Trail System Opponents Say WHOA : Land use: Property rights group fights county effort to amend general plan to require that developers of new subdivisions dedicate land to hiking, biking and equestrian trails. A vote is due today.

WHOA, a property rights group, will challenge the county Board of Supervisors’ decision to require mandatory land dedication to create a countywide system of trails for hikers, bicyclists and equestrians.

Tom Tanana, attorney for Worried Homeowners Organized and Anxious, said the county board will be violating U.S. Supreme Court and other court rulings if it passes an ordinance requiring mandatory dedication of property for the trails system, as it is scheduled to do today.

Property owners affected by the legislation and a representative of the Libertarian Party joined WHOA leaders at a news conference Tuesday to protest the county’s plans to require dedication of trails from all developers of major subdivisions, identified as those with five or more units.

Tanana said mandatory trail dedication “will result in the taxpayer bearing the substantial costs of a legal challenge” to the county ordinance.

“The taxpayer may end up owing significant compensation to those property owners whose land is confiscated under this unwarranted eminent domain proceeding,” he said, adding that both taxpayers and landowners also may be held liable for damages if there are accidents on the public trails.

Tanana said the news conference was held to air objections to the county board’s pending adoption of the mandatory trails dedication ordinance because no public testimony will be allowed at today’s discussion of the measure. An earlier public hearing on the trails plan allowed public comment.

Barbara Hutchinson, leader of WHOA, claimed the county has been acting illegally for years in the San Dieguito, Ramona and Sweetwater areas, where mandatory trail dedications have been required by the community plans.

“They have opened the county up to lawsuits that could run into the millions of dollars,” Hutchinson said. “You can’t just take property without just compensation.”

In the Ramona and Sweetwater areas, community plans have required trail dedications from developers of subdivisions with more than five homes. In San Dieguito, mandatory trail dedications were required of applicants for major and minor development permits.

Robert Wertz, a county planner involved in trails planning, said about 20 trail dedications have been made by property owners in the three planning areas, and 18 more are pending. Half of the trail dedications are in the San Dieguito area, he said.

No requests have been received from property owners to cancel trail dedications, Wertz said, “which indicates that previous trail dedications are not a problem.”

Earlier trail easements in San Dieguito, Ramona and Sweetwater planning areas are not condemnations of land, William Taylor, deputy county counsel, said. “Property owners gave the trail easements as part of the requirements for obtaining county development permits,” he said.

He said the three community plans did not gibe with the county’s general plan, which provides for voluntary dedications, but said that property owners involved “had sufficient opportunity to protest at the time.”

However, a deputy county counsel told county department chiefs in January that the trail dedications in the three community planning areas were technically illegal because the local plans required the dedications but the county’s general plan did not.

The “inconsistencies” between the county and community plans on trail dedications violate state law, according to an opinion by Deputy County Counsel Claudia Fitzpatrick.

“Nothing short of amending one or all of the elements will correct the inconsistency,” Fitzpatrick said in her January opinion to Deputy County Engineer David Solomon and Robert Asher, special projects chief in the Planning Department.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to amend both the general plan and the community plans today, to eliminate the discrepancy.