Slow-Growth Initiative on June Ballot : Politics: Proponents are disappointed that the City Council did not enact the initiative as an ordinance. Instead, voters will decide.

Fulfilling a legal obligation with a marked lack of enthusiasm, the San Diego City Council on Monday placed on next June’s ballot a managed-growth initiative, a measure that some council members strongly oppose and hope will be rejected by voters.

In one of the quirks sometimes occurring in City Hall affairs, the council’s unanimous action in placing the so-called Planned Growth and Taxpayer Relief Initiative on the June, 1992, citywide ballot displeased the measure’s major proponents, but drew reluctant support from its opponents.

Leaders of Prevent Los Angelization Now! (PLAN), the group that had circulated petitions and gathered more than 80,000 signatures to qualify the issue for the ballot, had hoped that the council would preclude the need for an election by adopting the initiative as an ordinance.

Opponents, meanwhile, do not want to see the measure approved in any form and recognize that a 1992 election offers them their best opportunity to defeat a proposal that they contend would virtually halt growth in San Diego, dramatically increasing housing costs.

Though Monday’s council debate was primarily procedural, it was laced with sharp, caustic comments from council members, and initiative supporters and opponents alike.

At several points, Councilman Bruce Henderson referred to PLAN leader Peter Navarro as “the Tom Hayden of San Diego,” a reference to the liberal state assemblyman from Santa Monica whose name is anathema to conservatives.

Navarro, succumbing to rhetorical hyperbole of his own, charged that Henderson and other council members “are in developers’ hip pockets,” adding that Henderson’s “unwarranted personal attack . . . is the lowest blow ever” at City Hall.

The more than 82,000 signatures collected this summer by PLAN, nearly 67,000 of which local election officials estimated to be valid--well above the 56,585-name requirement--left the council with only two options Monday: placing the measure on the ballot or adopting it outright as an ordinance.

Arguing that enacting an ordinance would save time and money, while putting needed growth controls in place immediately, Navarro pressed the council to opt for that alternative.

But, with Councilmen Bob Filner, a potential supporter absent during Monday’s debate, Navarro’s already slim chance of gaining a council majority was further diminished.

Accordingly, Navarro asked the council to continue the matter until later this month, hoping to pack the council chamber with several hundred initiative supporters in an effort to influence the council’s decision.

Although such continuances usually are routinely granted, council members on both sides of the issue said that they saw little reason to postpone action, particularly since the council seemed predisposed toward placing the measure on the ballot rather than simply adopting it.

“I feel very strongly about the initiative process,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor said. “We should put this on the ballot so the people can decide. . . . What I don’t understand is, you worked so hard to put it on the ballot, why aren’t we voting to put it on the ballot?”

PLAN officials argue that the initiative would help ensure that builders pay their fair share for public services necessitated by new development--a requirement that some building industry leaders contend is already being met.

The initiative also would prohibit development if the growth reduced the number of police officers per capita or increased the likelihood of water shortages, water rationing or higher water rates--standards that critics complain are alternately unrealistic, unfair or Draconian in their potential economic impact.

However, given the choice between the council’s immediate enactment of an ordinance to that effect or a 1992 vote, opponents reluctantly opted for the latter course, which, absent legal action, offers them their only remaining possibility of defeating the initiative.

Last week, San Diego County Superior Court Judge James Milliken rejected the first of two lawsuits aimed at blocking the PLAN initiative from reaching the ballot and scheduled a hearing on the other suit for next month.

In last week’s suit, a coalition of real estate consultants argued that PLAN violated a new state law by failing to specify on the petitions that the signatures were being solicited by both volunteers and paid circulators. Agreeing with city attorneys, Milliken ruled that PLAN’s signature-gathering process was governed by the local election code, not state law.

The paradox inherent in Monday’s council debate was underlined by the fact that the motion to place the initiative on the ballot was made by Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who called it “the worst one” of several Navarro-backed initiatives that have come before the council in recent years.

“Each time, it gets worse,” McCarty said, leaving no doubt that she hopes voters do what the council legally could not by rejecting the proposal.

Business leaders took a similar tack, denouncing the initiative--which one termed “one of the most dangerous social experiments ever brought” before the council--even as they encouraged the council to schedule it for a 1992 vote.

Before the issue is put before voters, the business leaders added, the council should direct city administrators to analyze the initiative’s potential impact--fiscal and otherwise--on the city.

Navarro, however, objected to that request, noting that similar city-generated reports “have been twisted into hit pieces” in past ballot battles over growth.

City Manager Jack McGrory also expressed some reservations about conducting such an analysis, saying he hoped to keep analysis narrowly focused on how the initiative might change existing city policies in order to limit its use as a political tool. Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, meanwhile, protested that the study could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

McGrory is scheduled to report back to the council later this month on the scope and cost of an analysis of the initiative.