Pleasanton council shows support for local control advocacy group

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The Pleasanton City Council adopted a resolution last week stating that the city supports a draft initiative written by Our Neighborhood Voices, a grassroots group fighting for local control rights by placing a measure on the 2024 ballot statewide.

The proposed initiative, which city staff told the council was just a draft body of text that still needs to be reviewed by the California Attorney General’s Office in order to receive an official title and summary, states that local land use and zoning policies should override conflicting state laws in regards to housing development.

The council adopted the resolution in a 3-2 vote at its June 6 regular meeting, with Mayor Karla Brown and Vice Mayor Jack Balch dissenting.

“What we’re doing is supporting the initiative to get on the ballot and let the voters decide,” said Councilmember Julie Testa, who has been asking that the council endorse the initiative for over a year.

“Our community has made very clear their concerns about the state overreach,” Testa added. “What this initiative would do is … give cities an opportunity to regain that local authority. If there is a state law and a city has a local ordinance that conflicts, the local ordinance would prevail.”

Originally on consent calendar, which are items deemed routine in nature and typically voted on without discussion, Balch pulled the support resolution for public discussion because he had questions about the consequences of such a measure — many of which were left unanswered in his mind after Testa tried to offer some further information.

“This initiative is a constitutional amendment and I take that question of endorsing a constitutional amendment very seriously,” Balch said. “We have people putting things into the record tonight who are not attorneys and are giving us opinions based on their understanding.”

Balch was referring to when he tried asking city attorney Dan Sodergren about things like disputes between state and city authority, possible legal litigation costs and possible state limitations on infrastructure funding to which Sodergren couldn’t comment on because he had not yet reviewed the initiative text.

“That concerns me,” Balch said. “I have unanswered questions that I started with to try to clarify as to how it will affect Pleasanton.”

However, Testa attempted to assure the council that proponents who worked on the initiative with the Sacramento legislative council to tighten up the language made it clear that the constitutional amendment would address land use and zoning only.

But Brown, who also wanted Sodergren and the Attorney General’s Office to review the initiative text before endorsing it, told the council that while she does support grassroots efforts, the ballot measure might be too optimistic for its goals.

“I think it is Herculean, at best,” Brown said in regards to the initiative’s goal. “It requires huge sums of money, an army of volunteers and I just don’t see (Our Neighborhood Voices) having that.”

She also asked why the city would put itself in that position against the state at such an early stage when she said state legislators have already been taking away local control for so long.

“(State legislators) have great power and they’re taking it from cities, they’ve done that for years, and they’re gonna continue to do that,” Brown said. “I agree with the concept of standing up. I think it’s too early.”

But even though it is at a “step one” stage in the ballot process, Testa said it’s still important to stand up against the state by supporting Our Neighborhood Voices.

“We need to help them. They’re a group of volunteers who have been carrying water for cities across the state,” Testa said. “I know it’s what our community expects of us to stand up and try and do what we can to push back on the abuse that is coming from the state.”

She also tried answering questions from one of the public commenters, Jocelyn Combs, who told the council that they shouldn’t adopt the resolution and should further review it because it would eliminate all the legislation that made her accessory dwelling unit and thousands of other ADUs throughout the state possible.

ADUs are smaller, secondary homes that are located on properties with main residential units.

“The draft initiative deserves more scrutiny,” Combs said. “It’s confusing and could be wide-ranging.”

But Testa said the initiative wouldn’t take away ADUs, it would only restrict ADUs from being built in areas that impede on other properties.

“We are losing far more than we are gaining, and it’s time to stand up. It’s just time to say that it’s gone too far,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t eliminate our responsibility to build housing and build affordable housing. The laws that are being passed are just a scam; they’re not really to produce affordable housing. They are to require us to produce market-rate housing.”

Our Neighborhood Voices, according to Testa, plans on sending its draft text to the Attorney General’s Office in July in order to get an official title and summary for next year’s ballot.

In other business

* While housing development was brought up a lot during the initiative vote, the city pushed pause on discussing its state-mandated Housing Element, which was continued after City Manager Gerry Beaudin said issues arose from one of the site locations.

Adopted on Jan. 26 by the council, the city’s sixth Housing Element is a document that serves as a plan to address Pleasanton’s mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation counts for new residential units within designated affordability categories.

Pleasanton’s Housing Element plans on meeting the mandated RHNA tally of 5,965 new units — 2,758 of which are targeted toward lower-income households — over the next eight years through the rezoning of 19 sites for housing.

After years of deliberation on which occupied and vacant sites to zone for potential housing development, the city had submitted its final draft Housing Element on Feb. 14 so that California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) officials could review and approve the document.

And despite HCD officials finding that most of the document complied with state Housing Element law statutory requirements, the city had received a notice letter April 10 noting that the city needed to make some additional revisions in order for the document to be certified — which have been addressed since then.

However, Beaudin told the council at the very beginning of the June 6 meeting that because of an issue with one of the site locations, staff had to postpone bringing the Housing Element for council review.

He said that while they don’t have a date yet, they plan on getting it back in front of the council as soon as possible.