Heeding the advice of a supervisor to go out and get a
referendum, opponents of a move to control growth within the county
delivered the goods Monday.
Heeding the advice of a supervisor to go out and get a referendum, opponents of a move to control growth within the county delivered the goods Monday.
Members of the Farmers and Citizens to Protect our Agricultural Heritage turned in more than 5,300 signatures to the county’s elections office in an effort to bring the San Benito County Growth Control Initiative to a vote by referendum in March.
The group needed to collect 1,271 valid signatures of registered voters, County Clerk John Hodges said.
Dara Tobias signed over the petition feeling confident about the number of signatures collected.
“I kept a good track of them,” she said. “The reason we got so many signatures is because people we’re upset with the supervisors decision to take the voting rights away from the people.”
The county Board of Supervisors passed the measure 4-1 April 1 instead of voting to place it on the March ballot.
The initiative limits the ability of landowners to subdivide their property, and its re-zoning aspect is different from the county’s existing provisions in that it takes much of the land currently in agricultural productive designation and reduces it from five-acre designation to 20-acre designation. The ordinance also designates agricultural rangeland area from 40-acre designation to 160-acre designation.
Proponents said the initiative will strengthen agricultural policies of the county’s General Plan and help preserve open space and conservation measures of the land’s resources.
Within 18 days, the coalition gathered more than 5,300 signatures for the referendum, which was close to the 5,900 signatures collected by proponents of the initiative.
“People were coming to us waiting in line to sign it,” said rancher Robert Frusetta and treasurer of the SBC Farm Bureau.
Since state law limits time allowed to collect signatures on such a referendum petition, coalition members were given 30 days to collect signatures.
Hodges said he was surprised about the number of signatures collected in such a short period of time
“They only had 30 days to hand them in,” he said. “The board only decided on this April 1.”
San Benito County Farm Bureau President Tom Tobias said he last counted 5,344 signatures.
“We oppose out-of-control growth, but this measure hurts the very people we should be protecting,” Tobias said.
A referendum allows voters to decide the fate of the growth control measure.
“Once people understand what this measure does, we will defeat it, and this will clear the way for more sensible approaches to resolving our growth issues,” Tobias said.
The next step will be to verify the signatures as register voters, which Hodges said should be completed within a couple of weeks.
