Coastal election up to the judge Coastal election up to the judge (July 14, 2004)

By Marion Softky
Almanac Staff Writer

The question of whether voters on the San Mateo County Coastside will get an election to decide if they want to be part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District was still a cliffhanger on Monday night when the Almanac went to press.

While the number of valid signatures protesting the annexation appeared to miss the number legally required to trigger an election, Judge Mark Forcum was due to rule Tuesday morning on a lawsuit challenging the count.

After weeks of counting petitions, Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum on July 8 released figures that showed 3,443 valid protests, when 4,071 were required to trigger an election. Under the law governing the annexation, 25 percent or more of the 16,284 registered voters have to sign petitions protesting the annexation in order to force an election.

The proposed expansion of the open space district was approved in April by the San Mateo County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo), after years of planning, a complex legal process, and numerous public hearings with hundreds of comments.

The annexation would allow the district, which has preserved almost 50,000 acres of open space in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties over the last 32 years, to buy and manage open space on the Coastside. It has given up the power to condemn private property in the expansion area, and would buy land only from people who wanted to sell.

If Judge Forcum does not derail the process, the annexation will become official when certified by LAFCo Executive Officer Martha Poyatos, based on a count of petitions. By press time, Ms. Poyatos had not completed her analysis.

Judge Forcum was to review the LAFCo conclusions in light of a lawsuit by Coastside activist Oscar Braun, the Half Moon Bay Coastside Foundation, and others. Mr. Braun, who has already sued unsuccessfully to block the annexation, asked the court to stop the proceedings and reverse the annexation.

Mr. Slocum's numbers reflect the passionate petition campaign, where opponents of annexation were signing up everyone they could find, and its proponents were asking people to sign a petition withdrawing their protests.

Of the 5,340 petitions submitted, the elections department found that 3,583 were "sufficient," and 1,757 were "insufficient." Of 253 petitions withdrawing a signature, only 140 were "sufficient."

Among the reasons petitions were deemed insufficient were: 542 duplicate protests; 376 protests that had been altered after they were signed; 167 protests from people living outside the annexation area; and 341 protests from people who were not registered to vote.

In analyzing the petitions, Ms. Poyatos was directed to try to figure out what the voter wanted to accomplish, explained LAFCo counsel Carol Woodward. "The election staff and the LAFCo staff have worked awfully hard to determine the interest of the citizens," she said. "We have absolutely no preference as to whether there is an election or not."

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