Nico Calavita
Affordable housing, redevelopment & urban planning
links &  
A larger venue for affordable housing
6.30.00   SDUT pB11
Nico Calavita, prof. Grad. Pgm in City Planning
San Diego State Univ. 619.594.4027

The city of San Diego Planning Commission recently decided to do something about the looming housing crisis that other city leaders merely talk about. They pushed for the creation of a citywide, flexible, "inclusionary housing" policy, a forward-looking requirement ensuring that a portion of newly built residential developments will be affordable to low- and moderate-income families, to those who teach our children, clean our buildings and streets, serve our food and protect our neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, inclusionary housing is controversial among developers. In fact, their opposition killed a 1993 attempt to establish such a program in San Diego. Given this background, why would the planning commission unanimously resurrect inclusionary housing?

Two reasons stand out:
Housing crisis
Not a day goes by without a newspaper article or editorial ringing the alarm: we've got a housing crisis on our hands! It's the flip side of our economic boom; we've been creating new jobs, bringing in new workers, but not the roofs to shelter them. A healthy balance between housing and jobs mandates an average of one new residential unit for every 1.5 new jobs. In San Diego, the ratio falls far short, with only one new unit for every 4 new jobs.
The result is a relentless upward pressure on housing costs, making San Diego the eighth least affordable housing market in the nation, where only one-third of our households can afford the average-priced home. With only 26 percent of new homes priced below $300,000 and an apartment vacancy rate bottoming out at 2.2 percent, our moderate and low-income population are hit the hardest.
Non-affordability and non-availability are today's perilous realities. They constitute "the biggest long-term threat to our economy," warns Gail Scott, president of the San Diego County Apartment Association. A recent San Diego Union-Tribune editorial puts it more bluntly: "A housing disaster is upon us."

A divided city
In 1972, the city of San Diego established a "Balanced Communities Policy" to promote social and economic balance in all San Diego communities, but without the tools necessary to implement it. The outcome? 95 percent of all low-income housing units built in the city in the last nine years were built in communities (mostly south of Interstate 8) with already high concentrations of low-income housing, worsening social and economic segregation. If this trend continues, San Diego will, tragically, become a front-runner in our nation's list of segregated cities.
The issue, then, is twofold. We have an acute deficit of affordable housing and an equally acute need for the equitable distribution of affordable housing throughout the city. inclusionary housing is a unique planning mechanism that addresses both aspects of the housing crisis by increasing the supply of affordable housing while fostering balanced communities. Moreover, it does the job in a way that actually minimizes disruption, community opposition and development uncertainties.

Under an inclusionary housing program, affordable units (usually 15 percent to 20 percent of a project or community) are constructed and occupied concurrently with market-rate units, avoiding the stigma associated with lower-priced housing and minimizing NIMBY responses. The benefits of reducing the spatial mismatch between jobs and housing for low-wage earners are manifold, ranging from improved access to jobs for all workers, to equal educational opportunities for students, to reduction in commuting time and traffic congestion, and an increase in stability and vitality of our communities.
It should not be surprising, then, that at least 75 localities in California have established inclusionary housing policies; and on our own homefront, 11 localities in San Diego County have chosen inclusionary housing as part of their housing strategy. These include Carlsbad, Chula Vista, Coronado, Oceanside, Vista and Solana Beach. Although inclusionary housing programs may vary widely they are consistently among the most effective strategies for local governments to increase the supply of affordable housing and promote balanced communities.
Nevertheless, the opposition of developers has limited this option in the city of San Diego. What can be done to neutralize their concerns?

The strategic choice for local governments under these political circumstances is to develop inclusionary housing programs that are less objectionable to the building industry, i.e., to develop programs that provide cost-offsets. With cost-offsets developers are provided with financial assistance, regulatory relief and flexibility in the attempt to counter the costs they incur in providing inclusionary units, and ensure that their economic and business objectives are not unduly compromised.
Inclusionary housing policies can be phased in, allowing developers to calculate costs in their land acquisition plans. In other words, the inclusionary housing program can be made politically and economically feasible.

Inclusionary housing, standing alone, will not solve our affordable housing crisis. A truly serious effort to address the needs of lower-income populations must call upon a more comprehensive range of tools and remedies. Nevertheless, inclusionary housing remains an invaluable technique to produce a significant number of affordable units and implement the balanced communities policy of the city.
It is up to us to demand an immediate, solid and productive follow-up from our representatives.

San Diego needs a housing policy SD UT Letters to Editor 7/4/200
Re "A larger venue for affordable housing" (Opinion, June 30)
NORMA DAMASHEK La Jolla

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Recent articles in The San Diego-Union Tribune have sung the praises of tourism as "San Diego's big-bucks pal," an industry that not only pays its way but also realizes a tidy profit for the city. Such praise was based on the findings of a study commissioned by the San Diego Taxpayers Association and prepared by CIC Research of San Diego. The conclusion of the report was that, given the benefits to the city, subsidies to the tourism industry -- specifically the Convention and Visitors Bureau (ConVis) -- should be increased.
The release of the report was strategically timed to coincide with the presentation of the proposed city budget to City Council for the fiscal year 2000. The budget proposes an additional $2.3 million for tourism promotion and services, an increase of 21 percent over last year's allocation.

On the other hand, most other visitor-oriented programs funded through tourist dollars, that is, the hotel surcharge known as Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) -- show much smaller increases. Neighborhood-based art and cultural programs, most of them in the city's poorer neighborhoods, will receive even less of an increase. Is this preferential treatment really warranted?
Before we can answer that question we must first evaluate the impacts of the tourism industry on the San Diego economy beyond its stated contribution to the city budget. A recent report prepared by SANDAG, "Creating Prosperity for the San Diego Region," pointed out that the major problem with the San Diego economy is that our standard of living, measured by real per capita income, is lower than that of the state and the nation.
According to the report, "visitor industry services" -- one of region's most important economic sectors -- pays wages that are at the bottom of the pay scale. The average annual wage of tourism workers was $12,798 in 1996, up $106 from the 1990 $12,692 average.

The picture emerging from the SANDAG report is that of an industry, heavily subsidized by the public, that pays its workers rock-bottom wages and actively contributes to reduced economic prosperity and a lower standard of living. Wages in the tourism industry are not living wages that make it possible for a family to make ends meet. For example, a family of four with two parents working full-time minimum-wage jobs will earn about $21,000. Average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $780 a month or 45 percent of their gross income. If they want to have any money for health care, child care, education and other necessities they can only afford to pay 25 percent of their gross income for rent. Imagine the problems of a single-parent making even $10 an hour!
As a consequence, many working families have to rely on taxpayer-funded social services to survive. Many fall victim to problems that plague poor neighborhoods, like low scholastic achievement and high crime levels. Instead of invigorating the economy, they find themselves adding further to public costs. Instead of helping to revitalize their neighborhood they might be forced to move time after time in search of cheaper rents.
We can see, then, that the financial benefits touted by the tourism industry tell only part of the story. A closer look at the other side of the ledger forces us to draw different conclusions. While the tourism industry might look like "a big-bucks pal" for the city when viewed simply in terms of revenue, it looms as a potential long-term liability when considered through the larger lens of a cost vs. benefit analysis.

What to do? The answer does not lie in either/or solutions like cutting existing tourism subsidies or, as some people advocate, providing public support only toward the creation of jobs in high- paying industries such as high-tech or biotech. Quite the contrary, the region's economic health requires a well-balanced range of jobs. But in order for low-paid workers, like those in the burgeoning tourism industry, to contribute to and not drain the economy, we must insist that they receive a living wage and health and other benefits.
If our goal is, as the SANDAG reports states, "a rising standard of living for all of our residents," then it makes sense to establish a policy based on the straightforward principle that significant subsidies to a private industry must be tied to significant concessions on the part of that industry to benefit the public. More specifically, we should:

These proposals might seem radical for a city as conservative as San Diego. They might seem unrealistic especially in light of the power wielded by the downtown establishment -- largely composed of tourism operators. They will certainly be challenged by tourism officials as unfair, unworkable and detrimental to the city's economic growth. They will respond to these suggestions by pointing out that the 10.5 percent TOT tax is, indeed, their contribution to the city. They will argue that their rates are based on the market and that, without the TOT, they could charge 10.5 percent more. True. But they forget two things:
First, the additional tourists that ConVis marketing presumably brings to their hotels are an added benefit that they would not receive without the TOT.
Second, all cities have a TOT, and most major tourism destination cities charge higher TOT taxes than San Diego. Houston charges 17 percent, Seattle 15.6 percent, Anaheim 15 percent, Los Angeles 14 percent, Chicago 14.9 percent and New York 13.25 percent, to name a few.

A lower TOT means higher profits for San Diego hotel operators, lower tax revenues for the city and therefore fewer services for its citizens. Surely, San Diego is justified in demanding, and getting, a good deal in return.

Incomplete facts promote union control of economy SD UT Letters to Editor 6/3/99
Re: "Tourism's low wages raise questions about allocation of hotel tax revenues" (Opinion, May 19)
STEPHEN A. ZOLEZZI Food & Beverage Association San Diego

SCOTT BARNETT SD County Taxpayers Association KARIMA ZAKI Chairman-elect, ConVis
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The one truly great resource that lies embedded in the core areas of most American cities is their "sense of place," that unexpected amalgam of historic buildings, parks, civic squares, folklore, characters and events that shape and give meaning to the older parts of cities. Here lies the magic that draws people to leave their cul de sac homes in the suburbs. More important today, here is where people are returning to live amidst the excitement of old buildings and new experiences.
Although its history does not span the centuries of some of America's earlier cities, San Diego does have an older business district surrounded by exciting communities -- the Gaslamp Quarter, Little Italy, East Village, etc. -- that inherently possess some of that magic: layers of buildings and streets constructed in different eras, blending together to create a unique and desirable place. These surprising and wonderful niches in our urban landscape are only created in a kind of natural evolution of people and architecture -- here lies their value. Such places cannot simply be manufactured under the rubric of "redevelopment."

