San Diego OKs Scout Lease Despite Objections

Over the objections of gay activists and civil libertarians, the San Diego City Council agreed Tuesday night to continue leasing a 16-acre parcel of city-owned Balboa Park to the local Boy Scouts.

The 6-3 vote granting a 25-year lease capped an all-day hearing that drew more than 1,000 residents and centered largely on whether a group that excludes homosexuals and atheists should be granted preferential use of public parkland. The arrangement already is the focus of a federal lawsuit by the ACLU.

Under the lease agreement, the Scouts will continue paying $1 a year to retain use of a parcel they have occupied at the edge of the well-known park, near downtown San Diego, since 1946. The group, which also will pay $2,500 yearly in administrative fees, promised to make $1.7 million in improvements during the next seven years as part of the lease arrangement.

City Council members who supported extending the lease said denial would unfairly punish thousands of youths who benefit from Scout programs at the facility, which includes a swimming pool and recreation grounds. Other boosters defended the Scouts against bias charges.

“We’re not here to discriminate or show a lack of tolerance. We don’t offer hate. It’s a difference of opinion,” William Carlson, whose son is a Scout, said at the hearing.

The Scouts’ lease was set to expire in 2007, but group leaders sought early renewal to ensure tenure as they prepare to raise funds for capital improvements.

Dan McAllister, president of the Desert Pacific Council of the Boy Scouts, said after the vote, “The City Council, all of them, had great things to say. We need to be sensitive to the community. We operate here. I think we should be gracious in victory.”

Critics of the lease have said the agreement would violate terms of the city’s anti-discrimination policy barring bias on the basis of religion or sexual orientation. Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, a San Diego Democrat who formerly served on the council, said the Scouts carried an “an underlying message of prejudice and intolerance.” Kehoe, who is gay, urged the council to delay extending the lease until the scheduled 2007 expiration to give the Scouts time to make reforms.

The fate of the arrangement may rest ultimately with the federal courts, where the San Diego chapter of the ACLU is challenging the legality of leasing public land to a group that excludes gays and atheists. The ACLU lawsuit was filed in August 2000 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of the Scouts to exclude gays.

The council also unanimously approved extending for 25 years a separate lease under which Girl Scouts utilize a 15-acre parcel next to the Boy Scout camp. That agreement is not controversial, said civil libertarians, because the Girl Scouts do not discriminate.