Initiative by PLAN Links Growth With Police Protection : Building: Proposed ballot measure would limit new development by prohibiting the reduction of police-to-residents ratio.

Linking San Diego’s increasing crime problem to growth, the managed-growth group Prevent Los Angelization Now! unveiled Monday an initiative aimed at ensuring that new development does not reduce police protection.

At a news conference outside City Hall, PLAN officials, who last month saw the City Council refuse to place a growth measure focusing on traffic reduction on June’s ballot, announced plans to begin collecting signatures on petitions to qualify the so-called PLAN Police Protection Initiative for the November ballot instead.

PLAN leaders argued that the new measure, which, among other things, would prevent any new development that would reduce the ratio of city police officers to residents, is needed to help prevent growth from putting additional strain on San Diego’s overburdened jail and court systems.

Opponents, however, were quick to criticize the proposal as a platform for the potential mayoral campaign of PLAN Chairman Peter Navarro that would, if enacted, severely restrict new housing and drive up costs while doing little to reduce crime.

“This is a no-growth initiative, not a police protection initiative,” said City Hall lobbyist Mac Strobl, whose clients include development-related industries. “Its real intent is being concealed by the way in which it’s dressed up with a lot of nice-sounding words. And what it’s really about is giving Peter Navarro a platform to run for mayor.”

Although disputing that contention, Navarro said Monday that PLAN anticipates placing at least one more growth initiative before voters within a month. Though the council could choose to place the initiatives on June’s ballot, it is more likely that PLAN will have to force the council’s hand by gathering sufficient signatures to get them on the November ballot.

PLAN Executive Director Becky Mann told the news conference Monday that the crime initiative stems from the “growing atmosphere of lawlessness on our streets” traceable to local governments’ failure to adequately plan for growth or to force builders to pay their “fair share” of the cost of new police officers, jails and courts.

Violent crime in San Diego has increased 58% since 1987, Mann said, and 1991 produced a record number of homicides--179 in the city and 301 countywide. In addition, San Diego’s ratio of 1.6 police officers per 1,000 citizens is among the lowest of any major city in the country, and the average police response time to emergency calls increased over the past year, Mann said.

In an effort to reverse that trend, the PLAN initiative would prevent the council from approving any new development that would either reduce officer-to-population ratios or increase police officers’ response time.

The initiative also would require builders to pay their “fair share of the costs of all new and existing police facilities and services” necessitated by new development but does not specify how those costs would be calculated. Navarro pointedly declined to estimate how much that formula might affect housing costs, saying that PLAN hopes only to institute a “general principle” to be later defined by council action.

The same “fair share” guideline was cited in another provision of the initiative that instructs the city to work with the County Board of Supervisors, the San Diego Assn. of Governments and other local agencies to ensure that a new development pays a commensurate percentage of the cost of new jails and courts.

In recent years, Navarro argued, the council has devoted an increasingly large percentage of the city’s budget to police protection “at the expense of just about everything else” such as street improvements, parks and libraries. Such actions, he added, are tantamount to an “implicit subsidization” of development.

Last month, Navarro and PLAN suffered a severe setback when the council refused to place on the June ballot another growth initiative that had been ruled unconstitutional by a judge.

That measure would have established several new growth-control standards but also specified that construction workers be paid “prevailing wages.” Though PLAN collected about 82,000 signatures--nearly 25,000 more than needed--on petitions for that initiative, a Superior Court judge ruled that it violated a state constitutional mandate restricting such measures to single issues.

From the perspective of Strobl and other business leaders, the initiative unveiled Monday reflects Navarro’s politically motivated zeal to keep the growth issue alive through this year’s mayoral campaign.

“Whenever Mr. Navarro fails, he steps back and thinks, ‘What was my biggest boo-boo, and how can I avoid it next time?’ ” Strobl said. “He’s extremely shrewd when it comes to that. Unfortunately, he’s also a charlatan of the first order . . . and he’s being very deceptive about what this initiative would or wouldn’t do.”