PRIDE to Start 2nd Ballot Drive : Development: The slow-growth group’s measure would require voter approval for any changes to the General Plan relating to land use.

Leaders of the community group that sponsored the successful 1989 Growth Management Initiative, imposing tough restrictions on new development in the city, said they’ll go to the ballot again to ensure voter involvement in development decisions.

Mike Salazar, co-chairman of PRIDE, Pasadena Residents In Defense of our Environment, said the group will launch a petition drive this fall to place on next June’s ballot a proposed City Charter amendment requiring ballot measures for any future changes in the General Plan relating to land use.

“This isn’t about slow growth, no growth or too much growth,” Salazar said in making the announcement Tuesday. “It’s about whose city this is. The residents need to have a valid say (in land development goals).”

The General Plan is a statement of the city’s long-range planning goals, including neighborhood plans.

PRIDE members want any proposed deviation from the General Plan having to do with land use, traffic or growth management to be put to the voters, Salazar explained. Thus, if a developer proposes building a department store on a residential block, the development would become a ballot issue, not just an item to be considered by the Planning Commission and the City Council.

The ballot requirement is the only way to ensure that developers and city planners abide by the General Plan’s goals, Salazar said. “If we see the General Plan as our guiding light, then let’s stick with it,” he said.

Critics quickly attacked the new PRIDE initiative, saying it would put a lid on future development projects and contribute to the perception that Pasadena does not welcome private investment.

“It would mean that every development project would be at the mercy of the voters,” City Councilman William Thomson said. “It would be very cumbersome.”

Thomson said the amendment would place additional burdens on developers who propose innovative plans. “The developers have to spend money to get through the design process,” Thomson said. “Then when the city says yes, they have to go to the voters.”

Councilman Rick Cole, who supported the 1989 PRIDE initiative and has been friendly with the group, worried that the new measure would clutter the ballot with the minutiae of planning and development.

General Plan amendments are required to permit anything from a small apartment building in a neighborhood zoned for smaller buildings to minor modifications in language, said Planning Director Ann Odell. State law allows four amendments a year. The Pasadena General Plan was amended four times last year, but there have been none so far this year, Odell said.

Cole envisioned the voters, under the terms of the PRIDE amendment, having to grapple with minor issues. “If the General Plan says there should be no print shops south of Colorado Boulevard,” he said, “then technically we might have to amend it so that it doesn’t affect everybody with an office printer.”

In order to submit the Charter amendment to the voters next June, PRIDE has until mid-January to gather the signatures of 9,260 voters, 15% of the electorate, on petitions supporting the measure, City Clerk Marvell Herren said.

If the initiative qualifies for the June ballot, the vote could complicate two closely related aspects of the city’s struggle over Pasadena’s future growth--the anticipated completion next August of the city’s first General Plan revision in 16 years and a referendum on PRIDE’s Growth Management Initiative on the November, 1992, ballot.

General Plan revisions and the PRIDE-sponsored Growth Management Initiative have been linked through an out-of-court settlement between the city and several community groups. The groups charged last year in Los Angeles Superior Court that the Growth Management Initiative’s strict development controls harmed minority and low-income groups by limiting jobs and the supply of low-income housing in the city.

The City Council, fearing a long, costly court battle, agreed in a court-approved compromise to place the Growth Management Initiative back on the ballot. It also agreed to undertake a city-financed campaign to develop widespread community involvement in rewriting the development sections of the General Plan.

Thus, should the Growth Management Initiative be repealed next year, a list of long-term goals, written into the General Plan with broad community involvement, would be there to take its place, said Bruce Ackerman, executive director of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

The new PRIDE amendment threatens that compromise, critics said. Jim Plotkin, a Chamber of Commerce member, Tuesday demanded Salazar’s removal from the city’s community development commission, claiming that the PRIDE co-chairman was undermining community involvement in the General Plan revision.

“He wants the citizens of this community to vote on everything,” Plotkin told the City Council. “He wants to take it out of your hands.”

Salazar acknowledged that the Charter amendment was prompted by the feelings of slow-growth advocates that the City Council had betrayed them by agreeing to put the Growth Management Initiative back on the ballot.

But Salazar said there was little connection between the two. “Gathering 15,000 signatures is not something we do for recreation,” he said, explaining that the group expects to gather that many signatures to allow for disqualifications.

Community forums and seminars are not sufficient to ensure a community voice in long-range development goals, Salazar insisted.

“What happens is that just a few people end up having any say,” he said.