A long fight over development
For the past week I’ve been reviewing a package of newspaper clips recounting Yorba Linda’s first two petition drives and the city’s first special election—and I’m struck by how political rhetoric hasn’t changed much in nearly 40 years.
The clippings are from the April 1969 to March 1970 period in a two-inch-thick binder, since back then four newspapers under separate ownerships covered the city, including the weekly Star and three dailies, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News Tribune.
Although I’ve written about various petitions and special elections in past columns, I’ve never mentioned these two precedent-setting petitions and the first special election held after incorporation.
The first initiative petition for more restrictive zoning never reached the ballot, despite gaining 1,119 signatures from 4,539 registered voters, because a Superior Court judge ruled the City Council, not voters, was empowered to establish and administer zoning.
Among comments from the 1969 petition drive: “We could have a rash of hog ranches” (Mayor Burt Brooks) and “the blind leading the blind” (YL Star publisher Bill Drake).
A politically active Chamber of Commerce even resolved the membership was “not in accord with attempts…to upset the accepted ways of democratic city government.”
Next, the first referendum petition opposed a council-approved 170-unit apartment zone on 13 acres southwest of Richfield Road and Yorba Linda Boulevard behind the current Henry’s Market on land now occupied by the Cerro Verde condominiums.
The 560 valid signatures were enough to force council members to either rescind the apartment zone ordinance or set a special election date, which they did for Feb. 3, 1970.
Again, the Chamber weighed in, this time to support the apartment zone and to urge that “everyone interested in the future of this city support our duly elected officials.”
Drake framed the issue as letting “a small minority intimidate the council,” while his reporter Val Lucas claimed “dissidents” didn’t care “two whoops” about apartments—“their real objective is to destroy our confidence in our elected representatives.”
Voters rejected the apartment zone with 1,302 opposed to 887 in favor. Then, in the regular April 14 election, voters dumped three of the city’s original five councilmen.
Among the several petition and election campaign leaders were Hank Wedaa, who was chairman of the Committee for a Better Yorba Linda, and Sid Radus, who was president of the Yorba Linda Homeowners Association.
A FINAL NOTE
Residents who remember the developer-funded letter signed by four council members in December 2005 calling petitioners seeking to overturn the now-rescinded high density Old Town zoning ordinances “naysayers” and “a civic threat” will get a kick out of this:
Drake ran a Jan. 21, 1970, letter to the editor in which a longtime resident compared the anti-apartment zone petitioners to the then-“dissident groups on our campuses who have caused riots, property loss, damage to buildings owned by you and me, disrupted classes and in general raised havoc with the orderly procedure of colleges and government.”
The clippings are from the April 1969 to March 1970 period in a two-inch-thick binder, since back then four newspapers under separate ownerships covered the city, including the weekly Star and three dailies, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News Tribune.
Although I’ve written about various petitions and special elections in past columns, I’ve never mentioned these two precedent-setting petitions and the first special election held after incorporation.
The first initiative petition for more restrictive zoning never reached the ballot, despite gaining 1,119 signatures from 4,539 registered voters, because a Superior Court judge ruled the City Council, not voters, was empowered to establish and administer zoning.
Among comments from the 1969 petition drive: “We could have a rash of hog ranches” (Mayor Burt Brooks) and “the blind leading the blind” (YL Star publisher Bill Drake).
A politically active Chamber of Commerce even resolved the membership was “not in accord with attempts…to upset the accepted ways of democratic city government.”
Next, the first referendum petition opposed a council-approved 170-unit apartment zone on 13 acres southwest of Richfield Road and Yorba Linda Boulevard behind the current Henry’s Market on land now occupied by the Cerro Verde condominiums.
The 560 valid signatures were enough to force council members to either rescind the apartment zone ordinance or set a special election date, which they did for Feb. 3, 1970.
Again, the Chamber weighed in, this time to support the apartment zone and to urge that “everyone interested in the future of this city support our duly elected officials.”
Drake framed the issue as letting “a small minority intimidate the council,” while his reporter Val Lucas claimed “dissidents” didn’t care “two whoops” about apartments—“their real objective is to destroy our confidence in our elected representatives.”
Voters rejected the apartment zone with 1,302 opposed to 887 in favor. Then, in the regular April 14 election, voters dumped three of the city’s original five councilmen.
Among the several petition and election campaign leaders were Hank Wedaa, who was chairman of the Committee for a Better Yorba Linda, and Sid Radus, who was president of the Yorba Linda Homeowners Association.
A FINAL NOTE
Residents who remember the developer-funded letter signed by four council members in December 2005 calling petitioners seeking to overturn the now-rescinded high density Old Town zoning ordinances “naysayers” and “a civic threat” will get a kick out of this:
Drake ran a Jan. 21, 1970, letter to the editor in which a longtime resident compared the anti-apartment zone petitioners to the then-“dissident groups on our campuses who have caused riots, property loss, damage to buildings owned by you and me, disrupted classes and in general raised havoc with the orderly procedure of colleges and government.”
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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