As all American cities undergo revitalization, we must ask ourselves: what exactly do we mean by "redevelopment?" Some recent downtown redevelopment "success stories" have a disturbing sub-text to them, one that causes architects and planners to shake their heads in frustration and write books with titles like "Variations on a Theme Park" or "The McDonaldization of Society." The upshot of these books is that the urge to view profit and revenue generation as the main barometer of downtown redevelopment may, in the next generation, leave America with a bunch of simulated downtowns that are no different from theme parks.
San Diego is about to enter perhaps the most important moment of its downtown redevelopment era. Several of the city's oldest districts are facing change -- the waterfront at North Embarcadero; Seaport Village and Convention Center expansion; the Santa Fe Rail station and the proposed neighboring public library; the revitalization of East Village and possible construction of a new baseball stadium there.

Much of the dialogue about these projects has focused on whether or not they are financially feasible. The bottom line has been -- if they can pay for themselves and bring consumers downtown, then let's call that "redevelopment." We would suggest that the merits of downtown redevelopment ought not to solely rest upon the financial success or failure of projects, but rather on whether the projects make a contribution to downtown as a living and working space for all San Diegans. This brings us to the question of the baseball stadium proposed for East Village, and being promoted as a catalyst for redevelopment which would include new offices, shopping and hotels.
Why would a ballpark generate a demand for office or hotels? If there is demand for those uses, they could be accommodated in other parts of downtown without the huge subsidies that they will receive in the ballpark district. But let's assume for the sake of argument that the ballpark will make those uses possible; a second question arises: Is "redevelopment" here to be measured only by the number of dollars generated per square foot of space? This might be a sufficient measure for a suburban location, but we would argue that it is not for the historic downtown setting, which already has an invaluable resource, itself. By their nature, and whether you call them parks or stadiums, ballparks tend to be enclosed fortresses that wall off a game which people pay to see, from the surroundings, where those who have not paid or cannot pay will nonetheless experience the glaring floodlights and traffic congestion.

Further, a stadium houses a short-term event that lasts a few hours. What occurs in them and around them on a daily and nightly basis? Drive around the new stadium districts in Baltimore or Phoenix when there is no game, and you will find the districts virtually deserted. The East Village redevelopment project centered on the ballpark will wipe out almost all existing buildings, some of historical value, and interrupt 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th avenues in their march toward the bay. It will also halt the flow of energy emanating from the Gaslamp, leading to further congestion in that area. To the north, it will block city dwellers' views to the bay, and on the eastern side, behind the proposed office buildings, surface parking and parking garages will ring the project, sealing off that area from the rest of downtown.
Jane Jacobs, in her book "Death and Life of Great American Cities," arguably the greatest book written in this country on urban planning and design, attacked the big urban renewal projects of her time, calling them, "hostile islands ... that seldom aid the city areas around them, as in theory they are supposed to do." In her chapter on "The Need for Aged Buildings," she emphasized their importance, not so much from an aesthetic point of view, but from an economic one.
While new buildings can be afforded only by national chain stores or corporate offices, older buildings offer lower rents to those uses that bring vitality to a neighborhood or downtown, making possible the "intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially." This was the basic principle behind the existing Center City Development Corporation plan for the East Village that proposed a mixture of what Jacobs called "primary uses," residential and commercial. Further, from a regional perspective, East Village was the place where a good portion of the residential growth of the city was going to be accommodated, reducing the pressure for suburban sprawl. Now much of it will be pre- empted by the project.

Redevelopment was occurring already, perhaps in the best way possible, through the gradual expansion of business and residence from the Gaslamp Quarter eastward. A recent special advertisement supplement to The San Diego Union-Tribune, "Downtown," pointed out that in East Village: "Produce distribution warehouses are giving way to architecture studios, art galleries and software companies. Vacant lots are becoming live-and-work lofts and row homes." This market-based approach is not fast enough, we are told. What is fast enough? And to accelerate its pace will we destroy one of the few places left that can be infused with a sense of place? And spend $275 millions of public money to boot? And use the power of eminent domain so that people who already live and work in this area, in Jacob's magistral words, can be "pushed about, expropriated and uprooted, much as if they were the subjects of a conquering power."?
We are not against redevelopment or the use of eminent domain when absolutely necessary. We are against it when used to actually destroy what makes downtown special. We are also concerned about using $50 million of CCDC funds for a project such as this. That money could go a long way in aiding East Village to grow organically. East Village does not need another isolated piece of large-scale infrastructure, but rather, like the Gaslamp Quarter, a pedestrian scale mix of residence and business that will allow it to be what it is meant to be: a downtown living and working space that opens onto the bay.

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On June 2, the voters of San Diego will decide the fate of the expansion of the San Diego Convention Center. It is a momentous decision. It is momentous because the vote is about much more than the expansion itself. It is about whether we want to continue to subsidize that part of the economy, largely based on tourism, that generates primarily low-wage jobs, especially at a time when the city is facing a budget crisis of huge proportions.

One of the most important challenges facing our city & our quality of life is the decline of an already low per-capita income when compared with the state and the nation. Thus the question for voters is whether we should pay at least $216 million to subsidize an industry that will drag even lower an already low and declining per-capita income.
The recently released draft of the San Diego Regional Economic Prosperity Strategy, prepared by SANDAG and an advisory committee, contains a table of annual payroll per employee for major industries in the San Diego region. Not only is the visitor industry services the lowest by far at $11,786 in 1996, but it has declined 7 percent from 1990.

That the public should subsidize the convention center not only seems unfair at some basic level, but it is at odds with existing policy, made necessary by the post-Proposition 13 environment of fiscal constraint, that those who stand to benefit from public improvements must help pay for them. The following are just a few examples of current policies derived from this principle:

This practice that increasingly makes beneficiaries pay, while necessary, has not been sufficient to stabilize the finances of the city. The recent recession caused a drop in city revenues, and at the same time the state drained property taxes from local governments to help balance its own budget. The result for the past few years has been an annual budget shortfall of about $40 million. Instead of confronting the problem head-on, the City Council avoided coming to terms with it and made up the deficit by selling city land. Now we are running out of land to sell. As a result, we face the harsh reality of either raising taxes or cutting local services.
A sign of things to come is the recent flare over, in the words of the chairman of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, the city "stealing funds" from the Center City Development Corp. "to support general fund activities." It is in this context that we need to judge the use of general fund dollars to pay for expansion of the convention center. Proponents claim that the expansion will be paid for with the transient occupancy tax (TOT, paid by hotel guests) generated by additional conventioneers. But, if the direct beneficiaries of the expansion -- the hotels, restaurants, shops and property owners downtown -- would pay their fair share, then TOT money would flow into the general fund where it is urgently needed for police and fire protection, parks and recreation, libraries, etc.

As reported in The San Diego Union-Tribune, one of the supporters of the convention center told an audience in San Carlos at a recent debate: "You should thank God every night that you have got the tourist tax (TOT) to take care of the many expenses that you'd be paying otherwise." He had it wrong. If Proposition A passes, the visitor industry will thank God and the voters of San Diego, for taking care of the convention center expenses that it would be "paying otherwise."
The convention center expansion, as with the stadium expansion, is a classic example of what historian David Landes has called "An old story: Privatize the gains, socialize the costs." In other words, while the financial benefits of the expansion will flow primarily to the hotel, shop, restaurant and property owners downtown, the rest of us will pay for its costs and assume its risks. A defeat of Proposition A would tell the City Council that the voters of San Diego have seen through the "it is good for all of us" rhetoric and understand that it would be a taxpayer-subsidized windfall for the businesses and land owners in the downtown area. A "No" vote would tell the council to find ways to distribute fairly the costs and benefits of any convention center expansion.

Proponents would like the voters to believe that the convention center expansion is a "no brainer." As far as their interests are concerned, it is. Voters should know better. Hopefully, they will prove David Landes' dictum wrong, that "you can fool some businessmen some of the time, politicians much of the time, and voters almost all the time."

Expansion would bring new money to the city SD UT Letters to Editor 5/29/98 pB9
Re: ""Privatize gains, socialize costs" (Opinion, May 27)
FRED WILLIS Solana Beach

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Redevelopment is an enticing planning tool and, when used well, can help revitalize blighted areas. It is enticing, because through eminent-domain powers, government can force unwilling property owners to sell their land if needed for redevelopment. More important, the great majority of future property tax increases revert to the redevelopment agency and are not shared with school districts, county government and the rest of the city.
Powerful stuff that, according to state law, can be used only when the area cannot otherwise be revitalized. If applied to an area with healthy demand for land where real estate values would increase even without redevelopment, school districts and the county essentially get robbed of property tax increases, as do the remaining areas of the city. To make things worse, other areas of the city would also lose economic activity to the redevelopment area because of the better infrastructure and the subsidies made possible through tax increment financing. It seems, then, that under those circumstances, redevelopment should not be used.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening in San Diego's North Bay, where 1,400 acres of mostly commercial land are about to be declared a Redevelopment Area. Now, North Bay (generally the Midway, Rosecrans, Sports Arena area) is not Fashion Valley, but it can't be denied that, on the whole, it is a commercially vibrant area. It is also the site of the bay-to-bay canal, proposed by the mayor a few years ago. Actually, it is a bay-to-San Diego River canal. To expand it to Mission Bay would require the channelization of the San Diego River, a huge expenditure and a probable environmental disaster.
It is interesting that the redevelopment area is being put on a fast track, at a time when the city's General Plan is finally being reviewed and updated, providing the instrument to make decisions rationally. Given the priorities that the city is facing now, it is puzzling that such a proposal would be even considered. As a citizens finance committee of many years ago lamented: "Without a systematic approach, it is unlikely resources will be distributed fairly among the the city's communities, or that citywide needs will be addressed properly."
The North Bay proposal is another egregious example of a city where decisions are made on grounds of political expediency only. It is bad planning, inequitable, environmentally unsound and probably illegal.

