Disputed Road OKd as Filner Flip-Flops

The San Diego City Council, delivering a shocking defeat to protectors of Mission Trails Regional Park, Tuesday approved a four-lane extension of Jackson Drive through the urban wilderness when a leading council environmentalist unexpectedly defected.

The 5-4 vote for the 2.4-mile link to California 52 will give Navajo area residents a north-south connector route and, many of them believe, a measure of relief from commuter traffic congestion on Mission Gorge Road and other local streets. The decision was a huge victory for Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who has championed the controversial project since her first campaign for office in 1985.

Stunned environmentalists, who believed they had won a tough battle to defeat the project when swing vote Councilman Ron Roberts announced that he would not support it, watched in disbelief as Bob Filner, one of the Sierra Club’s most steadfast allies, voted for the road without explaining his views.

On Monday, the Sierra Club had placed Filner in a second-place tie among council members on environmental issues, just a point behind first-place finisher Linda Bernhardt. The ranking was based on 66 council votes in 1989 and 1990.

“I was absolutely shocked,” said Barbara Bamberger, the Sierra Club’s conservation coordinator. “This was the major environmental issue of the year, and we could have had it in the bag.”

“Bob Filner is dead in the environmental community,” said Peter Andersen, a San Diego State University professor who founded Citizens Against the Jackson Drive Extension. “I’m going to do whatever is in my power to see that Bob Filner isn’t elected to any office here or anywhere else.”

Earlier in the day, environmentalists lost another battle when the council voted, 5-4, to postpone for one year a decision on the first housing development planned for the city’s urban reserve. Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, supported by Filner, Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman John Hartley, had hoped to kill the project.

Andersen said his group, and perhaps the Sierra Club, would file suit on a number of issues. The roadway also must earn several state and federal permits before construction can begin next year.

Filner, who did not publicly state his views during 3 1/2 hours of testimony and debate, told reporters that he came into the hearing tentatively opposed to the project, but changed his mind to support McCarty.

“There is no greater protector of Mission Trails park than Judy McCarty,” Filner said. “In her view, this helped the park, not hurt it. I have to go along with someone who has been Miss Mission Trails.”

Filner and McCarty denied charges by Andersen that Filner traded the vote for McCarty’s support in the upcoming council choice of a new deputy mayor, a charge that Andersen conceded was based solely on rumor. Andersen also claimed that Filner had promised to “lead the charge” against the road, an assertion that Filner also denied.

McCarty and Filner were joined by O’Connor and Councilmen Wes Pratt and Bruce Henderson in approving the road. Roberts, Wolfsheimer, Hartley and Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt were on the losing end of the vote.

Hundreds of people turned out for the lengthy afternoon hearing, which pitted residents of several of the city’s eastern communities against each other, and threw environmentalists into conflict with middle-class homeowners demanding relief from the cars that cut through their neighborhoods on the way to Interstates 8 and 15.

Much of the council debate centered on a planning report showing that, although the extention of California 52 to Santee would significantly relieve traffic congestion, the Jackson Drive extension would have relatively little impact. For example, it will take just 5,000 cars daily off a section of Mission Gorge Road by the year 2010.

Opponents said such minimal benefits did not justify a construction project that will cost $71 million, including interest on the debt, and require the removal of 2 million cubic yards of earth on the western edge of a park treasured by hikers and bird watchers as a retreat from urban noise and traffic.

The project will require construction of a 1,600-foot bridge across the San Diego River and shorter bridges over smaller canyons.

“I’m concerned with spending this much money on something that gives us minimal benefit,” Roberts said.

But, in addition to easing traffic on Waring Road, Princess View Drive, Twain Avenue and Zion Avenue, the road will open access to the park for active recreation uses that will be constructed there, McCarty said. Homeowners have located in the area on the promise that the extension would one day be built, she said. The road has been part of the city’s General Plan since 1960.

Abandoning the road “says to the public that Mission Trails is there simply to look at, and you’ll sure have plenty of time sitting in all that traffic on Mission Gorge” Road, McCarty said. “Jackson Drive is a compromise that gives us the future.”