In a twist,
Arcadia anti-mansionization initiative fails to qualify for ballot
By Courtney Tompkins, The Pasadena Star-News
POSTED: 04/05/16
ARCADIA
>>A resident-backed initiative targeting mansionization will not make the
ballot after the city clerk’s office discovered a discrepancy in the number of
qualifying signatures.
The Los
Angeles County Registrar-Recorder had cleared the initiative last week,
qualifying it for a future ballot, with only one more signature than the
required 2,909, but City Clerk Lisa Mussenden said she found 64 additional
signatures that should have been omitted because the accompanying paperwork was
not filled out correctly.
“What happened
was the circulators’ declarations were not properly filled out so that
invalidates all those signatures,“ she said.She said she notified the county of
this when she submitted the petition for verification, but somehow the
signatures were still qualified.
Saving
Arcadia, a local activist group behind the initiative, began efforts in July to
take a measure to the voters that would set limits on home size. The initiative
aimed to create a citywide floor area ratio (FAR), which, if adopted, would
have set much tighter restrictions on square footage.In
Februrary, the group submitted a petition with a total of 3,182 signatures to
the city.
David
Arvizu, the Saving Arcadia spokesman, is disappointed with the outcome, but he
doesn’t intend to give up.“It’s a
setback but it’s not a defeat,” he said. “It’s just a technical hurdle that we
will have to get over.”He said the
group may challenge the final count, but first he plans to hire an attorney to
review the discrepancies before determining the next step.
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