North County Voters to Decide Growth, Property-Rights Issues : Escondido Move Perils Rent-Control Bid

The Escondido City Council voted Wednesday night to place a “Fair Property Rights Initiative” on the June 7 city ballot. If it passes, the measure could negate a competing, citizen-initiated ballot proposal that would impose strict rent controls on mobile home parks.

Angry howls and catcalls greeted Mayor Jim Rady’s announcement that no public testimony would be taken before the vote, and the mayor was forced to adjourn the council session for about 10 minutes. During the recess, several mobile home park residents vented their anger by protesting the measure before the empty council dais.

The issue, introduced by Councilman Doug Best, was placed on the ballot by a 3-2 vote, with council members Jerry Harmon and Doris Thurston voting no.

During the morning council session, irate mobile home residents said the ballot measure is unfair because it would, if it received more votes, prevent the enactment of their rent-control measure, even if the latter were approved by a majority of voters.

The rent-control measure, which was signed by nearly 11,000 Escondido residents, calls for a rollback of mobile home park rents to their Jan. 1, 1986, levels and names the council as the city’s rent review board.

Best’s ballot issue provides that the city “may enact no law which imposes direct restrictions on the price for which real property may be sold, leased, rented, transferred or exchanged,” except through city zoning powers or eminent domain.

Thurston echoed the opinions of mobile home tenants, calling Best’s initiative “most unfair” because it is an attempt to preempt the issue.

Opponents of the measure protested that Best is trying to negate an 11,000-signature citizen initiative, but the councilman said he is playing fair and square.

Wants Voters to Decide

Best said he sought to place the measure on the June ballot rather than introduce it as an ordinance in fairness to mobile home residents.

“This should be decided at the polls, and that’s where it will be settled,” he said.

He pointed out that he could have proposed the ballot measure as an ordinance for council passage, which would have made the rent-control measure moot. Best, Rady and Councilman Ernie Cowan have supported a less restrictive rent review system, which park tenants say is ineffectual.

Josephine Hudson, a representative of the League of Women Voters, criticized Best’s proposal as “confusing the issue” and putting the voters in the “Catch-22 situation” of having to vote against Best’s measure in order to gain a mobile home rent-control ordinance.

Best said at least two other California cities--Napa and Burlingame--have passed similar measures giving private-property owners control over the setting of rent and sale prices of their property.

Backing Best’s ballot measure was Charles (Buzz) Dupont, a mobile home park owner who argued that the initiative sponsored by the mobile home tenants is “not a well-considered measure” and that it had been delayed “until the last minute” in the ballot filing period to prevent others from placing competing measures on the ballot.

Other issues scheduled for the June 7 ballot are:

- The acquisition and preservation of the old adobe fire station scheduled for demolition when the Palomar Memorial Hospital expands.

- Direct mayoral elections.

- City annexation of Lehner Valley, a rural area northeast of Escondido.

Three council seats also will be on the June ballot. Harmon and Best have announced they will run for reelection, but Rady has said he will step down. As of Wednesday, 16 people, including Rady’s wife, June, had taken out papers for the elections.