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Politics

San Diego County Supervisors Disagree About Private Property Rights

By Alison St John / Reporter
Published March 16, 2011 at 12:50 PM PDT
This story was published more than 13 years ago.
San Diego County Supervisors Disagree About Private Property Rights
San Diego County Supervisors disagree over the effects of their new general plan for future growth in the unincorporated areas. The board is grappling with requests from more than 200 property owners who object to the new zoning.

San Diego County Supervisors disagree over the effects of their new general plan for future growth in the unincorporated areas. The board is grappling with requests from more than 200 property owners who object to the new zoning.

Almost half-a-million people live in San Diego’s unincorporated areas. The new plan is designed to manage development to accommodate another 200,000 residents in the areas outside San Diego’s 18 cities’ boundaries over the next 40 years.

The proposed plan will leave almost 30 percent of acreage with zoning unchanged, increase building potential on 4 percent and down-zone development rights on 65 percent.

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(NOTE: previous version said 30 percent of parcels, rather than 30 percent of acreage)

Supervisor Bill Horn said the plan has been in the works for 13 years, but he isn’t ready to vote yet.

“I’m a private property advocate.” Horn said. “Down-zoning without compensation in my mind is stealing, and I can’t support that.”

Supervisor Ron Roberts said many planned projects are on hold, waiting for a decision. He disputed Horn’s opinion on down-zoning.

“That’s a personal opinion,” Roberts said, “that’s not a legal statement and we need to be clear about that. It is just like a talk-show host trying to get everybody riled up, and it doesn’t do us any good when we start talking about things that aren’t factually correct, or even legally correct.”

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The county’s consultant concludes that property values are not devalued significantly county wide by the new general plan.

The Supervisors asked staff to work on about 120 remaining parcels where property owners are dissatisfied with the plan. The Supervisors voted to stand by the Environmental Impact Report on the proposed plan, and reaffirmed the principal of putting new development near existing infrastructure

NOTE: This is a correction from the previous story. The County says it is NOT negotiating with private property owners.

Supervisor Diane Jacob says the board needs to balance the needs of individual property owners with the interests of the general community.

The next Board meeting on the issue is April 13th

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Politics Regional GovernmentsSan Diego
Alison St John
Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.
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