Council Places Park-Bonds Issue on Ballot : Elections: But it rejects November vote on a police bond issue and a measure that would have instituted trash pickup fees.

During a marathon session Tuesday, the San Diego City Council determined that San Diegans will vote in November on a $100-million open-space bond issue, but not on a police bond issue or a measure that would require city residents to pay $8.50 a month for trash pickup.

The council also voted against placing on the ballot most of the substantive charter changes proposed by Mayor Maureen O’Connor and a city-appointed charter review commission.

During a flurry of votes, the council rejected ballot issues that would have given the mayor veto power and created a redistricting commission.

During Tuesday’s rambling session, which also touched on the redistricting court case and growth control, the council voted unanimously to place the open-space and parks bond issue on the Nov. 6 ballot. The $100-million measure, which requires a simple majority for passage, is designed to raise funds to acquire open space and to improve existing parks.

But, citing the nation’s growing economic malaise, the council said it would be unwise to submit several new taxes to the public.

Instead, it voted to send the proposed police bond issue back to council committees, which will consider whether the public would be more likely to approve it at a later date. The council on Monday voiced similar economic concerns when it agreed to delay a library bond issue, most likely until 1992.

O’Connor said Tuesday that the police bond issue, which could have cost a residential property owner as much as $326 a year, “may not be ripe yet. . . . I am concerned about the economic news.”

Councilman Ron Roberts suggested that the council committees “ought to do a bit of work on this before we drop it on the ballot.” Roberts suggested that the council create a committee of civic, business and community leaders to take a “more in-depth look at this thing.”

Roberts, who voted against placing the trash pickup fee on the ballot, said he was “not going to mess” with the 1919 People’s Ordinance, which requires the city to pick up trash from residences free. The city now uses $25 million in general funds to pay for the pickup.

The council also rejected a pair of ballot measures dealing with controlling development in the city’s fast-growing northern tier.

However, while it voted against placing on the ballot a growth-control plan drafted by San Diego 2000, a group that includes business and development interests, the proposal will appear on the ballot anyway because its backers collected enough initiative signatures earlier this year.

That was not the case for a competing growth-control proposal drafted by the Prevent Los Angelization Now group.

“Give the voters a reasonable choice in November,” PLAN founder Peter Navarro urged the council. “The builders are going to win unless the council acts.”

Councilman Bob Filner, who said the San Diego 2000 ballot initiative would “damage very greatly our ability to manage our growth,” urged the council to “enact (its own) meaningful growth-management proposal” when it returns from a scheduled break in September.

Roberts said the council should not endorse PLAN’s proposal simply to give voters a second choice on growth management.

“I’m not going to support putting something else that is equally flawed on the ballot in some defensive measure,” he said.

Although the council debated the tax issues, its votes on the string of 14 proposed charter changes moved quickly, largely because only five council members were still in attendance at the end of Tuesday’s meeting.

Council Members Abbe Wolfsheimer and Wes Pratt were on vacation, and Linda Bernhardt and Bruce Henderson left before the votes occurred.

“I think this is just tragic what’s happening,” O’Connor said as a majority of the proposed charter changes were defeated by one or two votes. “These are major issues that will not be resolved” because the four council members were absent, she said.

After Tuesday’s meeting, O’Connor, who early this year pledged to spend the rest of her term as mayor working for the charter changes, said the rejections “were no reflection on me personally.”

She instead linked the rejections to the four council members who lacked the “interest” to be in chambers for the votes. That lack of interest made it obvious, O’Connor said, “why we need a change in government” along the lines of the rejected charter changes.

O’Connor also questioned the motives of Councilman John Hartley, who cast the lone vote against a proposal that would have required the city to prepare a five-year budget, a process that seemed to have solid support on the council. O’Connor expressed concern that Hartley’s vote was driven by his “dislike for me personally.”