Newport Slow-Growth Initiative Developing Into Statewide Fight

A slow-growth ballot measure in Newport Beach has alarmed developers and lobbying groups statewide who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to kill an initiative they say would cripple the economy of the ritzy seaside city and spark similar efforts elsewhere.

The developers have raised $405,061 in support of a dueling initiative, Measure T, that would cancel Measure S, the grass-roots initiative that would require citywide votes on major developments. Computer chip maker Conexant Systems Inc. of Newport Beach, the California Business Properties Assn. in Sacramento, the Newhall Land Co. of Valencia and dozens of other business interests have contributed to the fight against Greenlight, as Measure S on Tuesday’s ballot also is known.

The Irvine Co. alone has spent $187,000. By contrast, Greenlight supporters have raised $62,562.

“There’s a lot at stake here,” said Mark Petracca, chairman of UC Irvine’s political science department. “[It] has much less to do with individual development . . . in Newport Beach. What’s at stake is a precedent-setting trend setting a type of involvement by the public. If it can pass here, it is passable in a lot of other places.”

Voters in Colorado and Arizona will be asked to approve stringent rules on development Tuesday. Throughout California, 50 land use initiatives appear on the ballot.

In Brea, Measure N would require a citywide vote on major developments in the hills above town. And in San Clemente, voters will decide whether to impose the partial moratorium on development in Measure U.

More than $1 million has been raised for the three Orange County contests. While the vast majority of the statewide initiatives have attracted mostly local interest, the dueling measures in Newport Beach have gained a far higher profile, partly because it is home to many of the biggest developers, including the Irvine Co. and its chairman, Donald Bren.

Surprisingly, conservative Orange County has a rich slow-growth history. Twenty years ago, a state Supreme Court ruling involving a Costa Mesa residential development laid the foundation for voters to wrest control of local planning decisions from elected officials.

In March, Orange County voters overwhelmingly approved a measure that requires a two-thirds public vote on airports, landfills and jails near residential neighborhoods. Yet Newport Beach voters resoundingly rejected that measure.

Now, those same residents may embrace a similar proposal to require public votes on major projects. Measure S would trigger a citywide vote on developments that exceed the city’s general plan by 100 homes, put 100 additional cars on the roads during rush-hour or add 40,000 square feet of commercial space.

“Every real estate development company, every community developer . . . in the entire state and country has the incentive to make sure this thing gets killed,” Petracca said.

That’s exactly what Measure T aims to do. If Measure T prevails at the polls on Tuesday, it would give developers a meaty side benefit. It would cement into the city charter less stringent traffic impact standards, making it difficult for future city officials to raise the requirements for builders. If both measures receive more than 50% of the vote, the initiative with the greatest number of votes would win.

Among other things, Measure T would place traffic standards in the city charter, a document that acts much like the U.S. Constitution by establishing the government structure and terms of office for elected officials.

Thomas Cole Edwards, co-chairman of the Measure T group, said Thursday that future City Council members would still have discretion to change the enforcement rules for traffic standards. However, leaders wouldn’t be able to alter a formula for calculating congestion at key intersections at rush hour, which, if too great, could scuttle a project.

Nor would future councils be able to change a threshold on how much traffic a particular project could add without having to compensate for it.

“The basic structure would always stay the same,” Edwards said Thursday.

The reason traffic standards were included in Measure T, Edwards said, was because “the people in Newport Beach were screaming about alleged traffic problems, and this provides a traffic solution. By their own admission, their ordinance does nothing to reduce traffic.”

Edwards and other Measure T proponents say Measure S could damage the city’s economy and long-term redevelopment efforts, and force countless elections to decide picayune planning issues. That could add expense and years of delay to construction costs in Newport Beach.

“Rather than improving the quality of life in Newport Beach, Measure S would have the opposite effect,” Irvine Co. Executive Vice President Gary Hunt wrote this fall in an Irvine Co. position statement on the initiative.

The slow-growth measure, Hunt said, would backfire by “discouraging the city’s revitalization, harming property values, and ironically leading to increased traffic congestion as regional traffic into the city continues to increase while local funding for city traffic improvements evaporates.”

Other Newport Beach property owners say ordinary residents would vote no rather than slogging through a ballot filled with various development approvals. They also contend that voters would be easily swayed by slick arguments or popular individuals who might advocate for a builder.

“We’ll basically have zoning by hooligans,” said Larry Kates, who said he owns homes on Balboa Island and an office building on Jamboree Road. He contributed $10,000 to the Measure T effort. “No one has shown me what’s been done so wrong in Newport Beach during the last seven to 10 years.”

The California Assn. of Realtors has given $52,000; the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California provided $24,500, and the National Assn. of Home Builders in Washington, D.C., sent $10,000.

Greenlight proponents counter that the measure is needed because, as they see it, the seven City Council members kowtowed to developers last year when adopting a weaker traffic standards ordinance. The council rejected 16 of the proponents’ 19 suggestions during public hearings, said Phil Arst, a leader of the Greenlight effort.

“I contend that we have special-interest government much like in Washington, where the lobbyists get undue attention,” Arst said.

However, City Atty. Bob Burnham said most of the changes in the traffic ordinance were needed to conform with recent court rulings, to be consistent and to reflect modern traffic engineering guidelines.

“In my opinion, these changes improved our ability to apply and administer the [traffic phasing ordinance] and made [it] less vulnerable to a legal challenge,” he said.

Last year’s ordinance also allowed five members of the council, down from six, to override traffic standards.

If Measure T is approved, these changes will be cemented in the city charter. They could be changed only by voters--except for one section. The City Council still could change--even weaken--traffic requirements for development near John Wayne Airport, which is bounded by Jamboree Road, Bristol Street and Campus Drive.

Conexant officials, whose world headquarters fall within these boundaries, said the company still would have to comply with traffic standards. The chip maker, which has put on hold plans for a major expansion of its facility pending the election, gave $10,000 to the Measure T campaign.

The provision “recognizes that the airport area has a different makeup than the residential area, and it gives the City Council the authority to make decisions . . . without going to a citywide vote,” said Conexant spokeswoman Lisa Briggs.

Newhall Land, which contributed $5,000 to Measure T, is developing the Newhall Ranch in northern Los Angeles County--a planned community of 21,000 homes on 12,000 acres near Valencia, just west of Interstate 5.

The company owns no property in Orange County, said Marlee Lauffer, Newhall’s vice president of corporate communications, said Thursday. The company learned of the anti-Greenlight effort through “chamber of commerce or round-table lunches or other business organizations that we are all involved in,” she said.

“We got involved because the ballot-box planning is just poor planning,” Lauffer said. “It’s bad precedent. It’s not the way to plan a community.”

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Race for Funds

Developers, realtors agents and home builders are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Newport Beach’s Measure T which would thwart competing slow-growth Measure S.

Source: Newport Beach City Clerk’s Office.