Stop kowtowing to the downtown developers SD UT Letters to Editor 4/30/98
Re: "Redevelopment robs area of tax revenues" (letters, April 23):
R.C. FORSYTHE Normal Heights

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There is no denying that San Diego has been blessed with a bounty of natural delights. But it is not only our temperate climate and magnificent coastline that make this city a great place to live, work and visit. Our enviable quality of life is, in fact, the result of decades of community planning and "pay-as-you-grow" policies, judicious zoning enforcement, hard-won environmental regulations and citizen involvement in the political decision-making process. Through these efforts, we have successfully accommodated rapid economic and population growth without seriously damaging our unique public assets.

But storm clouds are gathering. Recent political actions concerning a variety of issues are, or should be, serious warnings that our city's growth-guiding strategies are being sacrificed on the altar of business and the development industry.
How is this happening? In a single-minded effort to make the city "business friendly," the city is rolling back growth-management measures and moving to gut environmental protections -- vital safeguards that ensure not only the protection of our resources, but that growth pays for itself. Put simply, interests promoting rapid, unmanaged growth are trying to regain control of our city. The growth industry is leveraging the tough economic times San Diego, and the rest of Southern California, experienced during the early 1990s, blatantly misrepresenting the area's recession as a result of "overregulation."
This strategy has unfortunately proved successful, providing these business and development interests with sufficient political cover to attack environmental protections and growth- management measures that have successfully maintained our quality of life throughout years of both recession and expansion, through good times and bad.

Here is a brief sampling of recent official actions that illustrate this ominous trend:

To meet current and future requirements, the city badly needs to provide new sewer and water infrastructure, as well as to replace deteriorating facilities that break down on a regular basis. But where is the money to come from? (The city budget is ostensibly bare when it comes to financing these desperately needed improvements.) Sewer rates were increased five years ago. Last year, the City Council attempted to raise rates yet again, but an incensed public squelched the plan, thus postponing desperately needed water and sewer improvements. Against this background, the council's June 25 decision to cut desperately needed water and sewer capacity charges by 50 percent is perplexing, to say the least.
The estimated revenue losses resulting from this cut will total more than $21 million per year, an amount which, City Manager Jack McGrory assured the council, can be offset by greater efficiency and reduced inflation and bond rate assumptions. But this begs the question: If developers are no longer paying the costs for new water and sewer facilities needed to meet the increased demand generated by their projects, who will pay? The answer, regrettably, is we, the ratepayers, through future increased fees, or we, the public, through crumbling and substandard infrastructure and lower quality of life. The City Council has cut in half another fee -- the "linkage" fee -- which helps development pay for the costs of growth. So called because economic studies have shown the link, the nexus, between new commercial development and the increased need for low-income housing, the linkage fee is paid by the developers who create this housing need in the first place. The courts have ruled on and upheld the legality of this linkage, but it should be self-evident: Many of the jobs created by new shopping centers, hotels, even giant, gleaming office towers, are filled by low-paid employees.
We know that even for our school teachers and restaurant chefs, the San Diego housing market is decidedly difficult. How much more so for stock clerks, secretaries and chambermaids? Without development paying for a small portion of the need they create, the San Diego housing crisis will worsen, all in the name of being "business friendly." One of San Diego's most important amenities is its waterfront. "Without access to the waterfront," stated a recent newsletter of the citizen group C-3, "San Diego is denied its reason for being." Showing casual disregard for this common sentiment, the City Council has approved plans to expand the existing Convention Center in a manner that doubles its already imposing bulk and results in the virtual obstruction of 2,000 feet of waterfront property, making already difficult waterfront access practically impossible.
Add to these plans the three proposed waterfront hotels needed to serve the expansion, and the city will have destroyed -- with Port District complicity -- what the public considers to be the most important amenity of downtown San Diego. City officials proclaim that certain economic benefits will accrue to San Diego as a result of the expansion, such as the creation of new jobs and the annual infusion of millions of dollars into the local economy. But the majority of those jobs will be low-paying, and, compared to other cities, we already have a disproportionate number of low- paying jobs. It seems clear that spending $390 million of public money and destroying the waterfront, only to lower the economic prosperity of the region, is a bad investment.
And given the facts that national demand for convention space has been essentially flat for the past few years; and the city already subsidizes the existing Convention Center to the tune of about $4 million a year, curious, considering its recent "hands-off," deregulatory frenzy, it strains credibility to assert that the proposed expansion is such a good deal for the city.
The expansion of the Convention Center benefits a politically powerful coalition of the tourism industry and downtown land owners. For the rest of us, the expansion means a destroyed waterfront, an expenditure of $390 million that could be better spent to fix our crumbling infrastructure. To add insult to injury, our city officials have willfully bypassed a vote of the people for this risky and expensive proposition. Less visible than a Convention Center edifice, but perhaps more dangerous, are the behind-the- scenes, "business-friendly" changes that have been enacted in the way the city is run. City departments and personnel have been decimated, moved and reorganized in order to expedite the processing of plans, provide "regulatory relief" and foster economic development.
The movement of many of the Planning Department's responsibilities to the Department of Development Services is revealing of the change in the city's philosophy and approach toward growth. Permit applications, once carefully reviewed by planners for their consistency with community plans and standards of quality, are now signed off by computer intake workers. As a result, the community is cut out of the development-review process and regulations are missed or overlooked. Meanwhile, the city's zoning code regulations are being rewritten under the direction of a "citizens advisory committee" consisting of the city's powerful development interests. Public hearings and notices have been scaled back considerably, and the public voice in community matters has been decisively silenced.
In sum, the regulatory process, which should ensure the maintenance of the quality of life in our city in the face of development, has been transformed into a mechanism to process applications for development approval as quickly as possible. San Diegans want the kind of growth that will improve the economic prosperity of the city, protect our natural and built environment and provide our neighborhoods with the public facilities and amenities that should accompany development. What San Diegans want and expect from our city officials is that they act in the public interest to guide and shape growth and development.

City seems interested only in growth and the economy SD UT Letters to Editor 8/6/96 pB7
Re: "Paying for business-friendly' policies" (Opinion, July 28):
CATHERINE A. STROHLEIN San Diego

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HERE'S THE DEAL The Buying and Selling of a Great American City
auth. Ross Miller, Knopf 302pp $27.50
I thought I was going to enjoy reading "Here's the Deal," an investigative history of the wheeling and dealing surrounding the attempts to redevelop a block smack in the middle of downtown Chicago, right next to City Hall, the State of Illinois building and Marshall Field's flagship store. After more than 30 years of effort, and millions of dollars made and lost, Block 37 stands empty. Ross Miller tells us why -- "in all its daunting details" as he concludes at the end of the book.
Daunting indeed. It's hard to keep track of the hundreds of characters that come and go, the numerous flashbacks, the complex deals and the Machiavellian plots that crowd more than 300 pages of text. Though there are entertaining pages, as when the major characters such as Mayor Richard J. Daley or Arthur Rubloff, a colorful development mogul who labeled himself "Mr. Real Estate," are described. But the rest is, to use again Miller's own words, "gigantic intricacy."

At the root of this gigantic intricacy is the politically privileged status of downtowns in the United States, where a "growth coalition" of Central Business District (CBD) real estate and merchant interests, politicians, metropolitan newspapers, downtown financial interests and often construction unions has almost free rein. Under such circumstances, public and private goals become indistinguishable, and government powers and money are used to entice growth and development in the CBD.
Such public involvement takes place at two levels. At a general level, in an effort to prop up property values, large civic projects such as sports arenas, convention centers, stadiums, baseball halls of fame, civic centers, aquariums and the like, are built with public money to bring economic activities downtown. Separate redevelopment agencies (such as the city of San Diego Centre City Development Corp.) are often formed and financed through self-financing mechanisms that tap into downtown real estate taxes. Such downtown-fixated redevelopment usually comes at the expense of the lower-income neighborhoods in or around downtowns.

At the single-project level, land is taken away from small private landowners through the power of eminent domain, assembled, improved and then sold at a discount, a "write down", to large developers. The greater the public subsidy, the zoning concessions, the tax abatements, the write-downs, the greater the windfall for the developer. Under these circumstances, public and private interests become blurred. In the case of the notoriously corrupt city of Chicago, the private side can even usurp functions that are generally associated with the public sector.
For example, in "Here's the Deal" we learn how in the 1970s "Mr. Real Estate" tried to get a joint venture going to develop Block 37, and in the process promised tax concessions, "off the record", to possible partners, hired architects to develop plans for the north loop and Block 37 (which at the time neither he nor the city owned) and unveiled scale models, while City Hall stood silently on the sideline. When a model of the redeveloped North Loop was completed, "the developer gallantly invited the entire Central Area Committee for an advance look.

