Airport Foes’ New Strategy Would Ban ‘Noxious’ Use

A coalition of South County city officials approved an abrupt change in strategy Monday for fighting a commercial airport at El Toro, agreeing to move ahead with a countywide initiative in 2000 that would bar new airports, landfills or jails without voter approval.

Officials with the seven-city El Toro Reuse Planning Authority will reconvene in a special meeting early next month to approve final language for the proposed “Safe and Healthy Communities Act.”

The measure would call for regional land uses that are deemed “noxious” to be approved by a two-thirds majority of voters countywide.

The initiative, while not a direct attack on plans for an airport at El Toro, “is designed to kill the airport,” Lake Forest Councilman Richard T. Dixon said in support of the new tactic. “We don’t just want to kill the airport but to make sure that the planning fiasco doesn’t take place again.”

Mission Viejo Mayor Peter Herzog said the planning process for the 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station has been flawed since 1994, when a slim majority of voters agreed to rezone the base for a commercial airport after the Marines leave this July. Changing that zoning would require another countywide vote.

For months, South County officials have advocated repealing the airport zoning through a special election this year. The new initiative is a radical departure from their promises to put a nonaviation alternative for the base up for voter approval.

Dixon, who was succeeded Monday as chairman of the reuse group by Susan Withrow of Mission Viejo, said many officials were concerned that if the group’s nonaviation Millennium Plan were placed on the ballot, cities could no longer spend money to promote it. State law prohibits governments from advocating positions on ballot measures.

But at least two coalition board members, both from Irvine, and several speakers at Monday night’s coalition meeting in Lake Forest warned that tying needed public improvements to a super-majority vote is bad public policy, legally flawed and would be a loser at the polls.

Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea argued that the group should move ahead with plans to replace the airport proposal with the Millennium Plan. Last month, the Irvine City Council approved spending more than $2 million to fight the proposed airport, including an aggressive education campaign to sell the Millennium Plan to North County residents.

“This [new] measure could create a lot of problems,” she said.

Irvine Councilman Dave Christensen said the new initiative caught many elected officials by surprise, including Sheriff Mike Carona, who was concerned that it could affect his ability to improve the county jail system. Christensen said he has a fiduciary duty to make sure that whichever initiative is pursued, it has the best chance of winning.

Irvine is the largest contributor to the South County coalition, giving about $1 million a year to its $2.4 million budget.

Supervisor Tom Wilson proposed the idea of the new initiative two weeks ago. He said Monday that he plans to work with fellow airport foe and colleague Supervisor Todd Spitzer to ask the board to put the new initiative on the ballot. But Spitzer said Monday evening that he is not sold on the concept and will wait for final language to make a decision.

“I certainly have issues that I will be looking at with respect to any initiative that takes land-use planning discretion away from the Board of Supervisors,” he said.

Leaders of the anti-airport movement said it was too late to get an initiative qualified for a 1999 special election, which would take about 200,000 voter signatures. They found that the new initiative would appeal to the larger group of voters expected to go to the polls in 2000 and would need only half the signatures to qualify.

Irvine Councilman Larry Agran acknowledged that writing a single initiative to both repeal the airport zoning and replace it with the Millennium Plan was “extremely challenging.” He urged the coalition to move swiftly on the new initiative but also to continue working on a Millennium Plan measure for the ballot, which still ultimately must be passed by voters.

“As much as I support the Millennium Plan, it’s still very much a work in progress,” he said. “This is a two-step process.”

In other action, the coalition met in closed session Monday to discuss possible litigation against the county’s plans to allow cargo service at El Toro after the Marines leave.