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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

June 11, 2004

Lagoon petitions readied

Opponents to a proposed development by Triad Communities prepare to launch a referendum drive to halt it.

The Vacaville City Council's approval earlier this week of a controversial 1,300-house development in lower Lagoon Valley, debated and wrangled over for more than a year, has motivated an opposition group to mount a referendum campaign to block it.

More than 50 people, many belonging to Friends of Lagoon Valley, met Thursday in the Three Oaks Community Center to talk strategy on a referendum drive to be launched Saturday.

Planned to canvass Vacaville's supermarkets, video stores, gyms and other gathering spots, the opposition group wants to ink up to 6,000 signatures against the planned development, proposed by Seattle-based Triad Communities.

A memo by City Clerk Kathy Dussault lays out the options the City Council would have if the referendum drive were successful.

The City Council could send the referendum to voters in a future election, possibly as early as November. Then, if more than 50 percent of the city's voters opted to oppose the project, it could put the development in limbo for at least a year from the time of the election.

Before sending the referendum to the ballot, the City Council also would have the option to rescind its approval of the development.

"We're convinced that the community as a whole doesn't want this development," said Marian Conning, a representative of Friends of Lagoon Valley.

Members of the county's Orderly Growth Committee and the regional Greenbelt Alliance group were on hand at Thursday's organizing meeting to lend a degree of political expertise.

It will require some.

The group plans to launch signature-gathering drives toward a referendum on two separate City Council actions that were taken Tuesday, Conning said.

One drive would seek to block approved changes to Vacaville's general plan, alterations which would allow the Triad Communities development to be built on 730 acres in the semi-rural Lagoon Valley on the southwestern edge of the city.

The drive to stymie general plan changes will begin this week, said organizers, and the group has a little less than 30 days to gather at least 10 percent of the signatures of the city's approximately 38,400 registered voters.

The second drive would be aimed at amendments to the city's specific plan that also are required for the development.

The effort to halt amendments to the specific plan, however, is expected to commence in another two weeks.

The City Council would have to give final reading to the authorizing ordinance for the specific plan before the opposition group can begin collecting signatures.

That petition drive would span 30 days from the council's final approval of the ordinance, scheduled June 22, and also would require the signatures of 10 percent of the city's voters.

Attorneys working with Friends of Lagoon Valley suggested the two-pronged strategy to block the lower Lagoon Valley development, Conning said.

"The city is required to have a general plan and a specific plan that are consistent," she said.

Meanwhile, the referendum drive is an echo of an effort some 15 years ago to stop lower Lagoon Valley from being developed into a business center that would have included a Bank of America and a Kaiser Permanente hospital, said Ernest Kimme, with the Orderly Growth Committee.

A council approval on that development - and the subsequent signature- gathering campaign to oppose it - led the City Council to scrap the development plan.

"The political thing that happens is that it sends a strong message," Kimme said. "It took 15 years for it to come back around."

In contrast to the seasoned political veterans, other residents at the meeting were gathering for the first time against the development.

Kamala Cochran, 31, said she's not a political activist, but doesn't want to see lower Lagoon Valley become a subdivision.

"It's going to be an exclusive kind of club," she said of the development, upscale by all accounts. "I like to go to Lagoon Valley to be alone, to commune with nature."

Councilman Steve Hardy, who voted earlier this week to approve the development, fears that the pending referendum drive could lead to unintended consequences.

"It's still their right to do what they want to do," he said. "I'm sad they feel they have to do it. In my humble opinion, this is a world-class project."

"This referendum wouldn't compensate the property owners (who own land in Lagoon Valley), it just delays development and I think that it's kind of mean spirited."

Jason Massad can be reached at county@thereporter.com.

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