It should be mentioned that Daley, who in his earlier years had commanded city decision-making institutions and resources in a systematic way, became less effective after his shameful behavior at the 1968 Democratic Convention, opening the door to private developers like Rubloff. In a sense, this book is a chronicle of the shift from an era in which a strong mayor was in control of an agenda that served both his interests and those of business, to a period of political fragmentation and an indecisive public sector.
Daley's death put an end to the Rubloff charade. A new character, Charles Shaw, situated himself in the middle, between the city and entrepreneurial business interests, as Rubloff had done before. In the meantime the properties on Block 37, condemned but not yet acquired by the city, kept going up in price, doubling their value several times over. And so it went, developers being superseded by more politically connected adversaries, all hoping to make it big through the city's write-down of the land. But two mayors' deaths in office (Daley and Harold Washington), attempts at balancing the interests of downtown with those of the neighborhoods (Washington), condemnation and historic preservation lawsuits and vacillating bureaucracies all delayed the condemnation, acquisition and demolition of the properties.

During the 1980s, as easy money fueled a speculative frenzy in the office market, millions of square feet of office space came on the market all around Block 37 without government subsidies. When the bubble burst in 1990, before construction could begin, it was the market that stopped, perhaps mercifully, the story of Block 37. The developers now own land that is worth much less that the "write down" price of $12,583,430 they paid for. With a vacancy of 25 percent in office space and practically "not a single truly solvent building, with a healthy cash flow from rent, in an American downtown," Block 37 is destined to remain vacant for a long time. (Office buildings in Chicago now sell for about a third of their original cost; in San Diego, half.)
With property values in American downtowns drastically reduced, what can we expect government to do? Given the unchecked power of downtown coalitions, we can expect even greater efforts to bring economic activities downtown (more convention center expansions, stadiums, libraries and other civic projects), greater subsidies to private development, and even less money for the neighborhoods.

If you want to know more about the wheeling and dealing that goes on to extract more value from downtown land, about "this great American moneymaking machine about which most Americans, strangely enough, know nothing," read "Here's the Deal." But be forewarned: You will need at least some rudimentary knowledge of real estate vocabulary, love of detail and a strong stomach.

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Recently the Board of Supervisors, led by East County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, recommended that private land be excluded from the 80,000-acre San Dieguito River Valley Park. Now Jacob wants to do the same for the Multiple Species Conservation Planning (MSCP) area. In both cases, multiyear, multimillion-dollar planning efforts -- critical for the long-term maintenance of our quality of life -- are being seriously threatened. The reason given by Jacobs is: "The government should not be forcing property owners or taking their land from them."
Such a statement is outrageous on two counts: The implications of the possibility of excluding private property from planning efforts are worrisome, for it would eliminate the ability of government to plan for the public good, essentially meaning a return to the laissez-faire of the 19th century. Is this what the public really wants?
It might be helpful to remember that these days we engage in urban planning, government intervention in the ordering of the urban environment, because we rejected the unregulated laissez-faire system of the 19th century. While laissez-faire helped unleash hugely productive forces, it also generated tremendous problems. Boom and bust cycles shook American society to its very foundations, labor strife was rampant, vast monopolies bilked the public, stock fraud was common. The cities that grew as part of this system were, according to urban historian Lewis Mumford, the worst ever produced in the history of mankind, places so foul and overcrowded that epidemics of all sorts decimated the population on a regular basis.
If you really want to know how bad things were, you should read Upton Sinclair's novels.

Slowly, at the turn of the century, business, unions and government came together to find mutually beneficial ways to limit the excesses of the market, i.e., to replace the ideology of laissez-faire and social Darwinism with the idea of a responsible social order. The business community was willing to tolerate a certain amount of regulation for a more predictable economic environment. In fact, business, in large part, spearheaded this movement.
The same approach was applied to the urban sphere. Government land-use controls such as zoning and subdivision regulations spread rapidly, because they met the needs of business for control and predictability by making the city more functional and efficient, and because they allayed the fears of homeowners who wanted to protect their property values by keeping away unwanted land uses.
A major ideological shift had occurred. After a period when land was treated solely as a commodity, Americans realized that land is a bundle of rights and responsibilities, a social resource as well as a private right. Urban planning is the process through which those two conflicting values get mediated. It is a political process strewn with difficulties, conflicts, compromises, but it is the only path through which a predictable, efficient, orderly, equitable and aesthetic environment can be achieved -- prerequisite not only for a high quality of life, but for an efficient business climate.

To yank private land out of the MSCP and San Dieguito River Park planning processes is to render planning meaningless. Imagine, for example, if New York politicians had eliminated private property from the planning process that led to the establishment of Central Park. There would be no Central Park. Imagine New York without Central Park. It would negate the collective democratic process through which we as a community chart our future.
Both the San Dieguito and the MSCP planning processes have been highly participatory and representative. As such, they have mediated between different groups and group interests. Take the MSCP for example. Both environmentalists and developers are working together to protect endangered species and their habitats while ensuring predictability and certainty in the development process.

Then how can we explain Jacob's behavior? Politicians tend to focus their attention on short-term issues that may have a direct bearing on the next election instead of planning for the long-term future. They are compelled to pursue the interests of vocal and politically connected groups rather than the interests of the entire community. Riding the recent "property rights" wave that has engulfed the country, Jacobs might think that East County voters will applaud her stance, which ostensibly protects their property rights. Some property owners might be pleased, but when the rest of the voters understand that her actions reduce the opportunity to maintain existing open space in perpetuity, thus increasing both their quality of life and their property values, they might think otherwise.
When voters learn that "property rights" initiatives benefit only a few at the expense of the many, they will repudiate them. In Arizona last year, voters defeated Proposition 300, the first state-level ballot initiative that supposedly would have protected property rights. It was supported by the National Association of Realtors, various mining companies and the National Cattlemen's Association. They outspent the opposing grass-roots campaign 3 to 1; yet they lost, resoundingly.

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We were part of a crowd of more than 100 University City residents who protested the widening of Genesee Avenue at a recent meeting of the University City Community Planning Group (UCPG). During our professional lives we have found ourselves many times in the same position as the UCPG and city of San Diego transportation planners found themselves that night, being faced by residents protesting a land use change or a transportation project. That evening, however, we were on the other side.
Had the NIMBY bug fogged our professional judgment? After all, the University City Community Plan calls for not only widening Genesee but also connecting Regents Road with a bridge over Rose Canyon to connect South and North University City. Those improvements were called for because, as all planners know, increases in land-use intensities will generate more traffic and, to avoid congestion, the capacity of the road network needs to be expanded. A perfect engineering solution to the transportation problem.

But such a solution, planners are starting to realize, is single-minded. It ignores everything else that affects our quality of life: community cohesiveness and interaction, nature, air quality, a sense of place, the viability of alternative means of transportation, the pedestrian and the street. For decades, we have planned and built our cities and suburbs, not for people but for cars, and we have transformed streets into highways by focusing our attention on increasing road capacity to accommodate ever-increasing traffic.
The net result is that, in spite of new road construction, accessibility to places decreases -- together with a worsening of our quality of life. (The average commute time in San Diego County has lengthened during the 1980s, increasing from 19.5 minutes in 1980 to 22.2 minutes in 1990). Recently, urban and transportation planners have started to call for a new balance that seeks to integrate seemingly opposite forces, auto and pedestrian, environment and development, community and mobility.

In 1991, Congress passed a major piece of legislation, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), which provides the framework for a healthy and sustainable transportation system. According to transport policy analyst Donald Camp, ISTEA is characterized by, among other things:

ISTEA is not an isolated attempt to harmonize transportation and community design. It is emblematic of a wider movement in urban planning, called neotraditionalism or new urbanism, that seeks to substitute the leap-frogging, low-density, automobile dependent, single-use pattern of development of the post-World War II period with functionally and socially integrated systems of streets and public spaces. Traditional neighborhood design can help us move from isolation and congestion to community and human scale, a modern version of the traditional town.
Widening Genesee Avenue to six lanes, spoiling much of its trees and vegetation, whisking high volumes of traffic through intersections that are used by large numbers of school children and the elderly, runs counter to this overdue holistic approach to transportation planning. Instead, it continues the old approach of making cars happy at the expense of people.
Genesee Avenue is already a knife that cuts across our community core. Widening it to six lanes will entice even more drivers trying to avoid I-805 and La Jolla Village Drive when driving from the south to University Town Center and Costa Verde shopping centers and the office core in the Golden Triangle. It would be a fatal blow for South University City.

It is time for the current engineering approach to the widening of roads to be replaced by an approach that incorporates citizens' concerns for the livability of their community. University City residents already have stated that they prefer to maintain the existing road even if it means more congestion, as opposed to a six-lane "mini-freeway" carrying more traffic at higher speeds.
It is time to start choosing people and communities over cars.

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A recent report of the Coalition for San Diego Business and the Greater Chamber of Commerce, "Restoring San Diego's Economy," compared the county's competitiveness to 20 other metropolitan areas. Can you guess which factor was, by far, the most detrimental to our economic competitiveness? Not state taxes, high wages nor industrial leases, but the high cost of housing.
In an attempt to help meet the need for affordable housing, San Diego City Council recently approved in concept the Inclusionary Housing Program, which would require developers to provide in their projects a percentage of housing affordable to households making less than 80 percent of median income ($33,100 for a family of four). It is a step in the right direction.

Inclusionary housing will not solve the homeless problem nor eliminate the problem of the more than 34,000 families in the city of San Diego who pay more than 50 percent of their income for rent. By itself, it will not solve the housing affordability problem of San Diego, one of the least affordable markets in the nation, when housing costs and incomes are compared.
But, it will make 5 percent of new rental housing affordable to families making 50 percent of the median income (the secretaries, the nurses' aids and the account clerks), and 10 percent of new ownership housing affordable to families making between 50 and 80 percent of the median income. A developer can earn a density bonus within the development by increasing the percentage of affordable units to 10 percent and 20 percent respectively, providing hundreds of affordable units every year.
Inclusionary housing is part of a multifaceted approach to meeting the city's housing needs that have not been met though the market. Inclusionary housing is, as Mayor Susan Golding has stated, only "one aspect of the overall solution to our affordable housing problem." It is, however, an essential and effective component of the city's overall strategy.

