Anti-Development
Initiative Headed for Ballot |
By Jorge Casuso
May 20 -- A hotly contested battle is shaping up after
a ballot measure to limit commercial development to 75,000 square
feet a year over the next 15 years qualified for the November ballot
Monday.
The measure known as Residents’ Initiative to Fight Traffic
(RIFT) received more than the necessary 5,800 signatures from registered
voters, according to a sampling by the Los Angeles County Clerk’s
office of the more than 10,000 signatures submitted to the City
Clerk last month.
“Residents are fed up with overwhelming traffic congestion
and our city’s continuing failure to set limits on commercial
growth, which is a major source of gridlock,” said Diana Gordon,
co-chair of the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City which
authored the initiative.
“Finally, residents will get to vote on a real solution that
will reduce the growth in cars coming into our city,” she
said.
Opponents, who claim the measure is too generally worded and fails
to draw a direct connection between commercial development and traffic,
had already been gearing up for a battle at the polls.
Last month, they began forging a rare coalition that includes a
key faction of Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) and the
Chamber of Commerce. The coalition also could include the Edward
Thomas Company, a hotel owner that become a major player in local
politics.
The group has hired political consultant Barbara Grover, who ran
the mail campaign two years ago for Council member Kevin McKeown,
the initiative's only supporter on the council, as well as the School
District’s parcel tax, which won at the polls last year.
The ballot measure is expected to draw the attention of developers
from across the Westside, who will be closely watching, if not pitching
in.
Although the measure exempts residential development, as well as
commercial development that is "neighborhood serving,"
opponents worry that it would undermine the City’s update
of the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) of the general plan,
which would dictate development in the beachside city for the next
20 years.
More than three years in the works, the proposed update calls for
workforce housing that would likely require incentives for commercial
developers that would likely need to go beyond neighborhood serving
uses.
A hint of the heated debate the measure is expected to generate
came earlier this month when the council, most of whose members
vehemently oppose the initiative, voted to hire a consultant to
study its impacts. Gordon, who said the coalition is wary the study
will only help make the City's case, was grilled by a clearly angry
council.
The coalition contends the measure -- which exempts schools, hospitals,
religious buildings and other “community-serving development”
-- will slow development, “allowing Santa Monica's public
transportation system and infrastructure time to catch up with local
growth.”
Opponent counter that it would halt the building of new hotels,
which generate little or no new traffic and pump millions of dollars
a year into the City’s coffers. It also would curb the development
of medical facilities that serve the two major hospitals –
Saint John’s Health Center and Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center.
|