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Downtown's One Santa Fe project under construction. LA Observed file photo.
Backers of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative to slow development and City Hall's use of planning exceptions announced today they are no longer targeting the November ballot. They are going instead for Los Angles' March 2017 ballot, when the mayor, the other citywide offices and eight City Council seats will be voted on. Typically, the number of LA voters plummets between a presidential election and the following spring's city election, but there could also be more debate across the city on local planning and development issues.
Sponsors of the measure billed it as a way to get more voters interested. "A March election will ensure that the initiative plan to reform the city's rigged and broken building approval system is not overshadowed by 20 or more other statewide measures on the Nov. 8, 2016, ballot," said the Coalition to Preserve L.A., promoters of the measure.
Labor, business and affordable housing activists oppose the neighborhood measure, and a group on the opposition side said it was a tactic to avoid sure defeat in November. "They want to move it from an election where virtually everyone votes to an election where virtually no one votes," said a statement from the Coalition to Protect LA Neighborhoods. "That’s because they lose when people who vote hear about their extremist plans for Los Angeles."
For now, the sponsors have stopped signature gathering and will start over with some refined language. The backers will need to submit 61,486 valid signatures by the end of August to qualify for the March 2017 ballot. "Our initiative is too important to be buried at the tail-end of this November’s ballot,” Coalition to Preserve L.A. campaign director Jill Stewart said at a City Hall press conference. "The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is a watershed movement that deserves the undivided attention of the city’s voters and its media.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein, whose Hollywood-centered group is the main force behind the proposed ballot measure in response to plans for high-rise towers next to its headquarters, added that "we are going to shift gears...The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is a city issue, better suited for a city election."
Debating the future of development in the context of city election campaigns certainly makes some sense, though the sponsors said they also wanted to tweak the language of the measure in response to criticism that it would exacerbate the shortage of rental housing.
From the LA Times story:
Stewart said backers of the proposal rewrote their measure in recent days to make it shorter and offer new provisions that protect affordable housing.
The revised ballot proposal still has a two-year moratorium on certain large- and mid-sized development projects. But housing developments that are 100% affordable will be exempt from the moratorium, Stewart said.That change was made in response to affordable housing providers, Stewart said, adding, "We listened to the community."
