SLO County city’s building height initiative has enough signatures. What happens now?
A group of Grover Beach citizens that opposes tall buildings say it’s collected enough signatures from registered voters to put a measure on the 2026 ballot limiting heights in town.
On Monday, proponents of the initiative announced via a news release that they had submitted a ballot initiative petition signed by 1,256 Grover Beach voters to the City Clerk two days before the April 22 deadline to get the issue on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The signatures still need to be validated, but that total is well above the minimum 793 valid signatures required to get the measure on the ballot.
With the signatures submitted, the city cerk now has 30 business days to verify the signatures. Not all signatures can be accepted due to potential errors in residency information and voter registration status.
Assuming the measure makes it to the ballot, voters will decide whether the city should cap buildings in industrial zoning districts at 33 feet and mixed-use building heights at 40 feet, along with a 33% commercial space requirement.
The city currently caps industrial-zoned building heights at 40 feet and mixed-use buildings at 55 feet. On the top end, the difference would effectively limit buildings to three stories rather than the current four.
Just two weeks ago, proponents expressed concern that they would not be able to gather the needed signatures after they met with the city, which clarified that April 22 was the deadline to get the measure on this year’s ballot rather than the 2028 ballot.
“Even we were surprised at how many signatures we got in a reduced timeline,” proponent Mike Wilson said in the release.
With the signature-gathering period of the process complete, the City Council can choose to adopt the ballot initiative as an ordinance outright or, if enough signatures are valid, can approve it for the ballot.
“The people of Grover Beach have spoken,” proponent and former Mayor Ron Arnoldsen said in the release.
