By Scott Wong

A new residents group has emerged in protest of recent actions carried out by the lame-duck Los Altos Hills City Council.

Citizens for the Preservation of Los Altos Hills members are poised to pass a referendum to repeal council’s Nov. 7 adoption of the 2002 Master Path Plan, according to a group organizer.

“We’re not asking for a lot,” said Scott Vanderlip, a Los Altos Hills resident. “We’re just trying to continue the process and have more public input provided.”

Residents have complained that the revised map, which eliminated some off-road pathways and potential pathways, while securing other roadside paths adopted in 1996, is riddled with errors and cases of missing paths.

But at the Nov. 7 meeting, council members argued the revised pathways map was the most accurate to date and that ample time for public comment had been allowed on the issue.

Mayor Bob Fenwick, who joined in council’s unanimous approval of the plan, said Friday the map update had been 21 years in the making. The last time council revised the map was in 1981. He denied knowing anything about a referendum on the pathways plan, calling it “unknown territory.”

The group has just a little more than two weeks to gather roughly 600-700 signatures, or 10 percent of the registered town voters, and submit the petitions to the city clerk for review. Map revisions adopted by council will become law after 30 days on Dec. 7.

Once the referendum is authorized, it will then be forwarded to council at which time a number of options come into play. Council may either accept the referendum, overturning the plan’s prior adoption, or opt to put the referendum to a vote of residents at a special or regular election.

LAH Citizens organizers are hopeful Breene Kerr and Dean Warshawsky, who were elected Nov. 5 and campaigned on the platform of consensus government, will back their cause when the two take their seats on council Dec. 5.

Last week, Kerr expressed frustration that after the election, a lot of contentious issues were “pushed through council,” including the approval of the pathways plan.

“Despite the best intentions of council, this action has some rather serious consequences,” Kerr said.

LAH Citizens has followed in the tradition of other residents groups, which organized in reaction to council proceedings which groups said were out of touch with the interest of a majority of residents. Earlier this year, LAH Open Space was founded in response to council discussions on the possible sale of town-owned lands.

According to Vanderlip, the referendum will not and reverse progress and take the map back twenty years, but only to the day before the council vote.

“It allows all the work that has gone into the current map to be used,” he said. “We have a good map to work from and we can contribute to make updates and corrections to it.”