Huntington Beach officials are asking city voters if they want the power to approve or deny some major new construction initiated by the city.
It comes after Surf City lost multiple lawsuits against state leaders in the city’s fight against the state’s housing mandates.
[Read: Huntington Beach Loses Housing Mandate Lawsuit Against California]
It already caught the attention of Governor Gavin Newsom by Tuesday morning, who called the proposal an “illegal stunt,” to avoid building housing on X.
“We’ll continue to hold all communities accountable as we work to build more housing in California,” Newsom said.
The new proposal will let voters decide to approve any general plan amendments in the city or zoning changes for city property when there’s a proven negative impact to the environment.
The idea was pitched at last week’s city council meeting, when Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark and Councilmen Casey McKeon and Pat Burns insisted moving forward with new construction would “sell out” residents and leave them without any defense from overdevelopment.
“The City Council has a duty to protect the City’s environment,” they wrote in a letter to their colleagues. “The State of California is imposing a draconian development policy on our City that demonstrates a disregard for our precious environment, natural resources, quality of life.”
That memo led to concerns from the public that the proposal would torpedo any effort by private property owners to move forward with housing development, but at a special meeting on Monday night, McKeon made it clear it would not apply to private land.
“This will not affect any private sector projects,” McKeon said. “It applies only to the city.”
Van Der Mark, Burns, McKeon and Councilman Tony Strickland voted to put the item on the ballot.
Those council members – the council’s majority – have made fighting new developments in Surf City their top priority, repeatedly challenging state leaders in court.
And losing.
Right now, the city has lawsuits in both the state and federal appeals courts after they lost to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, with a state judge ruling the city didn’t have the power to overrule state zoning requirements.
Councilmembers Dan Kalmick, Rhonda Bolton and Natalie Moser – the council minority – did not show up at Monday night’s meeting, instead sending a letter opposing the proposed ballot initiative that City Clerk Robin Estanislau read aloud at the meeting.
In the letter, council members said the proposed ballot initiative was rushed through over the holiday weekend and limited people’s ability to weigh in on the issue.
The three council minority members also said it would likely be used to fight more state housing mandates.
“Amendments to the City Charter – essentially our City’s Constitution – should be made thoughtfully and with robust public input. This process has had neither,” they wrote. “The City will struggle to master plan anything again.”
Kalmick also presented a study last week from the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a nonprofit that studies urban planning, highlighting their report that found measures like the ones proposed have interfered with cities’ abilities to build housing.
That report highlighted a local example of Costa Mesa, where voters adopted a measure dubbed Measure Y that required voters approve any projects that would make any significant change to the general plan or zoning of any property.
[Read: Will Costa Mesa Voters Make it Easier to Build Housing in the City?]
But city leaders ultimately had to ask voters to loosen that rule in 2022 through Measure K when they couldn’t meet their housing requirement goals laid out by the state, which voters ultimately approved at the ballot box.
The report also highlighted how Yorba Linda leaders went around a rule requiring voters to approve any zoning changes by instead adopting new rules that allowed for an increase in things like density and more affordable housing, without changing zoning.
La Habra city leaders also adopted a measure in 2022 that requires voters to vote any time local leaders or property owners wanted to change open space into developable land.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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