It is not surprising that localities are increasingly turning to inclusionary housing policies to meet the affordability housing challenge. Under New Jersey's Inclusionary Housing Program, for example, developers have provided tens of thousands of affordable units. In California, AB 1684, a bill that would require builders to include 10 percent affordable housing in their projects, recently passed the State Assembly. At least 53 California localities have adopted inclusionary programs, producing more than 20,000 affordable units, with the bulk of them constructed in the last 10 years. Locally, Chula Vista, Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista have already adopted inclusionary housing requirements. In the great majority of these cases, developers are not offered any offsets for the additional cost that inclusionary housing requirements entail.
Unlike most of the existing programs in the state, the proposed city of San Diego Inclusionary Program offers developers incentives -- such as zoning code reforms. According to both an experienced economic consultant hired by the city and a city-empaneled Inclusionary Housing Task Force, the incentives effectively cover the additional cost of the affordable housing.

Development representatives, however, have repudiated such a conciliatory approach and have withdrawn their support for the Inclusionary Housing Program given during the Task Force deliberations. They are concerned that they will be required to provide the affordable units, but that: 1) the offsets "at the end will disappear" or, 2) their value to developers will prove less than estimated.
These are feeble excuses. Developers are right in saying that the offsets are the necessary condition for an inclusionary housing program. But fear of their disappearance is not a good reason to oppose the inclusionary housing program. Instead, they should join with the supporters of inclusionary housing to insist that the council enact the changes that will generate the cost savings. The value of the offsets was determined by the Inclusionary Housing Task Force. That group spent nine months analyzing, critiquing and cross-examining the consultant's data, and eventually agreed (with industry representatives included in the agreement) to a balanced package of offsets and housing affordability requirements.
To ensure that the program is both effective and equitable, industry representatives should also insist that the program, as the Inclusionary Housing Task Force has recommended, be monitored, re-evaluated and adjusted every year.

While opposing inclusionary housing, industry representatives are calling for additional offsets. It is because of their opposition and request for additional offsets that the Inclusionary Housing Program was approved only in concept and further analysis requested by the council. Currently, additional assistance for developers, including the issuance of tax exempt bonds, are being discussed between city and industry representatives. Is this fair?
It is fair only if additional incentives result in a higher proportion of affordable housing. It might even be desirable. The housing crisis in San Diego is of such a magnitude that all possibilities for additional affordable units need to be explored. However, it would be unfair if San Diego developers gain from them. The council should act now to approve the original proposal. If new incentives are provided, the affordable housing standards should be raised. The lack of affordable housing is a problem that affects not only thousands of people, but also the city's economic competitiveness. Its solution requires a fair, efficient and equitable approach.

Norman Krumholz, former Cleveland planning director, to speak on "Smart Growth, Regionalism and Equity" May 16 7pm Room 140, Hardy Tower, San Diego State University. Currently president of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Krumholz is a professor at Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
Nico Calavita arranged the event as part of a series of urban development and growth presentations, said Krumholz' ability to work well with three successive mayors in Cleveland demonstrates that planners can influence public policy."It's especially important to hear him in San Diego where I think planners need to get a little bit of backbone in what they do," Calavita said. SD UT 5/7/2000 pH9

Re "Will California limit growth or choke?" (Opinion, SD UT Feb. 21): We do need to start examining the possibility of limiting growth. We need also to understand that the ultimate cause of growth is economic growth, and that, while we talk about taming sprawl, the state and localities engage in economic competition, subsidizing faster growth. Ironically, subsidies reduce the revenues necessary to maintain our quality of life in the face of growth.
Nico Calavita SD UT Letters to Editor 2/24/2000

"Downtown and Neighborhood Development: A search for balance" slide lecture
Nico Calavita, professor Urban Studies SDSU. Sponsored by Friends of San Diego Architecture
9:30am Sat. (12/7/96 ?) New School of Architecture 1249 F St SD 619.287.0050 info
SD UT 12/1/96 pH4

"The New Urbanism, Neo-Traditionalism" talk
Nico Calavita, urban planner. Hosted by Friends of San Diego Architecture.
9:30am Sat. (4/20/96 ?) New School of Architecture 1249 F St SD 619.235.4100 info
SD UT 4/14/96 pH10

Kitty Calavita, associate professor University of California Irvine
author, "Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration & the INS."

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San Diego State professor Nico Calavita, one of the original members of San Diego's Housing Trust Fund board, was replaced yesterday by Clinton Pearson, who heads a program that teaches low-income youngsters how to read. Although Calavita's term had long expired, he said he was interested in remaining on the board, which oversees the disbursement of funds for low-income housing. He said Mayor Susan Golding had never informed him that she planned to recommend the appointment of someone else to fill his spot.
The San Diego City Council voted yesterday to affirm Golding's choice of Pearson, director of the Home Instruction Program for Pre-School Youngsters. Pearson also has been involved with the Logan Heights Citizen Council, Youth Opportunity Unlimited and the San Diego Coalition for Equality.
Supporters of Calavita had speculated that his vocal opinions on affordable housing and land-use issues had doomed his reappointment. In addition to appointing Pearson, the council reappointed Jean Porter, one of the directors of Neighborhood House Association, a social service organization; and Robert Bell, a land-use attorney who has been active in the San Diego Apartment Association and the Fair Housing Council of San Diego. Like Calavita, Porter has been on the trust fund board since its inception in 1990. Affordable housing activists, already feeling insecure about wavering financial support from City Hall, are protesting Golding's decision not to reappoint Nico Calavita, one of their more forceful advocates, to the Housing Trust Fund Board.
And Calavita, a San Diego State University professor and chairman of the trust fund board, says he's miffed that Golding never informed him he was not being reappointed. (Her pick for his spot is Clinton Pearson, director of the Home Instruction Program for Pre-School Youngsters, which helps low-income youngsters learn to read.) "I don't find it unusual," Calavita said of not hearing from Golding. "I find it rude. Some people would call it a slap in the face."

The trust fund, established in 1990 to provide a permanent source of financing for low-income housing, has seen its funding raided in past years as city officials slashed budgets throughout City Hall. Several affordable-housing advocates have contacted Golding's office to voice support for Calavita, an original board member since 1990, and express displeasure with her decision. Meanwhile, the City Heights Community Development Corp. board voted last week to support Calavita's reappointment, and Councilman Harry Mathis said he advised the mayor's office that he's also backing Calavita.
Some advocates say Calavita's outspoken views on affordable housing and growth management didn't sit well with Golding. (Two other board members are being recommended for reappointment in a vote slated for today's City Council meeting. One of them, Jean Porter, has served as long as Calavita.) Pintar, Golding's press secretary, said Pearson is a very strong candidate for the trust fund board; she also said Calavita never contacted the mayor's office to express interest in remaining on the panel. "He's served on the board for some time now," Pintar said, "and the mayor has the option of appointing people who can serve equally well or better."

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SAN YSIDRO -- There is a certain innocence here that contradicts the very urban setting of a community at the foot of two interstates and the edge of two countries. Merchants greet their customers by name. Neighbors take their children to the park together. Kids run unescorted to the corner store. And for many San Ysidrans, there is a border between the countries, but no real divisions. Residents take comfort in family ties that reach into Mexico.
"Grandma baby-sits a lot," said Maria Candelaria, 34, a mother of four who has lived in San Ysidro for four years. "The kids like living here. It's very quiet. We have family in Tijuana, and it's nice to visit them," she said as her children played in a neighborhood park. "Yes, they live in Tijuana, but it's like this (San Ysidro and Mexico) is just one big place."
While this small border enclave is embraced by its residents, it is a blur to the millions of tourists who each year pass through this international gateway. And it is remembered nationally only tragically as the site of the McDonald's massacre in 1984. While this community of 26,000 could have been swallowed up by the city of San Diego long ago, it has retained its local identity. And new developments, including the creation of a business improvement district, promise to put it on the map again, in a positive light.

The idea is to convince people that San Ysidro is more than just a place to buy gas and auto insurance before heading into Mexico. It is the busiest border crossing in the world: about 24 million people traverse the Port of Entry every year. However, it is unlikely that more than a bare minority ever find their way beyond the crossing gates and into the community itself. But back off the freeway, along the side streets, San Ysidro starts to define itself. A dense concentration of more than 400 businesses, mostly mom-and-pop types, lines a two-mile stretch of San Ysidro Boulevard. And although it is one of the poorest communities, it also has some of the busiest bank branches. The institutions are kept flush by hundreds of Mexican customers who cross the border daily to deposit dollars in U.S. banks.
And despite being carved up by freeways and trolley tracks, it is one of the most closely knit communities in San Diego, said Keith Selby, a San Diego recreation center director who runs programs at the Cesar Chavez Community Center. He is also a college-educated anthropologist. "These are very traditional family groups," Selby said. "Parents are ready to volunteer their time. If you look at other places, you won't see the level of (family) attachment that you see here."

"It had become a place with no soul," said Nico Calavita, a San Diego State professor who has studied the area. "The community was shattered. But there was such a pride, a sense of self-esteem," among the residents, he said. For example, when the enormous highway projects of Interstates 5 and 805 were completed by 1975, it divided the community with acres of elevated concrete. The freeways decimated the local main drag and old commercial district. And until 1994, cross-border lawlessness proliferated. Drug and illegal immigrant smuggling terrified and frustrated residents and threatened to chase away tourists.
However, the turnaround began when the federal government initiated the get-tough Operation Gatekeeper, which helped curb the smuggling problems. Since then, the crime rate has been reduced to the point where it is comparable to neighborhoods in Kearny Mesa and Clairemont.

