Escondido, Vista--Both Seek Custody of the Courts

The question is: Where to put a new courthouse in North County?

One possibility causes Vista Mayor Gloria McClellan to shudder: That Escondido, the big bully, century-old city to the east, will raid Vista of some, if not all, of its courts and establish itself as North County’s regional justice center.

The prospect of Vista serving only as a host to a regional jail, but with none of the benefits attached to it--courts, law offices, even upscale restaurants and boutiques capitalizing on a noontime professional trade--doesn’t sit well with McClellan.

She unleashes a string of reasons why Vista should be selected as the site of a new courthouse:

For starters, it already serves as host for 16 Municipal and Superior Court departments as well as a jail overcrowded with more than 500 inmates any given day. The county already owns land there for expansion. The lawyers are there. It’s freeway close, a block south of California 78 at Melrose Avenue. And it’s geographically central to North County.

A Court Too Far

In the next breath she argues why Escondido would be an inappropriate site for a new courthouse. It’ll be stuck in the middle of downtown Escondido with all the attendant traffic congestion. The site is too small. It’s too far from the coast. Jail inmates would have to be transported 18 miles to Escondido for court appearances. And it would be an inappropriate land-use mix alongside Escondido’s new City Hall and proposed cultural arts complex.

Despite McClellan’s points and objections, the possibility of Escondido’s being host to the new courthouse--and conceivably even snaring some or all of Vista’s existing courts--will be considered in a study that the County Board of Supervisors is expected to authorize Tuesday.

Specifically, the study will determine how many actual courtrooms will be needed to house 51 Superior and Municipal Court judges--the projected number to serve North County in the year 2005--if they share courtrooms for efficiency’s sake. Such a shared-courts concept has proven successful in Canada and is gaining acceptance in this country as a cost-saving measure. When one judge is in chambers, on vacation or otherwise not holding court, another judge could use that same courtroom.

Waiting in the wings to build just such a shared-courtroom facility are a private construction company and the City of Escondido.

The plan would have Lusardi Construction Co. build a four-story, 35-courtroom facility at the northeastern corner of Valley Parkway and Broadway, directly across the street from the new City Hall.

The building would then be sold to the Escondido Community Development Commission, the city’s redevelopment agency, for about $50 million. In turn, the commission would lease the building to the county of San Diego over 50 years at a discount, as repayment to the county for the $6 million Escondido owes the county from when it established a redevelopment project area in 1985 and reduced the amount of property tax income otherwise earmarked for the county. The county’s lease payments would retire the bonded indebtedness incurred by the commission in buying the courthouse from Lusardi.

Repayment Obligation

Not only would leasing the courthouse to the county at less-than-market prices meet Escondido’s $6-million repayment obligation, but it would relieve the county of the capital expense of building its own new courthouse, the need for which is unchallenged.

The supervisors--in the face of judges crying for more courtrooms anywhere in the county because of overcrowding at current facilities--are interested in the Escondido offer. The county’s openness to the Escondido proposal dismays Vista officials who, according to McClellan, were left out in the cold when discussions first broke.

“We were stunned when we first heard of the Escondido proposal,” McClellan said. “We read about it in the newspapers. Nobody had said a word to us about what they were thinking about, and we didn’t think that was quite fair, since we’ve got the courts here in Vista.”

Since then, the mayor said, Vista has been playing catch-up, trying to reposition itself as the logical home of North County courts. By July, when the new study is to be completed, Vista’s own, fledgling redevelopment agency will be prepared to make a counteroffer to the county, McClellan said.

So far, however, Vista officials hasn’t offered a counterproposal to financially entice the county to recommit to their city and its courts.

One of the variables in the question is whether San Diego County voters in June will approve a half-cent sales tax increase which, among other things, would provide funding for a new courthouse for North County. The cost of such a courthouse was estimated in 1984 at about $90 million--but that was based on a one judge-per-courtroom arrangement. A shared-courts facility, whether built in Vista or Escondido, would cost less.

The county already owns 7.5 acres of land adjoining its Vista courts complex, and the half-cent sales tax measure would provide enough money to build the new courthouse there.

But Escondido and Lusardi officials maintain that even if the tax increase is approved, the Escondido offer is still more lucrative to the county. By accepting the Escondido-Lusardi offer, the county could redirect to some other jail or courts project the revenues from the new tax that otherwise would have gone to a North County courthouse.

Dollars and Cents

Escondido Mayor Jim Rady said the argument for building a courthouse in Escondido is one of dollars and cents. “The county needs to build courts, and it doesn’t have the money to do it. So here’s a private developer willing to build the courts and lease them to the county at an attractive rate. We’re not saying the sun shines any brighter in Escondido. It’s simply a question of economics.”

And he doesn’t see Vista as competition. “If they can come up with a proposal which I have yet to see or hear that makes economic sense to the county, we’ll look at it. But so far all they have is blue sky, and we have the proposal,” Rady said.

