Navarro Group Pushes Police-Growth Initiative : Politics: Offshoot of PLAN! rushes to put measure on ballot. It would link city growth to size of the police force.

An offshoot of the organization headed by mayoral candidate Peter Navarro is racing the clock to place an initiative on the November ballot, a development that could add another wrinkle to this fall’s bitter contest to choose San Diego’s next leader.

Funded heavily by Navarro’s mother, Florida resident Evelyn Littlejohn, PLAN! Police Initiative Inc. has employed paid workers to gather signatures for the past seven weeks, largely without the knowledge of Navarro’s usually sharp-eyed opponents.

Navarro and his allies, who in the past have worked hard to publicize their efforts, are being circumspect about the initiative’s chances of qualifying for the November ballot.

“We’ve got a strategy, and it really doesn’t behoove us to give out any details,” Navarro, founder and chairman of Prevent Los Angelization Now!, said in a brief telephone interview Thursday. “We’re gathering signatures. People have been very receptive to the initiative, and stay tuned.”

“I’m not on the verge of bringing these signatures in,” said Becky Mann, who doubles as Navarro’s campaign manager and the executive director of PLAN! Police Initiative Inc. “I cannot predict the day we are going to have this thing qualified.”

The revised version of the PLAN! Police Initiative, published March 31, would prohibit new development if it resulted in a decrease in the ratio of sworn police officers to residents. It requires that new development be planned to prevent an increase in police response time.

Builders of residential, commercial or industrial facilities would be assessed fees used to offset any decline in police protection.

According to city elections official Mikel Haas, petitions should have been submitted to the City Clerk’s office by June 2 to guarantee enough time to validate them and allow City Council consideration before the Aug. 7 deadline. But that time-line assumes that it will take the City Clerk’s office 30 days to count the signatures; the job is often done in half the time.

Navarro said his organization “does not take (Haas’) deadline seriously,” noting that the City Council generally places measures on the ballot much later in the summer.

The group needs to collect 55,153 signatures of registered San Diego voters to qualify for the Nov. 3 election, the same ballot on which Navarro will face County Supervisor Susan Golding in the mayor’s race.

Navarro’s critics blasted the initiative itself and the drive to get it on the ballot as attempts to bolster Navarro’s mayoral candidacy.

Tom Shepard, Golding’s campaign consultant, contended that Navarro will use the ballot measure, of which he is “honorary chairman,” to publicize his campaign.

Unlike fund-raising for the mayor’s race, in which individuals may give no more than $250 each and organizations are prohibited from contributing, there are no limits on financial support for a ballot initiative.

“He would be able to funnel large individual contributions into an effort that would obviously piggyback and support his mayoral campaign,” Shepard claimed.

Mann, however, noted that the group could have adopted that strategy during the mayoral primary and did not.

Another of Navarro’s enemies said a successful ballot initiative will force his opponents to work on two fronts.

“Conventional wisdom says that a ballot measure is a political asset, because it is just an additional means of placing one’s name before the voters by way of association,” said Mac Strobl, the political consultant who led the legal effort to derail PLAN!’s 1991 initiative.

There are no current plans to challenge the latest initiative in court, Strobl said.

Neither Strobl nor Shepard was aware that signatures were being gathered for the new initiative.

But Strobl said the initiative may not play well in a recession, because population growth alone “will see to it that these standards cannot be met, which automatically shuts down development.”

Navarro rejected that interpretation of the initiative, saying it would establish a “floating floor” of police protection against which each new development would be measured. Police coverage ratios reduced by population growth would not be held against developers, he said.

The initiative is Navarro’s fourth major effort to enact some form of growth management via the ballot box. Two 1988 growth control measures containing numerical building caps, for which Navarro was chief spokesman, lost at the polls in the face of a $2.5 million campaign by the building industry.

In 1989, PLAN! pulled petitions for another initiative off the streets, relying on City Council promises of action, which Navarro says were not kept.

Last year, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Planned Growth and Taxpayer Relief Initiative, which had qualified for the ballot after an expensive campaign by PLAN!, violated the California Constitution’s ban on multiple subject initiatives.

PLAN!’s debts to Strobl and his attorneys, incurred in that legal battle, forced the formation of the new entity, PLAN! Police Initiative Inc., to prevent Strobl from attaching any funds raised and idled PLAN! as a group capable of promoting ballot measures.

In addition to Navarro and Mann, the new group includes other longtime PLAN! members such as Sue Biegeleisen, its treasurer, and Les Braund, its secretary.

It is also being funded by Navarro’s mother, who contributed $34,000 in cash and $16,000 in computer equipment to the 1991 initiative campaign. Littlejohn’s largess has at times been criticized by Navarro’s mayoral opponents.

Mann would not disclose how much Littlejohn has contributed to the new initiative campaign, but said that she is the single largest donor to an effort that could cost more than $50,000. City-mandated disclosures of fund-raising for the initiative must be reported by July 31.

“It’s a significant amount,” Navarro said of his mother’s financial aid. “She said she would help us with what we need to do to save the city.”