Slow-Growth Measure Goes Before Council in Seal Beach

The Seal Beach City Council tonight is expected to consider placing on the city’s March ballot a sweeping slow-growth initiative that would strip the elected body of its authority on land use decisions for public open space.

But the proposed referendum also addresses much broader issues than what it calls use of “open space” and “quasi-public land.” In fact, it could be called the Ballot Measure With Something for Everybody.

Known as the Spring initiative--named after its proponents, the Seal Beach Preservation Initiative Group (Spring)--the measure is the result of a successful referendum drive launched last year by a vocal group of local residents.

Spring members collectively have accused city officials of allowing developers to gobble up “every square inch of open space” in the tiny bedroom community through variances to local zoning laws that are not granted individual property owners.

Yet among the most controversial parts of the initiative is the one that would allow property owners to replace their structures “in kind,” if they are destroyed by natural disaster, rather than upgrading them to current zoning standards.

‘Improved Residences’

But Spring opponents have countered that the real motivations behind the initiative are the concerns of rental property owners, and that Spring has cast a special-interest initiative as a slow-growth measure--a wolf in sheep’s clothing--in order to gather signatures to qualify it for the ballot.

“The purpose of this ordinance is to provide controlled, orderly growth of the city of Seal Beach and to preserve for our children open spaces and parkland, as well as clean, modern and improved residences for all,” the initiative ordinance reads.

As such, the proposed ordinance stipulates that any property classified by the measure, or by the city’s general plan, as parkland, open space, public land or “quasi-public” land can not be used for another purpose without approval of two-thirds of the voters in a Seal Beach general or special election. Quasi-public land is not defined in the document, but some Spring members have cited golf courses as one example.

Also banned under the proposed ballot initiative would be construction, widening, rerouting or abandoning of any municipal street on public property, parkland or quasi-public land.

The ballot measure, however, addresses more than just parklands, open space and roads. It calls for:

Strict enforcement of commercial parking space requirements.

Protection of “urban forests,” or any 10 trees closely situated on public property and more than 10 years old, without written permission of the state Department of Forestry.

And outlawing the sale of liquor other than beer or wine from the restaurant at the end of the municipal pier.

“It’s understandable that they would get a lot of signatures,” said Seal Beach City Manager Robert Nelson, who said his role is not to support or oppose the ballot measure, but to administer it, if approved. “There was a lot to choose from in (the initiative), wasn’t there?”

Holding garage sales and other fund-raisers in recent months as they circulated their petitions, Spring members gathered 3,414 signatures--2,574 of which were certified as valid by the Orange County registrar of voters on Nov. 23.

By law, the group had to gather 1,813 signatures--10% of the city’s 18,129 registered voters--to qualify the measure for a referendum, and the City Council now must either vote to adopt the initiative as a city ordinance or call for a citywide election on the issue, which they are expected to do tonight. The election would have to be held within 103 days after certification of the petition signatures.

Seal Beach’s next regular election is on March 29, 1988.

“I feel it may as well go before the voters,” Seal Beach Mayor Edna Wilson said Sunday of the proposed measure. “That seems to be the consensus (among Council members). There’s been so many innuendoes and half-truths passed around, that maybe with an election, we’ll have the opportunity to clear out what the real issues are.”

Spring leaders Bruce Stark, an attorney, and Michelle Brendel, who has a counseling service and is Stark’s wife, were reportedly out of the country Sunday, and other activists with the group could not be reached for comment.

At the heart of the far-reaching initiative is the 4.9-acre Zoeter School site, over which the city has control. A proposal to allow for development of a commercial retail center on part of the lucrative parcel fronting the beach side of Pacific Coast Highway led to the formation of Spring last year. In return for rezoning to allow development of the commercial strip, the city gets a greatly discounted price on the remaining land, Nelson said.

But language in the ballot measure would effectively block that development, rezoning the property as “parkland in perpetuity.”

The measure also calls for zoning as parkland 70% of an undeveloped beachfront parcel owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The property is now zoned for a hotel, with a small portion set aside as a park, city officials said.

It also would require a minimum of 2,000 acres for any “planned unit development.”

But such language, according to Nelson, the city manager, and others, raises legal questions about private property rights versus the public good--questions that may end up being challenged in court if the initiative is approved by voters.