SLO County city certifies signatures for building height initiative. What’s next?
A citizen-led movement to limit building heights in Grover Beach has received enough valid signatures to put an initiative on the November ballot.
Previously, proponents of the measure said they had submitted a ballot initiative petition signed by 1,256 Grover Beach voters to the City Clerk on April 20, two days before the deadline.
On April 30, the City Clerk verified that the group had collected 1,102 valid signatures, according to the city’s staff report. The petition only needed a minimum of 793 valid signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 3 ballot.
On Tuesday night, Grover Beach City Council unanimously accepted the petition and the certification of signatures.
If the initiative lands on the ballot, voters will choose whether the city should cap buildings in industrial zoning districts at 33 feet and mixed-use building heights at 40 feet. It would also require a minimum of 33% of a mixed-use building be dedicated to commercial space.
The city currently restricts industrial-zoned building heights at 40 feet and mixed-use buildings at 55 feet. If the measure succeeds, the difference would effectively limit buildings to a maximum height of three stories rather than the current four.
What’s next for measure designed to limit building heights?
Now that the ballot initiative petition has been certified, staff will finish preparing a report to present at the City Council meeting on June 8.
At that meeting, the council will have the option to either adopt the ballot initiative as an ordinance outright or approve it for the ballot, the staff report said.
Several Grover Beach residents who signed the petition urged council members to implement an ordinance rather than wait for a November vote.
“You can just approve it. I can tell you that it was about a 10-to-one ratio for yeses versus nos, and we got those signatures lightning fast,” Kelvin Coveduck, one of the citizens who spearheaded the effort, said during public comment.
“You could save the expense of putting it on the ballot. I’m good either way. I know democracy will work,” he added.
