Group Says Slow-Growth Plan Qualifies for Ballot : Santa Clarita: Citizens report that the measure to allow 475 new housing units a year has enough signatures. The city is set to consider a less stringent proposal.

A Santa Clarita citizens group announced Monday that it has gathered 28% more signatures than required to place a slow-growth initiative on the April ballot.

The group plans to submit the signatures to the city today, just hours before the City Council is scheduled to discuss the possibility of adopting its own, less stringent, growth-control ordinance at a meeting tonight.

The initiative written by members of Citizens Assn. for a Responsible Residential Initiative on Growth, or CARRING, would allow only 475 new housing units in the city each year for the next 10 years. CARRING officials said Monday they have gathered 7,357 signatures in the past two months--1,600 more than the 5,757 necessary to place the measure on the ballot.

“The speed with which CARRING has gathered the signatures is a testament to both the popularity of the slow-growth cause and the excellence of the ordinance,” said John Drew, CARRING’s president and an author of the measure.

As insurance, the group’s 80 volunteers will continue gathering signatures from shoppers at local supermarkets while city employees verify that the first set of petitions were signed by registered voters who live within the city, as required by law. The deadline for submission of signatures is Nov. 27.

Meanwhile, the council is set to debate tonight whether to adopt its own growth-control measure or simply continue implementing its newly adopted blueprint for development, known as a General Plan.

A city staff report spells out the council’s alternatives, including placing a competing growth-control measure on the April ballot, but does not recommend a course of action.

Four of the five council members have said they oppose a numerical cap on growth, such as that proposed by CARRING. But according to the report, pressure is mounting on the council to prove to the public that it is doing something to prevent growth from overwhelming local roads and schools.

“The political winds are blowing toward limitations on growth, but I’m hopeful we’ll be able to inform voters the harm the CARRING ordinance will do,” Mayor Carl Boyer III said Monday. “It will destroy the relationship between developers and the city, and developers will build in the unincorporated areas, which will then truly lead to the rape of those areas, just as this area was raped.”

Boyer and Councilman Howard (Buck) McKeon said they would not support placing a measure on the April ballot that sets limits on the additional number of residential units in the city. But they said they would consider either submitting to the council or placing on the ballot a measure that would codify aspects of the General Plan, including requiring developers to pay for infrastructure improvements prior to completing their projects. Some projects now open before the required infrastructure improvements have been completed.

Council members Jo Anne Darcy and Jan Heidt could not be reached for comment.

Councilwoman Jill Klajic, CARRING’s sole supporter on the council, said Monday that developers will build the maximum number of units possible in the county, regardless of what Santa Clarita does.

“They’re going to build 20,000 more units in Castaic, so why should we add to the problem by approving 20,000 more here,” Klajic said. “I would discourage the council from coming up with a competing ordinance to CARRING’s. That would be a real insult to the nearly 10,000 people who have already signed CARRING’s petitions.”