ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Cities’ ‘Master Plans’ for Future Land-Use Aren’t Graven in Stone

Residents who dare to challenge the development ambitions of Orange County land leviathans like the Mission Viejo and Irvine companies are accused variously of assaulting or violating the community’s “master plan.”

These two little words--master plan--are to politics in South County cities what hocus-pocus is to children’s magic. They are emotionally evocative, sufficiently ambiguous to defy precise definition. These words magically identify the user with the municipality’s founding and with the promise of a secure and certain future.

In most communities, questioning the inviolability or the prescience of the “master plan” is a crime on a moral par with treason or, for the more spiritually inclined, blasphemy. If the “Master Plan” in any Orange County city had a physical presence like Plymouth Rock, Disneyland or the Mission San Juan Capistrano, it would surely be a tourist attraction.

But, what does it mean to have a master plan or to live in a master-planned community? What’s the magic of “the master plan”? To begin with, the master plan is more appropriately referred to as the “General Plan,” which is approved and amended by city ordinance. However, unlike an ordinance which, for example, mandates new city service or regulates the licensing of a business, a general plan is just that, a plan. It means that there is a blueprint for the development of every square inch of that particular city.

However, the master plan is neither a license nor a legal mandate to build anything that requires planning commission approval, a zoning change, or an amendment to the general plan. It does not permit building at will, nor does it legally require development--there is simply a plan for it when and if it should occur.

Additionally, the master plan is not a schedule. It doesn’t say precisely when development should occur, it simply says how and where it should take place when the time is right. Of course, the time is not always right for a new development or for the type of development originally set forth in the master plan.

The master plan is only a plan--there is nothing heroic or magical about it. Like all plans it should be changed, modified or postponed as the needs of a city change. Contrary to the propaganda disseminated by developers and many city officials, the master plan is neither a Magna Carta nor a Bill of Rights for developers.

There is no virtue or merit in the mindless obedience to a master plan. Try as they might, politicians who come to office to serve the interests of developers and builders cannot hide behind the master plan as an excuse for their decisions to approve new developments.

Those who cloak themselves with the mantle of the master plan would have residents believe that in Orange County, the master is the master plan. To the contrary, the people are the master of the master plan. Unfortunately, you’d have a difficult time knowing this if you tune into a local city council meeting and listen to various politicians babble on about how they are obliged to do this or that by the master plan.

As a mere blueprint for development, a master plan does not oblige any elected representative to further the economic interests of the land leviathans. Campaign contributions and personal inducements might create such bonds of reciprocity, but not the master plan!

While the political magic of the master plan is potent, in Orange County, like most wizardry it is easily debunked by common sense, rationality and knowledge.