having to invest a lot of time while he’s been enjoying armchair politics. Now he’ll be exposed to the front lines.

“We’ll be a team, as opposed to adversaries, and we can give the staff an absolutely clear direction of where we want to go,” DeDominicis said. “This should make the staff’s job a whole lot easier, because they won’t be trying to figure out who they should be trying to satisfy. They’ll be happy campers.”

City Manager Doug Clark agreed that, if the council speaks with one voice, it might make his job somewhat easier.

“I’ve always said, just give me three people to tell me which direction to march in, and we’ll march. But it’s always more comfortable with five.”

Ernie Cowan, a pro-growth councilman for eight years until he was abruptly swept from office in June by Hollins, says he isn’t so sure that a unanimous council is a sign of strength for the community.

“I have some serious concerns. Never in the history of this city has there been a council with the single-mindedness of this council,” Cowan observed. “A council that is so universally singular is potentially dangerous, no matter what side of the pendulum they represent. There aren’t any checks and balances.

“I can see some real problems ahead for them, given their already cavalier fiscal approach, combined with some difficult financial times ahead.”

Hollins says he doesn’t share that concern. “It’s absolutely wonderful for the city of Escondido, for the first time in decades, to have unanimity on the council in where we think the community wants to grow: managed growth, and adherence to the general plan and the adoption of quality-of-life standards.”