Seal Beach Initiative Drive : Slow-Growth Group Springs Into Action

Fearing the development “of every square inch of open space” in Seal Beach, a group of local residents is engineering a referendum drive to force a strict, slow-growth initiative into law, bypassing a reluctant City Council.

The multifaceted initiative would rezone as parkland the Zoeter School site, a plum parcel on bustling Pacific Coast Highway, effectively blocking any development of the land owned by the Los Alamitos Unified School District.

It also would preserve for parkland 70% of the beachfront property owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and force new businesses to comply with strict parking regulations, but it would relax parking rules for property owners who make home improvements, and try to limit the city manager’s authority to approve changes to “specific plans,” which set guidelines for property development.

And in what was seen as the biggest barrier to development, the initiative would strip the City Council of authority to approve construction on public land declared “open space.” Instead, it would require any future development on designated open space to be approved by two-thirds of the city’s voters.

‘Tie the Hands of the Council’

“It is an attempt to protect the people from the city government,” said Bruce Stark, a Seal Beach resident and founding member of Spring (Seal Beach Preservation Initiative Group).

City officials, constrained by Proposition 13 in their search for revenue sources, fear that the initiative might go too far.

“I think there would be a possibility that it would tie the hands of the City Council,” said Seal Beach Mayor Frank W. Clift.

Should the slow-growth measure qualify for the ballot and ultimately be approved by voters, opponents say, it could spell legal battles aplenty, with landowners insisting on the right to develop their property.

To qualify for the ballot, the initiative backers must get petition signatures of at least 10% of the estimated 19,300 registered voters in Seal Beach, said City Clerk Joanne M. Yeo.

But a conflict between the city clerk and Spring threatened to hamper the circulation of the petitions, which began last Thursday.

Under the California Elections Code, a “Notice of Intent to Circulate Petition” must be published 21 days before signatures are collected in support of an initiative. Seal Beach officials argue that Spring’s notice of intent, published Aug. 28 in the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise, did not meet the code requirements.

In a letter to Stark, the city’s lawyer said publication in the News-Enterprise, a newspaper circulated in Seal Beach and northern Orange County, did not qualify as legal notice, because the notice was not published in the proper local newspaper, the Seal Beach Journal.

“The Seal Beach Journal is the only newspaper of general circulation in the city in which publication of the notice of intention and written statement can properly be made,” wrote acting City Atty. William B. Rudell.

Stark, a labor lawyer based in Long Beach, disagreed.

“I say we have met the spirit and the requirements of the election code. The intent of the code is to provide notice to the people of your intent to circulate a petition,” he said.

Concerned that the issue “would get lost in the bureaucratic wrangling,” Chuck Riley, editor and publisher of the Seal Beach Journal, said he offered to print Spring’s petition notice free in his column “On the Beach.”

Even as the ink on Riley’s column in the Journal was drying, Spring members on Thursday began collecting signatures on their petition.

Nonetheless, Yeo said the city’s position remains unchanged. Unless the group abstains from collecting signatures until Oct. 9, or 21 days after publication in the Journal, she said she will declare the signatures invalid.

“I cannot stop them from circulating the petition, but the petition would be circulated in violation of the law,” Yeo said.

Spring, formed in June by about 10 residents, has gotten a “flood of phone calls” from people expressing support for the initiative, Stark said. The group expects little problem gathering enough signatures to place the initiative on the ballot, he said, because of the widely held perception that the City Council caters to business and development interests.

“While the city fawns before developers, residents and property owners must come begging to make any improvements to their property,” Spring charged in a prepared statement. “Any out-of-town developer, who could care less about the quality of life in Seal Beach, is greeted with open arms by the city and granted parking waivers and concessions.”

Spring member Juliana McCantz, president of the Seal Beach Homeowners Assn. and one-time council candidate, said, “The council is more interested in revenue to the city than in the people who live here.”

