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North County’s Anti-Development Coalition Gears Up

Development fights are common in North County, and 2018 won’t be an exception.

Pro-development Supervisor Bill Horn is termed out of his District 5 seat. Two Republicans, Oceanside Councilman Jerry Kern and San Marcos Mayor Jim Desmond, are favorites to replace him in the conservative district.

But Jacqueline Arsivaud, a San Dieguito planning group member, is running on the premise that voters there are as anti-development as they are pro-Republican.

She’s also part of the group pushing to put the Safeguard Our San Diego Countryside initiative on the November ballot.

The initiative would be a harsh blow to developments that have been pushing for approval from the board of supervisors for years. General plan amendments – developments that don’t comply with the 2011-adopted countywide growth plan – would require a public vote.

• • Arsivaud is on the board of San Diegans for Managed Growth, the group pushing the initiative.
• • “I have spent my life fighting these general plan amendments,” she said. Ten years ago, she helped block a Lennar Homes plan to build north of Rancho Santa Fe, where endangered California gnatcatchers lived.
• • The general plan created village areas to accommodate new housing. Projects there wouldn’t need a public vote. There are other carve outs for affordable housing, or where changes were needed to comply with state mandates.

There’s a notable coalition behind both Arsivaud’s campaign and the initiative. Former Supervisor Pam Slater-Price has endorsed her. So has Dan Silver, CEO of the Endangered Habitats League; Michael Beck, an EHL board member and county planning commissioner; George Courser, Sierra Club of San Diego steering committee member; and Duncan McFetrige, president of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation.

• • If you were brainstorming the most influential opponents of the various development projects seeking exemptions from the county’s general plan, that would be the list.

I asked Arsivaud if there’s ever such thing as a good general plan amendment. She said there was.

“Maybe in the future, things on the ground change and something wasn’t considered when we wrote the plan. In that case, you should look at it. But with Warner Ranch, Lilac Hills, Newland Sierra, all the same conditions existed at the time. They were considered by county staff when writing the plan, and they were rejected. They’re sprawl projects away from infrastructure, and they’re creating fire traps.”

It’s not a bad point: Arsivaud said that right now, developers are actually incentivized not to follow the general plan, because all the land that’s been zoned for dense development is now more expensive as a result. “It makes much more sense to option land that’s semi-rural, and then bet you can get three votes from the board.”

Her fix: Arsivaud said the county needs to flip those incentives by making it cheaper and easier to build in the areas where it has said development should occur. She also wants the county to adopt an ordinance requiring new developments to include housing reserved for low-income residents.