McClellan acknowledges that Escondido might have a better upfront offer to the county, at least for now. But she said the operating costs of operating courts in Escondido--including transporting inmates, providing duplicate administrative services and the like--might eventually outweigh the initial capital cost benefits.

“They can sugarcoat their offer all they want,” McClellan said. “But the facts are, it won’t pencil out in the long run.”

McClellan also argues that the county shouldn’t be swayed by the $6-million enticement. If the county doesn’t recoup that money in a courthouse deal, it will be repaid by Escondido in some other fashion. It’s not a question of taking the courthouse deal or losing the $6 million, she insists.

The study will also address the issue of capital versus operating cost benefits should the North County courts be bifurcated, with one facility remaining in Vista and another being built elsewhere--such as Escondido. The study will not specifically analyze the Lusardi offer, but will give Lusardi--or any other developer, for that matter--the opening to make a pitch to the county to build the new courthouse, said Steve Brennan, a county analyst and project manager for the courts study.

Initially, Lusardi suggested that its Escondido courthouse serve both municipal and superior courts, while the county maintains the existing 16 Municipal and Superior Court departments in Vista.

But Superior Court Presiding Judge Michael Greer says splitting the Superior Court departments between two courthouses in North County would be unacceptable for a host of logistical reasons.

“To manage courts, you’re always moving hearings and other matters back and forth from one courtroom to another,” Greer said. “There might be a trial in one courtroom, with another judge in a different courtroom handling a settlement conference on that very same trial. They have to be together, not split. The efficiency loss (in split courts) would be drastic.”

No Position by Judges

The Superior Court judges have not taken a position on whether they’d rather be located in Escondido or Vista. “We’re thankful for Mr. (Warner) Lusardi for doing what he has done, but we don’t endorse him or anyone else. We just want an economical procedure,” Greer said.

“My personal preference is a shared court somewhere in North County for both Superior and Municipal courts, together,” he said, in order to share common services used by both Superior and Municipal courts and because of the constant interfacing between the two levels of courts.

If an Escondido courthouse is approved, it would be a virtual given, because of the Superior Court judges’ insistence, that all of North County’s Superior Court departments would be housed there, leaving Vista with only Municipal Court departments.

Vista Municipal Court Presiding Judge Michael B. Harris said he, too, prefers to share a courthouse with the Superior Court for a variety of reasons, including the logistics of handling jurors who are called to serve both Superior and Municipal courts.

“What if an Escondido courthouse is approved, and a juror from Valley Center is called to Vista to report, and is then sent to Escondido for a trial? Too much time would be lost.

“And from a management standpoint, it makes better sense to have all the functions of the criminal justice system--the jail, the Probation Department, the district attorney’s office, the office of revenue recovery and the others, in one central facility.”

So is there the prospect of all the courts moving to Escondido?

“That’s a political reality the board will have to consider,” Harris said. “If they can build a courthouse in Escondido more cheaply than what it would cost in Vista, then it might be more feasible.”

District attorney’s spokesman Steve Casey said a Superior courthouse in Escondido and a Municipal courthouse in Vista would be a “substantial logistical burden” to his office because prosecutors commonly track a felony case from Municipal Court to Superior. “We’d be spending a lot of time on the highway,” he said.

There is also some discussion that should an Escondido courthouse be approved, the jurisdictional boundary line separating the North County branch of the Superior Court from San Diego should be redefined.

Currently, the Interstate 15 corridor communities of Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Carmel Mountain and Rancho Penasquitos are assigned to the main San Diego courthouse, while the coastal communities from Del Mar north are assigned to Vista.

Some officials have said that, given traffic flow patterns, southbound freeway congestion and the faster pace of residential growth along Interstate 15, it would make more sense to assign the North City communities along I-15 to the Escondido courthouse, and reassign some of the coastal communities to San Diego.

McClellan characterizes that as gerrymandering in order to rationalize a courthouse in Escondido, at the expense of her city.

For their part, attorneys say an argument can be made for building a new courthouse in either city.

Ned Huntington, president of the San Diego County Bar Assn., said his organization hasn’t taken a position one way or the other.

Timothy Thomas, president of the North County Bar Assn., said his group passed a resolution last fall endorsing the Escondido-Lusardi proposal, before Vista had rallied back on its own behalf.

“At the time, Escondido’s was the only viable proposal on the table to address the need for more courtrooms,” Thomas said.

“I don’t think anybody has a particular complaint about working in the Vista courthouse. And I don’t know that we are in a position now to choose one proposal over another. We just want the county to do something for North County.

He said attorneys would argue for one site over another based on where their offices are situated. “I’m an Escondido attorney, a trial lawyer, and it would be real nice to walk out of my office four blocks to go to court,” he said.