Measure R

Movie Theater and Urgent Care: Opponents of Measure R say that the Movie Theater and Urgent Care are at risk if Measure R passes, because these businesses cannot afford to pay fair market rent. Typically the city makes deals with developers, allowing the developer to do things they aren’t legally entitled to, in exchange for public benefits, which could include subsidizing a movie theater or urgent care. Measure R does not disallow such deals, but says that the citizens as a whole have to agree to the deals that are made, and takes that deal making power away from the five-member City Council. The very fact that people care about the movie theater and urgent care, and that this caring could be used as a scare tactic to try to defeat Measure R, indicates that citizens would be favorable to negotiating a deal in order to have these things.

Mom & Pops: Formula Retail ordinances have the side effect of lowering rental prices for Mom and Pops. Because once the ordinance is adopted, a commercial property owner effectively has two types of rental unit in inventory – those that can be rented to chain stores and those that must be rented to non-chain stores. The newly created “units that can only be rented to non-chain stores” have a reduced demand and thus (per Economics 101) will end up renting for a lower price.

Comparing the City’s existing Formula Retail Ordinance to that in Measure R. Many citizens lobbied the City Council for four years to create a formula retail ordinance, and though the city conducted dozens of meetings on the topic, the City Council never voted yes. Finally the Reiners learned about the issue and also became passionate about it, and helped acquire the funding to create a voter initiative. Only after all the signatures had been collected by citizens to successfully put Measure R on the ballot, did the City Council then finally vote to create a formula retail ordinance. Now opponents of Measure R are using the fact that the City Council finally created a formula retail ordinance to say we don’t need Measure R because we already have a formula retail ordinance.

If the City Council is that ambivalent about a formula retail ordinance, they can easily repeal or modify it into insignificance, if Measure R fails. But if Measure R passes, the City Council cannot repeal it; only a subsequent vote of the citizens could modify or repeal it. Also, the ordinance passed by the City Council is only for the civic center and doesn’t apply to the rest of the city; whereas Measure R applies to the whole city.

Property Rights and Lawsuits: A commercial property owner has a right to develop his land, but this must be done while respecting other people’s property rights; they cannot for example violate environmental laws, or noise laws, and cannot cause PCH to be unusable for the rest of the property owners who need it to commute and for emergency services. Generally, the process of public debate has resulted in a lot of laws at the state level that describe the relative rights of property owners who have competing interests in a community; and respecting property rights means making decisions within the law. This is what Measure R does. Measure R creates a formula retail ordinance, and courts have upheld over and over that cities have the right to do this, because the look and feel of the city is considered to have value to the residents, value to their quality of life and to their own property value, and is one of their property rights. And Measure R allows the discretionary approval (on about a dozen future commercial development projects citywide, which qualify to build over 20,000 square feet) which is already being made by five City Council members, to instead be made by the citizens as a whole. If Measure R passes, the decisions that the citizens make will have to conform to the existing state and federal law, which defines everyone’s relative property rights. By doing this, we can avoid a justifiable lawsuit against the city. (The city of Del Mar has had an ordinance for 28 years which allows citizens the right to discretionary approval of large commercial developments, (http://www.delmar.ca.us/documentcenter/view/492 ), and there have been no lawsuits against Del Mar related to this.)