DANA POINT : Council May Decide General Plan’s Fate

Voters in Dana Point may be faced with what officials are calling an unprecedented choice sometime this year: to accept or reject the city’s new General Plan.

Whether the plan will be on the ballot in June could be decided tonight, when the City Council meets behind closed doors to discuss the issue, which has been hotly debated since last summer.

A vocal group of critics has sought repeal of the four-inch-thick plan since the council unanimously adopted it last July, finally circulating petitions demanding a referendum.

“Everything in the plan is geared toward making this community a destination resort,” said Jack Roberts, a realtor and plan critic. “Many of us prefer Dana Point as a residential beach community.”

Last week, the critics prevailed in court over the city clerk, who had refused to accept the petition, citing technical errors in its wording and presentation. A Superior Court ruling forces the clerk to process the petition, which appears to have more than sufficient signatures to force an election.

The council must decide whether to appeal the court ruling and face the political consequences, or put the $700,000 plan up to voters in June or November.

City Atty. Jerry Patterson said Monday that he will advise the council to file an appeal, which he is confident the city will win.

The city has taken extensive steps to gather public input for the General Plan. It conducted 44 public meetings over 13 months in writing the plan.

“It would be an incredible job to educate the public about the plan (for an election). It’s not something that translates quickly into a 30-second sound bite,” Mayor Mike Eggers said.

Critics of the plan agree that educating the public in an election battle would be a monumental task, but it is one they would be happy to take on.

“The education process should have been done a long time ago,” said Ernie Nelson, a plan critic who will use the issue to launch a run for City Council. “But now the education process will be done by both sides. We will be pointing out where the flaws in the plan are.”

The flaws, Nelson and Roberts say, lie particularly in plans for the Lantern Village district, which is densely developed with apartments, and The Headlands and Monarch Beach, promontory areas designated for mega-resorts.

Critics charge the plan would use Lantern Village as a residential area for service workers who would work at the beachfront resorts.

The plan neglects to provide adequate parking and housing for future resort employees and often miscalculates open space estimates, the critics contend.

Council members, however, argue that changes can be incorporated in the city zoning code, which has yet to be written. They also say it is better to amend the General Plan if necessary, something that can happen four times a year by state law, than to toss the whole thing out and start over.

“They say 80% of the plan is fine, that they only have a problem with a little bit of the plan. So why go through this exercise when we can meet and maybe make some changes,” asked Councilwoman Eileen Krause. “I don’t comprehend the motivation, I really don’t.”

While the 2,300 signatures gathered on the petition last summer still must be validated by the county registrar of voters, critics are confident that they have more than the required 1,600, or 10% of the city’s registered voters, to force a citywide vote.