Scouts’ Use of San Diego Park at Issue

The San Diego City Council today will consider whether to renew the long-standing lease of a section of Balboa Park to the Boy Scouts--a controversial arrangement that has been the target of a federal lawsuit by the ACLU.

Under the proposed 50-year lease, the Boy Scouts would retain use of a 16-acre chunk of the city’s signature park occupied by the group since 1946. The council debate comes even as the ACLU challenges the legality of leasing public property to a group that bars gays and atheists.

The lease issue has attracted keen public interest, and officials were preparing for a big turnout at today’s council session. But opponents of the renewal conceded they are likely to lose.

“I am ever hopeful, but it doesn’t look good. That’s the reality,” said Councilwoman Toni Atkins, the council’s only openly gay member. Atkins said leasing to the Boy Scouts violates city policies barring bias on the basis of religion or sexual orientation.

“The city is violating its own policies. I don’t know how we can do that,” she said.

Mayor Dick Murphy, who supports renewal of the lease, favored moving ahead with the vote in spite of the ACLU lawsuit, filed in August 2000.

“There’s no end in sight on when the lawsuit will be resolved,” said Murphy’s press secretary, Elena Cristiano. “If he timed things according to lawsuits, nothing would get done.”

The current $1-a-year lease expires in 2007, but the Boy Scouts want early renewal to ensure tenancy before raising funds for a series of fix-ups on the eucalyptus-shaded parcel near the San Diego Zoo.

Under the proposed lease, the Boy Scouts would make at least $1.7 million in improvements during the next seven years.

The group also would pay a $2,500 administrative fee yearly, in addition to the $1 rent.

“In order to continue serving 25,000 kids, it’s imperative that we have the lease renewed. To penalize the kids would be wrongheaded. It just wouldn’t make good sense,” said Dan McAllister, president of the Desert Pacific Council of the Boy Scouts, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties.

Councilman Byron Wear, who rose to Eagle Scout and has two sons in the Boy Scouts, said the group gives youths an alternative to gangs and drug abuse.

“The benefits that the Boy Scouts provide to our community far outweigh any negatives that have been brought forth,” Wear said in a statement.

“The issue of sexual orientation and the Boy Scouts is one for the Supreme Court to decide, and not the City Council.”

The ACLU lawsuit came after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case filed by a gay Boy Scout leader in New Jersey, upheld the right of the group to exclude gays.

The court said the Scouts are a private group that is seeking to instill its moral values in boys and therefore free to bar those whose behavior or lifestyle clashes with its message.

The ACLU says the Boy Scouts cannot assert the right to discriminate while seeking support from city governments with laws that prohibit discriminatory groups from using public property.

The lease “makes the city a partner in the Boy Scouts’ discrimination against gays and religious nonbelievers,” said Dale Kelly Bankhead, spokeswoman for the ACLU’s chapter in San Diego and Imperial counties. “While the Boy Scouts may not be for everybody, city parks are.”

The City Council also will consider extending a separate 50-year lease governing the Girl Scouts’ use of 15 acres in Balboa Park.

The ACLU says it does not oppose the $1-a-year lease because the Girl Scouts do not discriminate.