Last night the Fullerton City Council voted 4-1 to approve Chevron’s plan to build 760 houses on 510 acres of depleted oil property in West Coyote Hills, thus overturning the Council’s earlier decision in May 2010. The reversal was expected. The vote in 2010 was close, and city elections in November had changed the makeup of the Council, replacing two of the council members who had voted against development.
Last night’s vote fulfills the terms of a settlement Chevron proposed for a suit it filed against the city last August for a failure to negotiate in good faith. The terms of the settlement required that the council take a second vote and approve the project. Chevron could simply have begun the process of seeking a zoning change all over from scratch, but that would have meant repeating an expensive and time-consuming process.
Friends of Coyote Hills, a group formed ten years ago to oppose development in favor of preserving open space, announced today that it will begin collecting signatures of registered Fullerton voters to petition for a referendum in the hopes that the voters of Fullerton would overturn the City Council’s decision. Enough signatures would halt development until an election could be called.
A referendum, if it succeeds, will still not settle the issue. Voters would not be able to vote on an alternative to Chevron’s plan, merely to nullify the Council’s vote, so the question of what to do with Fullerton’s last significant open space would remain.
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I’m here to report there are now a number of petition gatherers out and about.
Shame, they don’t know how the outcome of their efforts might play out. As you point out this, if successful, is not the end. The true choice is either let the developer proceed (they’ve been put through the ringer and have complied with a myriad of requirements) OR put a ballot measure up to acquire the property!!!!! The citizens of fullerton deserve an answer that doesn’t ‘kick the can down the road’
Pam “John Hancock” Keller was the first to sign the petition. FANTASTIC. She precedes Sharon ‘Teddy Rosevelt” Quirk-Silva who has yet to come to final resolution as to weather all this is ‘good or bad’.
I am truly afraid for the City of Fullerton.
Someone mentioned the former Standard Oil Property to me as an example of what Coyote Hills will become if building is allowed. I did not know that people who live up there are getting cancer in huge numbers.
Kim, I didn’t know that either. Where is this property and how do you know about cancer rates there?
I was told that it’s the houses by West Ridge Country Club off Imperial and Beach. My parents neighbor works at the Wal Mart right by there on Beach and said that employees there have also developed cancer.
And she was the one who also told me about those living up there getting cancer.