Developer, Escondido Battle for Control of Cattle Ranch : Construction: Slow-growth interests want to quash plans to place 3,263 homes on pristine land, but the builders are suing the city and council members for trying to derail the project.

Daley Ranch, a 4,400-acre cattle ranch that has belonged to the land-rich Daley family for more than a century, will become Escondido’s largest and most prestigious subdivision if its owners and developers have their way.

The steep and rocky acreage in the northeast corner of the North County city will become a low-density development compatible with its hilly terrain if the Escondido City Council’s new slow-growth majority has its way.

Which side will prevail? That question will be answered in coming months and years, after a very expensive war is fought at council meetings, on the streets, in living rooms, through the mail, at the ballot box and in the courts.

The way Councilwoman Carla DeDominicis sees it, it is a battle for all the marbles, a contest to determine who will run Escondido: the developers who, she says, are concerned with only the bottom line or the council, which, she claims, is concerned with only the best interests of the city and its residents.

No one wonders where DeDominicis stands. The newspaper reporter-turned-attorney won a council seat in 1988 based on her contention that the city needed to get a grip on growth and plan its future.

DeDominicis and Kris Murphy, another winner in the 1988 election, teamed up with veteran Councilman Jerry Harmon to form a slow-growth majority on the five-member council that, for the past 18 months, has pressured impatient developers by negotiating lower development densities and increased contributions for city improvements.

But not until Daley Ranch developers notified the city last August that they were prepared to begin a 3,263-home project did the council trio turn them down flat and advise them to revamp their plans to conform to new growth-management ordinances and a revised general plan that cuts in half the city’s ultimate population, from 300,000 to 150,000.

An interim city ordinance, adopted to stem development until the new growth-management rules are in place, provides building permits only to major developers who have agreements with the city. Daley Ranch does not have such an agreement.

“It’s simple,” DeDominicis said. “Now they have to play by our rules,” which, under the proposed general plan, call for a maximum of 1,700 residences on the Daley Ranch. That number would not provide sufficient profit to the developer, said a former Escondido councilman.

To Shea Homes and Daley Corp., two of the largest family-owned corporations in the nation and joint owners of Daley Ranch, the battle is over property rights.

In a lawsuit filed in October against the city, its attorney and its three slow-growth council members, attorneys for Daley Ranch Associates ask the court to order the city to abide by agreements signed as far back as 1982, when Daley agreed to annex the historic ranch to Escondido.

The present council “has a non-discretionary duty” to negotiate a development agreement with Daley under earlier agreements that would have allowed construction of 3,263 homes, the suit claims.

City staff and elected officials have “attempted to extort unreasonable concessions” from Daley Ranch developers by limiting the number of units that can be built, according to Daley Ranch attorneys. The suit seeks about $200 million in damages from the city and a minimum of $10 million in damages from each of the slow-growth council members--Harmon, DeDominicis and Murphy--and from City Atty. Lloyd Chapman. By naming Chapman, the developers’ suit forced the city attorney to disqualify himself and the city to hire outside representation, San Diego attorney Louis Goebel, at an estimated cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

The four city officials should pay punitive damages “to deter future similar outrageous and illegal conduct,” the lawsuit stated.

DeDominicis labeled the request for individual judgments “malicious and improper” and predicted that the lawsuit would be thrown out of court. She described it as a “harassment tactic” that could have a chilling effect on city officials seeking to follow the dictates of their consciences and constituents.

All three members have vowed to file a countersuit for malicious prosecution after the lawsuit has run its course.

“If they really were serious about recovering money from me as an individual citizen and not as an elected official, they could have filed in small-claims court,” where the limit of a claim is $2,000, DeDominicis quipped.

The developers say they are not interested in recovering damages from the city. Rather, they are interested in building houses under agreements that the city and previous councils have approved, they say. The slow-growth troika is “stone-walling” all efforts toward that end, they claim, and their lawsuit is an attempt to force the city to negotiate in good faith.

Thomas Noon, head of Shea Homes San Diego division, said he has been trying to negotiate with the city for more than a year to allow the Daley Ranch development to proceed. City officials have rejected the plan as “not in substantial conformance” with earlier plans and have told Shea that it must do a complete environmental impact review on their altered plan before it can be considered.

To do so would be “extremely expensive and also extremely risky, given the city’s present political makeup,” Noon said, referring to the slow-growth majority.

Looming in the next two months are final hearings on the proposed general plan that would initiate slow-growth policies and pare development levels by about half, not only on Daley Ranch but citywide.

Noon believes that Escondido residents back the slow-growth coalition in its efforts to prevent the problems of rapid urbanization: traffic congestion, school overcrowding, air pollution, water and sewer problems. But, he stresses, the Daley Ranch project is different. It is part of the solution, not the problem, he said.

The Daley Ranch developers have pledged $8 million to $11 million for road improvements outside the ranch property, Noon said. They also plan to build schools and to contribute to the community’s cultural and recreational projects.

“We have done several polls over the past months, and I am certain that the city’s rejection of our project is not in keeping with the sentiments of the general populace of the city,” Noon said.

Noon said that he has “personally sat down with probably 500 residents to talk face to face, in groups of three, four, five or 10 people,” and set them straight on Daley Ranch. He found most people “terribly misinformed,” he said.

Councilman Harmon, who plans to run for mayor in June, said he has not participated in the polls or meetings but has heard from friends that poll questions were “loaded” and other information was of questionable accuracy.

In light of his landslide victory in the 1988 council election, “I’m convinced the people are with us in our efforts to bring the city’s growth into reasonable limits,” Harmon said. He suspects that Daley Ranch public-relations efforts are aimed toward a ballot measure that would put the issue to voters, bypassing the council.

Councilwoman DeDominicis believes the campaign of mailings, informational talks, community meetings, personal letter appeals and polling might even be a prelude to a recall effort targeting the slow-growth members.

Noon and representatives of the Lynn Wessell Company, which is overseeing the pro-Daley Ranch campaign, say there are no plans for either a ballot measure or a recall of council members.

Noon said that the polls indicate that council members have a higher opinion of their public support than is warranted. Polls showed that between half and two-thirds of Escondido voters could not name a single council member, and that only a slightly higher number recognized the members’ names as they were read.

Suzanne Hoehl, Daley Ranch campaign coordinator, said that more community meetings, mailings and coffee klatsches are scheduled to win Escondido voters to the side of Daley Ranch.

Lynn Wessell’s services are sought by besieged developers statewide because of his pro-development successes. His most famous coup came in the 1988 Orange County elections, when Proposition A, which would have set limits on new construction, was favored by 80% of voters polled just eight weeks before election day.

In that short time, Wessell, using sophisticated computer programs, targeted voter lists and deployed hundreds of workers to turn around public opinion. The growth-control measure lost by a healthy 56% to 44% margin.

Harmon says that his concern over the Daley Ranch campaign does not focus on Wessell, who “is simply hired to do his job,” but on Daley Corp., which in an earlier annexation election allegedly used “political dirty tricks” in an attempt to persuade rural Lehner Valley voters to annex to Escondido.

On the eve of the election, Lehner Valley residents received bogus copies of the Lehner Valley News, a sporadic publication of annexation opponents. The edition reported that annexation opponents had changed their minds and now favored joining the city.

The effort was quashed when annexation opponents traced the look-alike to Daley Corp. through the postage meter number. An eleventh-hour telephone campaign to alert voters to the ruse resulted in defeat of the annexation issue.

Harmon said of Daley Ranch campaigners: “They may bamboozle an awful lot of people and they may promise an awful lot of things, but I still believe that the residents of Escondido are behind our efforts to control growth, and the momentum is building.”