The town was annexed by San Diego in 1957, primarily to give the city control of the land around the Port of Entry and, ostensibly, to be developed. But townspeople have complained ever since the annexation that San Diego's political leaders dismiss San Ysidro, except as a place to dump high-density housing projects. Now San Diego is trying to rebuild the community's flagging business district. It has created a business improvement district, which levies a business tax in a cooperative effort to stimulate the economy.
The district will use those funds to hire a person to promote the community and to purchase group advertising. The initial assessments have been mailed, and the district hopes to raise about $100,000 in the first year. And developers have proposed a $192 million shopping complex featuring a pedestrian bridge across the border. The mall, near the old Virginia Street border crossing, would create jobs and a new image for the area.

However, the business district is not as important to San Ysidrans as the community's sense of home. Tom Cuen, owner of the San Ysidro Feed Store, on this day is negotiating a deal with a bulk grain saleswoman. The scent of molasses from bags of chicken feed drifts over a line of customers waiting to purchase bird food.
Cuen is a longtime resident of San Ysidro. He purchased the store 11 years ago from his father. It has been in the family since 1934, but moved to its present location, at San Ysidro Boulevard and Park Avenue, in the mid-1950s.
"Sure the town has changed a lot. I guess you would call it progress," Cuen said. "But I know almost all of my customers. They've been coming here for years. San Ysidro is still a beautiful little town."

Late 1700s About the time that Father Junipero Serra was building Franciscan missions along the coast, native Indian tribes had already long-established encampments in the area. At this point, there was no dividing line between the countries.
1848 Officials signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which established the modern border that we use as an international boundary today.
1871 Border patrol officers were assigned for the first time to guard the border.
1882 The Santa Fe Railroad depot opened in National City. Settlers took advantage of $1 cross-country fares, which sparked an unprecedented fare war and population boom across the county.
1887 The first subdivision of Tia Juana City was established just north of the border. The town site was abandoned after the floods of 1890-91.
1909 Little Lands Colony, a utopian agricultural community, was founded & it laid out town site of San Ysidro.
1916 The Lower Otay Dam failed after torrential downpours. The resulting flood wiped out the agricultural lands south of the town, destroying hopes for the Little Lands Colony.
1920s With the onset of Prohibition, nightclubs and casinos in Tijuana were attracting record numbers. Service workers lived in San Ysidro and trekked south each evening.
Early 1950s Mexico passed laws restricting the employment of Americans in Mexico. Tijuana also was experiencing a massive population growth that contributed to the border crossing becoming the busiest in the world.
1957 San Ysidro officially lost its independent identity when annexed to City of San Diego.
1967 Interstate 5 opened all the way to the border, diverting a large amount of traffic from San Ysidro Blvd, the main street through town. In same year, ground was broken for Interstate 805.
1975 Interstate 805 completed to the border, displacing most of the old commercial district.
7/18/84 Gunman James Huberty walked into a McDonald's restaurant on San Ysidro Blvd & killed 21 people while injuring 19 others. Huberty was killed by police.
10/94 Federal government started Operation Gatekeeper to tighten up the border crossing at San Ysidro.
12/98 City of San Diego established a Business Improvement District to stimulate the local economy.

TIJUANA -- There are few silver-linings in the short-term economic picture for the San Diego- Tijuana region, a San Diego State University border expert said yesterday. After examining the factors of population, economics, government and quality of life, "the implications for the future are continued economic stagnation, continued job loss throughout this year, continued population growth and continued deterioration in the quality of life," said Norris Clement, director of the U.S.- Mexico Studies program at SDSU.
Clement's comments came during a symposium of San Diego and Tijuana academicians held to examine the economic downturn faced by both cities. The future in the longer term could be much brighter, but only if San Diego and Tijuana begin planning that future together, and soon, he said. "We need a shared vision on both sides of the border of where we want to go and how we want to get there," Clement said. "We must explore the international (business) opportunities and not just NAFTA (the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada)."
At the same time, however, others pointed out the challenges facing such cooperation, citing differences not in language or culture, but in the way government works, or doesn't work, on both sides of the border. David Janssen, San Diego County chief executive officer, pointed out that there already exist some 60 county programs that could address common problems along the border, but they cannot work in conjunction with Tijuana government. "Our challenge," Janssen said, "is to think beyond what the past has given us."

The symposium was the second such event held jointly by Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), a government-supported Tijuana-based "think tank," and the Economics Department from San Diego State University. COLEF economist Eduardo Zepeda Miramontes spoke of an annual 14 percent lag in public investment per capita in the last decade in Tijuana, while his SDSU counterpart, James Gerber, told of a similar lag in the per capita increase in incomes north of the border.
"We've created jobs, but not prosperity," Gerber said. Gerber and other SDSU academicians also told of San Diego's loss of more than 53,000 jobs between 1990 and mid-1992, mainly as a result of defense cuts due to the ending of the Cold War, restructuring and shrinking of the banking industry and a reduction in the number of federal jobs. "The job losses came out of the blue sky. This is a crisis in the short-term," said Clement.
COLEF demographers spoke of Tijuana's meteoric population growth, which exceeded population growth in the rest of Baja California and Mexico as a whole between 1970 and 1990. The rapid growth was highly disordered, they said. A part of the problem, said COLEF researcher Tonatiuh Guillen, is that Tijuana's growth has spread into land controlled by the federal government, over which the municipal government has little if any legal control.

For Tijuana, then, "the challenge is not to grow, but to give order to its growth," Guillen said. Paradoxically, SDSU's John Weeks noted that while San Diego is on the border with the fastest growing city in Mexico, its own Latino population actually lags behind that of other border cities on a per capita basis. "San Diego is the largest urban area along the border, but also has the smallest percentage of Hispanic population on the U.S. side of the border," Week said.
Representatives of both institutions spoke of what COLEF's urban planning expert, Roberto Sanchez, described as "the enormous need for integral planning" of the two border cities.
Looking at San Diego's quality of life, SDSU city planning specialist Nico Calavita said that while air quality, infant mortality and use of public transit have improved, affordability of housing, highway congestion, income distribution and high school graduation rates have all worsened. "The middle class in San Diego has decreased (between 1980 and 1990)," he said. "People of very low and low-income have increased steadily." Calavita suggested formation of a report card to gauge the region's quality of life on an annual basis.

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A single mother of three, Kelly Kranz still marvels at her good fortune in landing an apartment more than three years ago in a sprawling, La Costa-area complex where rents are restricted for financially struggling families such as hers. "On a clear day," gushes the effusive Kranz, "you can see a tiny sliver of ocean" from the living room window of the airy three-bedroom apartment she shares with her three children.
It's no wonder that Kranz remains delighted with her modern $571-a-month apartment. Before moving to Carlsbad, she was living in a mice-and-roach-infested apartment in San Marcos, where the rent was determined by the vagaries of the marketplace. Kranz is the beneficiary of a nearly six-year-old ordinance enacted by the city of Carlsbad to boost the supply of affordable housing in an area that is anything but affordable.
With new condominiums selling for a median price of roughly $230,000 and an average apartment renting for $954 a month, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find an affordable place to live in Carlsbad. "People drive in here all the time, coming to look, and they kind of get upset when they don't qualify," Kranz said of the Villa Loma apartment complex. "It makes me feel good I can live in Carlsbad and not have to earn $50,000 a year, and the kids are going to good schools."

Under pressure from the state housing department to show proof that the city could in fact provide housing for low-income households, and recognizing that a voluntary approach by the building industry was unrealistic, the city decided the time had come to mandate affordability. "We started to realize that, if we didn't push developers to do their fair share, it wouldn't happen voluntarily because of the way the market is," said Debbie Fountain, Carlsbad's housing and redevelopment director. "The state was saying, `You hadn't met your obligation before, and you're going to have to show how you're going to do it now.' "
The result was an across-the-board mandate that 15 percent of all new housing in the city be affordable to families earning 80 percent of the county median income for a family of four. That translates to an annual income of $42,000. (For housing projects less than seven units, builders have the option of paying a fee.) While the affordable housing has been slow in coming, the current development boom in Carlsbad is clearly accelerating the pace of construction. This year, 254 low-income apartments are expected to be completed, along with 42 for-sale condos and 50 "second dwelling units," or granny flats, as they are sometimes called.
Already completed and occupied is the 344-unit Villa Apartments, where Kranz lives. City officials anticipate that, during the next five years, more than 600 additional apartments and condominiums will be built as builders fulfill their affordable-housing obligations.

While Carlsbad is not the only city in the county to mandate affordable units through what is known as an "inclusionary housing" program, its ordinance is regarded as one of the more rigorous and productive approaches in the region.
For instance, the city of Chula Vista requires that 10 percent of new housing projects be set aside as affordable, but the requirement does not apply to developments of less than 50 units. In addition, unlike Carlsbad, up to 5 percent of the housing can be priced so it is affordable to households earning as much as 120 percent of the median income. During the last eight years, some 300 low-income units have been built in Chula Vista, and 370 more are in the process of being built, housing officials say. In Oceanside, 10 percent of new housing must be affordable to low- and moderate-income households, but the requirement is fulfilled by the developer paying a per-unit fee of $1,427 to the city. So far, no affordable housing units have been built, but the money collected has provided financial assistance to 70 households in purchasing their first homes, according to the city's housing department.