Mayor Clift denied the charge. “I believe that perception is not shared by a large majority of the people,” he said. “I think Mr. Stark feels that the council is trying to develop every square inch of land in the city, and I don’t think that’s so.”

Clift said the council favors “orderly development” that would increase the city’s tax base, produce revenue and allow the city “to sustain services which people have come to expect.”

The Spring initiative seeks to strip the council of its power to approve development of publicly owned “open space” by requiring future development plans to be placed on the ballot and win approval of two-thirds of the city’s registered voters, Stark said.

Clift said he sponsored a similar proposal earlier this year, but it was rejected by the council on a 3-2 vote.

The fate of the closed Mary E. Zoeter school is one of the most controversial parts of the initiative.

The site, on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and 12th Street, became property of the Los Alamitos Unified School District in 1983, when Seal Beach joined the district, said Ron Murrey, director of business services for the school district.

City Manager Robert Nelson said the land is zoned for residential development. But Stark disputed that, saying it is zoned as open space.

The district has offered to sell the land back to the city for about $4 million, or sell it to developers, who have expressed “a lot of interest” in the property for commercial development or other uses, Murrey said.

Stark said the initiative would rezone the Zoeter site “parkland in perpetuity,” blocking the district’s plan for development and lowering the market value of the land, which would allow the city to purchase the entire parcel at a reduced price.

If approved, such action appeared likely to raise considerable legal questions.

Nelson said the Naylor Act prohibits such rezoning tactics.

“It is my opinion, as a non-attorney and city manager, that it would not be upheld as a legal act. The Naylor Act states that the city must zone the property consistent with the surrounding area,” Nelson said.

And Jay Covington, a member of the Seal Beach Planning Commission, said that rezoning the district’s property as parkland would be tantamount to “inverse condemnation.” He said it would force the city to buy the land at a price set by a judge and would likely result in legal action by the school district against the city.

But Stark claimed that rulings of both the California and U.S. supreme courts in a case involving the Marin County city of Tiburon give municipalities like Seal Beach the legal precedent to “down-zone” property.

The initiative also seeks to alter the city’s specific plan for development of the Department of Water and Power land, which is located at 1st Street and Marina Drive. Among the several uses allowed for the property under the city’s specific plan are parkland, open space, grassland and theater.

Because Spring fears that theater could be interpreted to mean anything from a community band shell to a concert arena like Costa Mesa’s Pacific Amphitheatre or a movie complex, the initiative also seeks to revoke that language and to limit the city manager’s authority to interpret specific plans.

Stark said the city manager’s interpretive powers essentially give him the authority to approve “modifications” to specific plans. He contended that that gives too much power to a city manager.

But Nelson said that part of the initiative would be ineffectual. He said a city manager’s power to interpret the specific plans is vested in state and city law.

“The removal of the section will not hamper me,” Nelson said.

Under the proposed initiative, Stark said the developer of the DWP land also would lose the ability to count the city’s beach parking lot on 1st Street toward the number of parking spaces that city regulations require for new buildings.

The initiative would limit other loopholes in the city’s parking regulations, forcing new businesses to supply additional parking required by existing city regulations, Stark said. At the same time, the initiative would remove that requirement of homeowners who improved their property, so long as the land use was not intensified or existing parking reduced, he said.

The initiative also contains a disaster clause, which would allow property owners to rebuild their property to existing levels in the event of a disaster, Stark said. Because of changes in zoning regulations, some owners of duplexes, triplexes or four-plexes built years ago might only be able to rebuild single-family homes or duplexes in the event of a disaster.

Clift said such a disaster clause “might prolong overbuilding” from the past.

“I don’t think we want to continue the idea of four-plex buildings on lots that normally support a single-family residence,” Clift said.

While McCantz claims the initiative will “keep the city in line,” another Spring member, retired realtor Reva Olson, put it another way.

“We like our tacky little town,” Olson said. “We like what we have. Why does it need to grow?”