Menlo Park home-building rules: repeal, or take to voters? Menlo Park home-building rules: repeal, or take to voters? (March 03, 2004)

** Menlo Park City Council members are asked to choose on March 2, but may seek a compromise.

By Rebecca Wallace
Almanac Staff Writer

The evening of Tuesday, March 2, will be a crucial one for a controversial new set of home-building rules that have produced a spate of heated debates in Menlo Park.

Officials have determined that a referendum petition to overturn the rules does indeed have enough signatures of Menlo Park voters, which means the next step is up to the divided City Council, which approved the rules on a 3-2 vote earlier this year.

At their March 2 meeting, the council members must either repeal the changes to the zoning ordinance or opt to have the city's voters decide whether to do so. By law, the council could either place the matter on the November ballot or hold a special election within 88 days of March 2.

By law, the petition needed 1,700 signatures. City Clerk Silvia Vonderlinden said there were 2,536, and county elections officials successfully compared a sufficient percentage of the signatures against voter rolls.

Councilwoman Mickie Winkler, the rules' chief supporter on the council, has declined to say what she thinks the council should do, but has voiced concern about the cost of an election.

According to an estimate by Ms. Vonderlinden, a special election on the matter would cost about $3 per registered voter, or about $52,000. Putting the issue on the November ballot would cost roughly $1.25 per registered voter, or about $22,000, she said.

Councilman Paul Collacchi, who voted against the rules, raised another concern about holding a special election: low voter turnout. Based on recent statistics, Mr. Collacchi said he feared that a special election would attract less than half of the 17,000 registered voters in Menlo Park.

For example, he wrote in a memo to the council, the November 2000 presidential election had an 80 percent voter turnout in Menlo Park, but a special election the following June yielded only 24 percent.

The most recent special election, in October 2003, had special appeal because it was an unusual gubernatorial recall. Still, though, there was only a 64 percent voter turn-out in Menlo Park, Mr. Collacchi wrote.

A new plan?

Although Mr. Collacchi would choose using the November ballot over a special ballot, ideally he would choose a third option: trying to forge a compromise plan for changing the zoning ordinance, he said. He'd like the council to instead decide to take "a short but reasonable amount of time," such as 30 days, to do so.

After that time, the council could decide to rescind the rules in favor of the compromise, Mr. Collacchi said. Despite the deep divide on the council over the issue, he said hopefully, "There's always room for compromise."

Technically, the council is supposed to make a decision March 2, City Attorney Bill McClure said. But in reality the council could take the 30 days, because anyone who wanted a court order to force the council to act immediately wouldn't even be able to get a court date in that amount of time, Mr. McClure said.

Finding common ground in 30 days may be impossible. But the law does leave the door open for crafting a new set of home-building rules.

The council could repeal the rules and then come up with a new plan at any time. If the council passes a new plan within a year of repealing the rules, the proposal must be substantially different, Mr. McClure said.

After a year, though, the council is allowed to pass rules that are identical to the rescinded ones, he said. Then, residents could once more launch a referendum effort.

The plan at hand would create a rule-based framework for the approval process for new homes and major remodels, removing much human discretion. Because of the petition opposing them, the rules did not take effect and cannot be implemented unless a majority of voters approves them.

Supporters say the plan brings fairness and simplicity to the process and thus encourages homeowners to remodel aging homes. Critics fear that it could lead to more oversized housing and harm the privacy of neighbors.

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