"In all of the five San Diego County cities that have inclusionary housing, Carlsbad's is the one that has worked the best," said Nico Calavita, a San Diego State University professor who has extensive knowledge of inclusionary housing programs. "The city and nonprofit developers and the builders have worked together to create a large number of units." While he believes that a program like Carlsbad's is difficult to put into practice, developer Larry Clemens acknowledges that it has succeeded in achieving its goal.
"I believe Carlsbad has one of the most productive programs, and the City Council has not backed off of their position," said Clemens, formerly general manager of the company that developed the upscale Aviara project and was required to build the Villa Loma complex to meet its affordable housing requirement. "The city has continued to hold a high standard for what affordable housing is, while receiving a great deal of pressure from builders and developers. To that degree, the program has worked effectively and will produce a good number of units."

With few exceptions, Carlsbad's low-income housing is not segregated from the market-rate developments but is part of the same neighborhood or planned community, sharing space with expensive, upscale housing. While builders in Carlsbad have hardly embraced the city's inclusionary housing program, they are willingly complying with the ordinance's requirements. Some argue that the cost of providing the lower-income housing is inevitably borne by new-home buyers in the form of higher prices. So far, because the market is so strong in Carlsbad, developers have been able to price their housing accordingly.
"My sense is, it probably works in Carlsbad because the added cost that it takes falls over to the market housing, which makes the price of the house go up," said Doug Avis, president of Benchmark Pacific, which is developing up to 500 single-family homes west of Interstate 5. The affordable housing component, which is being built by a San Francisco-based nonprofit developer, will consist of 92 apartments located near public transit, with rents starting at $535 a month for a one-bedroom unit.
"To the degree it's put evenly on all houses in Carlsbad, it doesn't put any one person in a noncompetitive position. They've all had to jack up their prices, and it's not stopping projects going forward, so it's not raising a cry from the builders over it."

Many have adopted a rather matter-of-fact attitude about the ordinance, concluding that, "If you can't beat them, join them." "It's definitely one more burden you don't necessarily have in other cities," said David Lother, vice president of development for Continental Homes' San Diego division, which is being required to build 116 low-income apartments, 82 affordable condos and 50 second dwelling units. The developer plans to build more than 1,600 homes as part of the Rancho Carrillo project, which opened to sales last month. "It cuts into our profit line, and you try to raise prices to the extent you can. But whether you can recover it all, how do you know that? We've never been real happy with it, but we're pretty much forced to follow the existing ordinance."
What home builders do feel miffed about is that developers of commercial and industrial facilities escape having to bear any burden for providing affordable housing, when in fact they are the ones creating the jobs, the builders argue. "Who generates the need for affordable housing? Is it an industrial center, a manufacturer or is it housing?" said Avis, who formerly sat on the Carlsbad Housing Commission. "The industry's gripe is, `Why isn't everyone sharing in this subsidy?' "

When Sherri Pestritto learned there were affordably priced condominiums for sale in high-priced Carlsbad, she couldn't resist. She immediately put her name on a list of interested buyers, which grew to more than 1,000. A single mother of two, Pestritto hopes to buy one of the condos at the 42-unit Cherrytree Walk development once the pricing is firmed up. The developer is estimating that the two- and three-bedroom homes will sell in the mid-$100,000 range.
"It's extremely high to rent, and if you have a boy and a girl like myself, you might as well own your home," said Pestritto, who rents in Cardiff and works as a payroll bookkeeper in Carlsbad. "There's no way I could afford to buy a house elsewhere without a second income. I'd never qualify for anything in North County, and this is an extremely nice area.

Market-rate builders, in many cases, fulfill their inclusionary housing requirements by turning to developers who specialize in affordable housing. That was the case with Aviara, which relied on Bridge Housing, an experienced low-income-housing developer that has done numerous projects in the Bay Area and in Irvine. The nonprofit developer, MAAC (Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee), which has won awards for its affordable housing in Barrio Logan, is building the 134-unit Laurel Tree Apartments for two developers, and Barone Galasso & Associates, a for- profit developer and manager of affordable housing, is doing a 116-unit apartment complex for Continental Homes.
Typically, the market-rate developers will contribute the land, plus a cash contribution to help finance the affordable housing. The city of Carlsbad helps out with a low-interest loan, which is paid back out of surplus cash from the project. The city's loan contribution usually works out to about $10,000 a unit. Meanwhile, the affordable housing developers are savvy about finding subsidies to support low-income housing, often relying on tax credit money supplied by investors to help buttress the financing package.
One increasingly appealing technique used by developers to meet their affordable housing requirement is to incorporate "second dwelling" or studio-type units into the single-family homes they are building. Typically constructed over garages and with their own entrance, the units must have a full kitchen and can be no larger than 640 square feet. The thinking is that the units can be used to affordably house live-in help or an aging parent who might otherwise have a difficult time finding a place to live or rent. "They are a tremendous marketing idea," said Jim Hoffmans of Centex Homes, which is building second dwelling units as part of an upscale housing development in southeastern Carlsbad where prices in the project start at $600,000. "They take advantage of space, they're attached units where you can provide space for a nanny or maid to live in, and we can build them much cheaper than if you were to go in after the fact and build them. They're very well-received."

Still, there are some developers who believe the city could be doing more to help bring the affordable housing to fruition, be it help with cash or in expediting the processing of projects. "Ten thousand dollars per unit is low compared to what other cities have contributed to affordable housing in their communities," said Michael Galasso of Barone Galasso. "It was pulling teeth to get our permit back from Carlsbad. I can't tell you how many times I said, `Guys, this is an affordable housing project. What do we have to do to get your attention that these projects are time-sensitive?' "
Responded Fountain of the city's housing department, "We can't afford to dump a large amount of money into each project, because we have a large number of projects vying for limited resources. There are other cities that have large amounts of money but not as many projects to fund." The proof that Carlsbad's program is succeeding is that housing is getting built and that there has been no concerted move to kill it, believes Evan Becker, former Carlsbad housing director who was responsible for implementing the inclusionary housing ordinance after it was approved. "There had to be proof that it would work and not ruin developers financially, which they had claimed. The proof was the Villa Loma and the Laurel Trees," said Becker, now acquisitions director for Edison Capital, which invests in affordable housing. "If the developers had a choice to do affordable housing, they would opt not to do it.
"In Carlsbad, it has worked the way it was said in the beginning it would work."

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Two urban-planning professors have aligned themselves with the campaign against Proposition C, arguing that the proposed Padres ballpark project has been hastily planned and would be the wrong type of redevelopment for the East Village.
Nico Calavita and Larry Herzog stressed that their views are their own, and not those of San Diego State University, where they are professors at the School of Public Administration and Urban Studies. "I'd like to make it understood that we're not against redevelopment just this type of redevelopment," said Calavita, at a news conference organized by Stop C, the opponents of the ballpark redevelopment project. Calavita said the East Village section of downtown should be allowed to grow at its own pace, attracting small entrepreneurs and businesses, not huge redevelopment projects like the ballpark. Added Herzog: "We're not against putting the stadium near downtown … but not in the heart of the East Village."

Attorney Mike Aguirre, co-chairman of the pro-ballpark Yes on Proposition C campaign, said the project is the city's best hope for reversing suburban sprawl and the flight of capital from downtown. "The ballpark does that by investing a major amount of public and private funds that will make possible the type of development that these gentlemen are talking about," Aguirre said.
Proposition C, appearing on the Nov. 3 citywide ballot, asks voters whether the city should team up with the Padres to construct the first phase of the project, estimated at $411 million. It calls for $225 million in city financing, $50 million from the Centre City Development Corp. (the city's downtown redevelopment arm) and $115 million in private financing arranged by the Padres. On Tuesday, Port District officials said their agency would fill a $21 million financing gap. A second phase calls for the Padres to arrange for new office, hotel and retail development near the ballpark, with private investment of this phase estimated at $400 million or more.

Boosters tout the project as an appealing way of redeveloping a neighborhood they claim is blighted. But Calavita and Herzog discounted that view, portraying the East Village as an emerging Bohemian district that is attracting small entrepreneurs who work and live in warehouses there. Herzog compared it to New York City's artist-friendly SoHo neighborhood. Their news conference was held in an example of this type of development; the former warehouse that is now the home and photo studio of Stop C organizer Chris Michaels, a professional photographer. His property on Eighth Avenue would be gobbled up by the ballpark district.
The professors said Michaels and others like him are fueling the "organic" type of redevelopment that they say is more appropriate to the East Village.

If you liked the Qualcomm Stadium debate, you'll love this. Three major capital projects coming out of San Diego City Hall are marching toward critical mass this year, promising to play major roles in reshaping the face of downtown as it enters the 21st century.
But there is opposition -- led by some of the same people who opposed the stadium expansion -- and city officials will have to answer pressing questions over plans that could require large amounts of public dollars. At stake: the future of an expanded convention center, a Padres ballpark and a showcase main library.

Combined, these projects are estimated to cost well over $500 million to build, not counting interest. "These are exciting times in our community," said Charles Steinberg, a spokesman for the Padres. "It is becoming increasingly apparent that 1998 is a year when San Diego will define itself." And there are powerful political and philosophical currents at play.
For Mayor Susan Golding and City Council members, whose standing was diminished by the Qualcomm Stadium controversy of 1996-97, bringing these projects to fruition carries the promise of political redemption.
At a deeper level, the outcome will go far in settling the philosophical question of how fiscal and development policies should be set in America's seventh-largest city: by an elected mayor and council, or by voters. All roads lead through City Hall, where strong or weak leadership will greatly influence how these projects fare with the public. And recent history gives rise to doubts about the outcome.

In the stadium matter, an outcry erupted over the city's guarantee of general-admission attendance for the San Diego Chargers. City Hall was caught off guard. The mayor and council's failure to forcefully sell their case to the public, early on, became a public-relations train wreck that eroded public confidence in ways that linger today. "If there was some leadership to move us forward, you could be looking at the 21st century downtown," said Glenn Sparrow, a professor of public administration at San Diego State University. "But there's this vacuum, this deadening silence out there. None of this is going to happen unless someone steps forward. And projects like these, once you bury them, they stay buried for a while."

