By Scott Wong
Los Altos Hills lawmakers and grass-roots organizers are bickering over who may lay claim to the simpler, more effective open space initiative.
Both town council members and LAH Open Space are fighting for the protection and preservation of over 150 acres of town-owned space and recreation areas. But the campaign has recently been divided into two camps, when council, just days after residents submitted their open space initiative for city attorney review, introduced and approved an independent yet similar initiative at their Oct. 3 meeting.
Mayor Bob Fenwick said the citizens initiative was much too complicated and combined with unrelated elements.
“It took the citizens group 14 pages to explain what they were doing. You’d never have a clue as to what they were up to,” said Fenwick, a co-author of the council’s initiative. “Ours is straightforward and can be understood by anybody.”
But Nancy Couperus, a leader of the grass-roots group Los Altos Hills Open Space, said the mayor’s idea of complexity is skewed and explained that the citizens initiative rectifies incorrect zoning designations.
“What he’s doing is 10 times more complicated,” she said. “He’s locking in the wrong designations on five of the major properties.”
Under the general plan town-owned lands like Edith Park and Juan Prado Mesa Preserve should be designated as open space rather than their current “very low density residential” classification, Couperus said.
Fenwick called the expression “locked in” absurd and inappropriate.
While both initiatives require the vote of residents to either sell or change the designation of town-owned property, the citizens initiative adopts revised land use designations, or zoning, for these properties, a move the council’s does not make. The citizens initiative also calls for amendments to the general plan, which was adopted in 1975 and serves as a land use “constitution” for the town. The council’s initiative lets the current general plan stand as is.
However, the council-sponsored initiative calls for an amendment to a planning municipal code, yielding inconsistencies with the general plan and sending up a red flag, said attorney Rachel Hooper, who has been retained by LAH Open Space.
Harsh criticism from the residents group only incited the mayor to pose tougher questions about why residents propose to rezone certain parcels of town-owned land already defined in the general plan.
“Why should a small group of people play God and decide the zoning?” Fenwick asked. “I consider that to be a completely separate issue.”
Both initiatives could appear on next spring’s special election ballot, according to Couperus. But Fenwick said it was unspecified by council as to when its initiative would be put to voters. He said the time frame could extend as late as next year’s general election in November 2003.
“Council didn’t feel any urgency to call a special election on this issue,” Fenwick said.
