Voters Reject Seal Beach, Irvine Issues

In a rebuke to the well-financed campaign of a major developer, voters in Seal Beach on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a controversial housing project that has divided the city politically for almost five years.

In Irvine, meanwhile, a $1.4-million property tax to help the Irvine Unified School District shore up its sagging budget was narrowly defeated following an intense campaign by students, parents and educators to get the tax passed.

Final, unofficial returns show that Seal Beach’s Measure A-91, which asked voters to approve the $200-million Hellman Ranch project, was defeated by a 25% margin. Voter turnout in that city was 56.1%

Backed by Mola Development Corp., the measure called for 329 houses, 26 acres of parks and 41.4 acres of wetlands between the San Gabriel River and Seal Beach Boulevard. The parcel is one of the last and largest remaining pieces of open space in Seal Beach.

Also doing poorly at the polls was a companion initiative, Measure B-91, a non-binding advisory vote applicable only if A-91 failed. It recommended that the 149-acre tract be turned into a golf course, wetlands and commercial development. It lost by a 17% margin.

“It’s awesome,” said Wendi Rothman, who worked on the campaign against the Hellman Ranch project. “I really had confidence in the residents of Seal Beach that their intelligence would not be insulted” by campaign mailers of the Measure A-91 supporters.

Early returns fluctuated in Irvine for Measure P, which would have added $35 to each property tax bill in the city every year for four years. It ultimately failed to secure the two-thirds vote necessary for passage.

The Irvine Unified School District wanted to use revenue from the assessment for science programs, library services and teacher training slated to be cut because of an estimated budget shortfall of $3.3 million.

“We didn’t make it,” said Mary Ellen Hadley, an Irvine Unified School District board member and leader of the Measure P campaign. “It’s too soon for me to analyze it. I’m numb. I wish I could read something into (the defeat), but I don’t know what it means. . . . We did everything we could.”

The defeat of Measure A-91 in Seal Beach is a substantial setback for Mola, which has spent more than five years trying to build on Hellman Ranch, a project that has made enemies of neighbors, gone to court, and been debated extensively by the City Council.

“I think this indicates that people were confused,” said Joyce Risner, a former council member and a Measure A-91 backer. “That is why they are voting no on both. I’m going to hope that the city can get back together and people can start talking to each other.”

Mola’s plans were frustrated in June, 1990, when the City Council overturned its initial approval of the project because the city failed to update its local housing plan as required by law. By the time the proposal returned to the council, an election had occurred and the balance of power had shifted. The plan was rejected.

Since then, Mola has provided financial support for a committee that collected enough signatures to place the project before the voters in a special election.

The council majority--Frank Laszlo, Marilyn Bruce Hastings and Gwen Forsythe--also placed another measure, B-91, on the ballot. They said they wanted to offer voters an alternative to Mola’s proposal.

Campaigning for both measures was bitter, with flyers for each side accusing the other of pushing plans that would result in traffic gridlock and increased water consumption.

Mola-backed Seal Beach Citizens for Parks, Open Space and Responsible Government has spent more than $200,000 on its pro-Measure A-91 campaign, contrasted with $5,970 spent by Seal Beach Citizens United in opposition to the measure, according to the most recent campaign finance statements. Mola alone has contributed $114,750 to the pro-Measure A-91 effort.

Proponents of the Mola project have used campaign tactics ranging from holding neighborhood teas to dropping off more than 1,000 professionally produced videos on voters’ doorsteps. They also cited the project’s environmental benefits and the economic relief it would bring a financially troubled city.

Council members Joe Hunt and Edna Wilson, who supported Measure A-91, said that Measure B-91 was created hastily and slapped on the ballot in a deliberate attempt to confuse voters.

But opponents of A-91 said the Newport-Inglewood fault would make it dangerous to build on the property. They said B-91 was the preferable alternative and attacked Mola as an “out-of-town developer” or “carpetbagger” with little regard for the city.

One Wetlands Restoration Society newsletter pictured a crying seal with tire tracks across its body after being run over. A car marked “Mola” was speeding away.

Despite the defeat of Measure A-91, the debate over Hellman Ranch is likely to continue. Both sides have predicted more lawsuits will be added to the existing ones, and there has been talk of mounting a recall of some or all of the City Council.

In Irvine, hundreds of parents, students, teachers and school administrators worked on the pro-Measure P campaign by phoning parents and other voters in the district to encourage them to vote. District officials also sent home voter-registration forms to parents.

“Usually, these things win or lose by a couple of hundred votes, I’m told,” said David G. Epstein, an attorney who wrote the ballot argument against Measure P. “From that point of view, this was pretty decisive. Either a lot of people liked my rhetoric or the tax revolt is alive and well.”

The measure, placed on the ballot by a vote of the school board in January, was intended to make up for the budget shortfall anticipated by the district, which has 31 schools, 20,500 students in kindergarten through grade 12, and an annual budget of about $90 million.

The school board considered putting Measure P on the ballot with a tax greater than $35 per parcel to prevent deeper budget cuts. But Price Research, a political consulting firm, advised against it after a poll by the company in December indicated that voters would reject a tax of more than $35.

Persuading two-thirds of the voters to approve a new tax has been difficult for several cash-strapped Orange County school districts besides Irvine Unified.

In the last two years, tax measures have failed in the Capistrano Unified and Westminster school districts. But in the Los Alamitos Unified School District, 71% of the voters approved a property tax increase last year to help raise $13 million for refurbishing schools.

Statewide, parcel taxes such as Measure P have had a recent success rate of about 50%. In the March elections, 11 of 21 parcel tax elections succeeded in California, with two of four passing the previous November.

Times correspondents Shannon Sands, Tom McQueeney and Jon Nalick contributed to this report.

EDITION TIME ELECTION RETURNS

Irvine

Measure P

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Yes 7,683 62.2 No 4,668 37.8

Seal Beach

Measure A-91

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Yes 3,673 37.6 No 6,087 62.4

Measure B-91

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Yes 3,928 43.4 No 5,122 56.6

Winning side of measures is in bold type.