Group Drafting Initiative to Protect Parks

A group of San Diego environmentalists is drafting a ballot initiative that would overturn recent City Council decisions allowing a four-lane highway extension through Mission Trails Regional Park and construction of estate homes in the city’s urban reserve.

The ballot measure, still in the drafting stages, would require voter approval before “major roads and other non-park uses” can be placed in parks such as Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, Tecolote Natural Park and Mission Trails Regional Park, according to a draft of the document. Also protected would be proposed regional parks in the San Dieguito, Otay and Tijuana River valleys.

The initiative also would overturn the council’s Nov. 19 decision to change the zoning in the 12,000-acre urban reserve, a vote that cleared the way for developers to build large estate homes in the city’s northern fringe.

The protections would remain until a comprehensive plan for the area is written and voters approve it.

“We believe the council’s discretion is not the same as the electorate’s discretion, and we would rather have the approval process of some of these critical things lying with the electorate,” said Linda Michael, chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Land Use committee.

Environmentalists lost two crucial land-use votes last November when the council voted Nov. 19 to open the urban reserve and then approved a four-lane extension of Jackson Drive through Mission Trails Regional Park on Nov. 27. Both decisions came on 5-4 votes.

Environmental and neighborhood activists sued Jan. 3 to overturn the Jackson Drive decision.

The proposed ballot measure would change the city’s charter and therefore require the valid signatures of 15% of the city’s registered voters--more than 80,000 in all--to qualify for the ballot, said Bob Glaser, who is involved with circulating the measure.

Michael said that group might attempt to qualify the measure for this September’s ballot, a strategy that would require the council to call a citywide election. Four of the eight council members face reelection campaigns this fall.

Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who championed the Jackson Drive extension, said the initiative would require voters to approve the entire 80-page park plan for Mission Trails Regional Park.

“I have no doubt it would pass muster by the people if they could read all 80 pages of it,” she said.

The environmental group San Diegans for Managed Growth is circulating the draft document, and environmentalists such as Michael and Jay Powell, a former aide to Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt, have worked on it. Councilman John Hartley circulated a Jan. 9 memo to his council colleagues strongly supporting the measure.