AgdaPkt 2008-07-07 Clsd and Reg - Laserfiche WebLink

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and (2) the fact that the initiative would apply to lands in the City other than the Cargill lands, which appear to be the main focus of the initiative. Therefore, the proposals below focus on those two issues. Once the City Attorney receives direction from City Council about which, if any, proposal it wishes to pursue, the City Attorney will draft initiative language for your review. 78 Page 4 A. An Initiative That Focuses on Cargill and Requires a Maioritv Vote One alternative is to amend the Charter or Zoning Code to require future ratification by a majority vote of any future development of the Cargill lands. While the City Attorney is currently reviewing legal options, the goal of the initiative would be to limit the application of the ratification requirement to any development on Cargill lands or at least some subset of lands including Cargill lands but not all of the other lands that would come within the proposed Charter amendment. This proposal would differ from the proposed Charter amendment initiative in the following ways: 1. Future ratification would be subject to a majority vote instead of supermajority vote; 2. The goal of the measure would be to apply the ratification requirement only to Cargill lands and not the other areas covered by the proposed Charter amendment initiative such as City parks, Area H, Docktown, the SaSA treatment facility, the Oracle campus, County-owned land, waters around the Port, and the Redwood Shores lagoons. 3. The New General Plan may not be affected. The proposal would not be tied to General Plan designations, unlike the proposed Charter amendment initiative and, as a result, would not interfere with the City's current General Plan review. That is because the proposal would not require voter ratification of any changes to general plan designations as part of the general plan planning process. 4. By not changing existing law about the form of future City ballot questions. the City would not be constrained by the narrow and arguably incomplete form of the ballot question that the proposed Charter amendment initiative imposes on the City for future votes. A somewhat similar result could be achieved by amending the Charter to require ratification by majority vote for any change to General Plan ("GP") designations covering the Cargill land, namely the GP designations of "Unimproved Areas" and "Future Development Expanding Limits of Urbanization." (Approximately one-third of the Cargill land has a GP designation of "Future Development" and two-thirds has a GP designation of "Unimproved Areas,") This proposal, however, would have two potential drawbacks compared to the proposal mentioned above. First. it could affect the New General Plan by requiring voter ratification for a change to certain GP designations; any change to those lands in the New General Plan would have to be approved by the voters. Second, the initiative would affect lands in addition to Cargill, albeit less lands then the proposed Charter amendment initiative covers. In particular, the proposed wettands in Area H and the area surrounding the SaSA treatment facility are within the "Unimproved Area" GP designation, and therefore any changes to those areas would require voter approval. 4