Each of this year's three big projects is planned independently of the others. The fact they all come to a head around the same time is coincidental. But that they do is historic. "This is a major period for the city," says Scott Barnett, executive director of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Political consultant Tom Shepard agrees. "If you have any perspective at all on downtown development in San Diego, this year is perhaps the most important in downtown's modern history," he said. Shepard is running the campaign for proponents of the convention center expansion. The matter, to be decided by simple majority, will be on the June 2 ballot.
Many participants say the convention center is the fulcrum of the three projects. If it falls in June, it will cast a pall over the other two. "If that one can't be approved by the voters, what can?" asked Curtis Fitzpatrick, a former senior city attorney whose private clients now include the Padres.

A defeat could have a chilling effect on projects anticipated for the coming years, including a new civic center that would replace the City Hall on C Street. The current City Hall is a shabby structure in violation of the city's own health and safety codes.
The convention center expansion, currently estimated at $216 million and certain to rise by many more millions as time goes by, was supposed to be completed in time for Super Bowl XXXII, played at Qualcomm Stadium last month. Plans call for expanding the harborside center to 525,701 square feet of exhibition space, up from its current 249,338 square feet.
The goal: to turn the facility into an economic colossus, generating 4,000 new jobs for the region while keeping San Diego competitive in the mushrooming national market for conventions and exhibitions. In addition, plans being considered by the San Diego Unified Port District call for major hotel expansion and construction next to the facility -- at least 2,600 new hotel rooms in all.
Hotel-motel room tax revenues, a main component of retiring the convention center debt, are expected to be a big part of the Padres ballpark financing, which will be the subject of upcoming negotiations. Currently, the East Village area of Centre City East downtown is being looked at as a future Ballpark District. No timetable for a public vote on the ballpark has been set, but it could go before city voters as soon as November. The hotel-motel tax also has figured prominently in plans for the new main library, planned for Kettner Boulevard and C Street. Ballpark and library proponents may find themselves chasing the same tax dollars.

Convention center expansion backers say the expected boost in conventioneers will spread discretionary dollars around town -- on cab rides, restaurants, visits to landmarks such as Sea World and the San Diego Zoo -- fueling what economists call the "multiplier effect." Proponents point to the Gaslamp Quarter as a thriving example of the current center's ability to spur business activity. In figures that critics dismiss as exaggerations, the San Diego Convention Center Corp., which manages the facility, estimates that an expanded center would pump nearly $1 billion into the local economy annually, up from current estimates of $580 million.
Pat Shea, a lawyer and chair of the city's ballpark task force, calls the convention center "the engine for the development of downtown." "You go back to the genesis of all this -- visitors to San Diego -- it's the convention center," he said.

Not everyone sees good in this. Nico Calavita, a professor of city planning at San Diego State, said these projects reflect a growing shift in power to the tourism industry, which he sees as diverting capital from the city's older neighborhoods. He estimates the neighborhoods need $1.4 billion to repair decaying infrastructure. "There is an imbalance of power between the urbanized communities, which happen to be where the people of lower income live," Calavita said.
Ardent opposition arose from another quarter. The construction timetable was abruptly halted in 1996 when Libertarian Richard Rider -- a key opponent of the stadium expansion -- filed a lawsuit attacking the city's planned use of lease-revenue bonds, issued without voter approval, in a partnership with the Port District. Last year, the California Supreme Court decided it would review Rider's appeal of lower-court defeats; that matter is pending, further delaying construction. To get around the court roadblock, last November the City Council voted for a different financing method: certificates of participation, another debt instrument issued without voter approval. These certificates would be retired through hotel-motel tax revenues, plus subsidies from the Port District, which built the facility in 1989 and owns the land on which it sits.

Reacting to the council's vote, Bruce Henderson, a former city councilman contemplating another run for office, launched a successful referendum signature drive that forced the council to put the matter on the June 2 ballot. Henderson is a recent convert to the thinking that all public debt must be approved by voters, whether required by state law or not. (Currently, only general obligation bonds, which legally encumber tax dollars to pay debt service, require two-thirds voter approval.) Matters of public finance can glaze the eyes, so Henderson is wrapping his convention center attack in populist garb: Tearing a page from his Qualcomm playbook, Henderson calls the expansion plans "corporate welfare" for rich hotel owners. If hotel and other business interests like the project so much, he said, they should pay for it.
Henderson's campaign also seeks to portray city finances as reckless. He will juxtapose recent warnings by city bureaucrats of a $40 million operating deficit against the need to fix the city's crumbling streets and water-sewer systems, to clean up its parks and to pump more money into branch libraries, shuttered for many hours of the day by budget cuts. "The public understands that city government is failing us," he said, adding that hotel-motel room tax dollars should go to these problems, not big downtown projects.

Shea and others say Henderson is shortsighted. They argue that creating an economic engine in the convention center -- and not asking local residents to pay for it -- will only enhance the city's economic strength. "Henderson's approach is to eat your seed corn," Shea said of the hotel- motel room tax. "And you don't eat your seed corn. You plant it." In bureaucratese, this seed corn is called the transient-occupancy tax, or TOT. Another good name would be "the tax any politician would love," because it is imposed on out-of-towners who don't vote here.
San Diego's hotel-motel room tax rate is currently 10.5 percent, or 10.5 cents of every dollar spent on hotel rooms here. That's relatively low by national standards, according to a recent study by the city. Of 15 cities surveyed, Houston led the list with a rate of 17 percent. It was followed by Seattle (15.6 percent); Chicago (14.5 percent); Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco (14 percent); and New York (13.25 percent). For now, this tax is a bright spot in city finances because it is fueled by continued growth in tourism. Last year, more than 14.3 million visitors came here and spent nearly $4.4 billion, according to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau (ConVis). Five years earlier, nearly 13.5 million visitors spent $3.5 billion.

The outlook for 1998? "Exceedingly bright," concludes a ConVis forecast. Things are upbeat as well at City Hall. Finance officials there had projected hotel-motel tax revenues to dip 2.1 percent this fiscal year from the $74.8 million collected in fiscal 1997. But today they estimate a 12 percent jump over last year, with $83.2 million expected when the books close on fiscal 1998 at June's end. In sharp contrast, the city collected just under $44.3 million in hotel-motel tax revenue in fiscal 1993, reflecting nearly 88 percent growth over five years. "There's tremendous growth in (TOT) revenue," said Reint Reinders, president and chief executive of ConVis.
Some city officials anticipate future annual growth of 6 percent, while some private estimates put it at 8 percent. "In another four years, we're going to be over $100 million" in annual hotel tax revenues, predicts David Nuffer, chairman of the ConVis board. Currently, hotel-motel tax revenues are split roughly in half. Half goes into the general fund, which supports day-to-day city operations. The other half goes to so-called "special promotional programs," which have included things like the convention center and improvements to Balboa Park.

Critics say there's more to this tax than meets the eye. One of them, Mel Shapiro, a retired stockbroker, notes that the city's hotel-motel tax fund for special programs includes an infusion of $21.8 million in sales tax, a maneuver permitted by council policy. Shapiro, who is helping Henderson in the referendum campaign, said this is deceptive. "They should be up-front about it and say we don't have enough room tax to finance these special programs and the convention center expansion," he said. "The reason for this is that the council has over-promised. All these organizations come to them and say, `Give us money, give us money.' And they say, `Sure, we'll give you part of the hotel-room tax.' "
Barnett, whose taxpayer association is conducting an intensive study of this tax, disagrees with Shapiro's assessment. But he believes there are clear limits. "Does the city have enough (hotel- motel tax) money to do the library and the ballpark and the convention center?" Barnett asked. "Yes -- if the City Council shows some self-constraint in the spending of TOT dollars on nonessential programs."
Ironically, the financing methods at the root of the Rider-Henderson attacks are direct products of the tax rebellions that have dominated California public finance in the last 20 years. From Proposition 13 to the Gann Initiative to the recent Proposition 218, the goal of these measures has been to rein in government spending. One major result of this movement has been the imposition of a two-thirds voter-approval requirement for big projects backed by general obligation bonds. In response, California's state and local governments turned to exotic financing methods, such as lease-revenue bonds, which the courts say can be issued without voter approval. "Public officials have found back-door ways to get around these fiscal constraints," said Steve Erie, a UC San Diego political scientist. But the Qualcomm episode means that San Diego's politicians "have been backed into a corner, and they've got to go public. And the stench of the stadium will spill over into all three" projects.

The convention center clearly must go to the polls because Henderson collected the legally required number of referendum signatures. But the Padre ballpark and the library are likely headed to the polls for purely political reasons. Padres executives, after witnessing the Qualcomm controversy, know full well they must win the public's support. Steinberg, the Padres spokesman, said team owner John Moores and President Larry Lucchino have "big ears." And "you didn't need gigantic ears to hear the sentiment of this community in 1997. So if you're going to be responsive to your community, then it follows that you offer to invite a public ratification."
The library, meantime, will be on a future ballot, although it hasn't been decided which one. The council, in a 6-3 vote earlier this month, decided to put the project up for voter approval even though there was no legal obligation to do so. One danger: The public, facing financing it may not understand, may vote for the status quo. Reinders, of ConVis, agreed. "We're worried," he said. In the stadium expansion debate, "The mayor and council should have communicated (the project's merits) more forcefully to the public." Still, he's hopeful.
"We think what we've learned is that if we collectively think these things are good, we have to deal with the fact that there is opposition," Reinders said, adding that part of the stadium problem was that politicians want "everyone to be happy. But it doesn't happen that way. It doesn't happen in your own family."


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