Council Rejects Police Staffing Plan : Government: Peter Navarro-backed initiative would have created housing development fees to maintain police-to-residents ratio as population grew.

Weighing economic concerns against the city’s growing crime problems, the San Diego City Council on Wednesday rejected a proposed initiative to ensure that new development would not dilute police protection.

By a 5-1 vote, with three members absent, the council handed recently defeated mayoral candidate Peter Navarro his second major setback this month by turning down his proposal to link development fees to police staffing and service levels.

Put forward by an offshoot of Prevent Los Angelization Now! (PLAN!), the managed-growth group headed by Navarro, the proposed initiative would have prohibited any new development that reduced the city’s ratio of police officers to residents or increased police response time to crimes.

Although Navarro hailed the proposal as an alternative to higher taxes to pay for more police, opponents in the development and business community warned that it would severely restrict new housing, curtail economic development and drive up costs while doing little to reduce crime.

“We see it as a stop economic development measure that is masquerading as a police (hiring) initiative,” said Tom Sheffer, legislative director of the Construction Industry Federation.

While the council members sympathized with Navarro’s objective of hiring more police, they agreed with opponents that the measure could worsen San Diego’s business climate and lock the city into a rigid police staffing formula that could be a drain on the city’s treasury.

“I believe strongly that there isn’t anybody on this council who would not like to add police,” Councilman Ron Roberts said.

However, Roberts said the council believes that “higher and higher fees . . . and taxes aren’t going to get us out of the problems that we’re faced with.”

The council technically voted to “note and file” the proposed initiative--a legislative procedure that avoided a direct yes or no vote. The vote had the practical effect of killing Navarro’s proposal, though it could be reconsidered at a council workshop on public facility financing early next year.

Angrily calling the council decision a “weasel” tactic, Navarro characterized Wednesday’s action as a discourtesy to the nearly 20,000 San Diegans who signed petitions to put the proposal on the ballot.

While that number fell short of the figure needed to force the council to either approve the measure outright or place it on the ballot, it was sufficient to activate a rarely used charter provision requiring the council to consider adopting the proposal without voters’ concurrence.

“Let the record show you ducked the issue,” Navarro told the council. “Three (council members) couldn’t even be here. . . . People are dying. This is disgusting.”

Councilman George Stevens cast the only vote against rejecting the measure, while council members Abbe Wolfsheimer, Tom Behr and Bob Filner were absent.

Wednesday’s debate was largely a recitation of the arguments heard on both sides of the controversial proposal since it was offered early this year.

With the city already facing severe budget constraints, Navarro argued, the only major financing options to hire additional police officers during the next fiscal year involve development fees such as those proposed in the initiative or tax increases. The initiative, he added, could have generated up to $2.5 million annually for police services at a cost of only about $200 per new dwelling unit.

“You have a choice to make today,” Navarro said. “And the choice is a simple one between having the developers pay a modest $208 per building permit or having the taxpayers pay, and that ain’t gonna happen and you won’t get police officers.”

Opponents, however, contended that the proposal could have raised construction costs by as much as $8,000 per unit, thereby hampering economic expansion efforts.

Although Navarro labeled that figure “patently ridiculous,” a majority of council members concluded that the proposal was the wrong method of raising the current ratio of 1.6 police officers per 1,000 residents while the city is grappling with a lingering recession.