Our Neighborhood Voices, a statewide organization that has been collecting signatures in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills to get a measure to amend the state constitution on the November ballot, is postponing its efforts.
The organization was created in response to the trend of state laws that place heftier restrictions and requirements on local jurisdictions and, in the case of the controversial State Senate Bill 9, override local zoning requirements. Members aimed to place a measure on the ballot that would strengthen local control of zoning and land use.
According to the organization’s website, the initiative would limit the state’s control over municipalities in the case of “density bonus, Housing Element requirements, Housing Accountability Act approval requirements, and certain aspects of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation.”
The Los Altos Hills-based organization Hills 2000-Friends of the Hills had been collecting signatures locally in support of the constitutional amendment. Secretary of the organization Duffy Price alerted supporters of the postponement via email.
“Going forward, we will keep building our efforts for the cause of retaining local land use control and stop Sacramento from the land grab and providing gifts to developers,” Price wrote.
The proposed measure would have needed 997,139 signatures by the end of June. The leaders of the Our Neighborhood Voices campaign attributed the delay to the 2024 election cycle and “the combination of COVID-19, the dramatic spike in the cost of paid signature gathering and the need for more time to organize volunteer signature gatherers.”
One of the measure’s main supporters, Mayor Bill Brand of Redondo Beach, said, “We are not stopping, we are not slowing down, we are not ever going to give up until we have restored a neighborhood voice in community planning.”
