Ballot measure may be voted on this spring
In Santa Monica, the election may not end in November.
Homeowners for Voluntary Preservation filed a petition with 12,947 signatures with the city clerk Thursday that may qualify them for a special election as early as this spring. The group turned in their petition just hours before a six-month deadline to gather enough signatures was set to expire.
The Homeowners Freedom of Choice Initiative proposes to give homeowners final say over whether the city can bestow their residences with historic preservation status or as structures of merit.
Santa Monica City Clerk Maria Stewart said the group needs 15 percent of registered Santa Monica voters, or roughly 9,300 people, to sign the petition to force a special election, and 10 percent, or about 6,200 signatures, to get the initiative on the November, 2004 ballot.
“We feel pretty good that we have enough signatures for a special election,” said Tom Larmore, a local property rights attorney active in Homeowners for Voluntary Preservation.
City Clerk Maria Stewart said the petition and signatures have been sent to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s office, which the city contracts with to verify signatures on petitions for initiatives, referendums and candidates.
The county and the city clerk have 30 days to verify the signatures and return the results. The measure must then be taken before city council, which has the option of adopting the measure or scheduling a special election date.
Committee members believe the city’s current ordinance imposes restrictions on private property which constitutes an unwarranted intrusion of personal freedoms, they say.
The city allows the landmark’s commission to designate single family homes as “landmarks” and “structures of merit,” as well as create historical districts in certain areas of Santa Monica without the permission of the property owners. Homeowners are allowed to testify before the landmark’s commission and they can appeal any decision the board makes to the city council.
If a homeowner wants to make an alteration to the exterior of their home, they have to go through a rigorous public approval process, committee members say.
Some homeowners of older residences have said they don’t believe it makes sense that the government has more rights over their property than they do. Property owners should have the ultimate decision about what can and can’t be done to their homes, they say.
The initiative was prompted by a recent survey conducted by the Hollywood-based Historic Resources Group, which was hired by the city to make an inventory of all the single-family homes north of Montana Avenue worthy of preservation.
The study concluded that the north of Montana Avenue area includes some of the oldest and most significant historic resources in Santa Monica. The report said less than 1 percent of the potential historic properties in the area have been designated or preserved.
Consultants who prepared the report characterized Santa Monica as losing its older historical properties and said city officials need to make important decisions about how they want to preserve the remaining buildings before they are demolished or significantly altered.
The consultants looked at the 3,900 homes north of Montana and found about 9 percent, or 358 homes were of historical merit.
The number of homes on the inventory didn’t change much from 1986, the last time a similar survey was taken, because many of the homes that were at least 50 years old have been taken off the list and replaced with new ones.
In the last survey it was recommended the city preserve about 158 homes from Palisades Avenue to Georgian Avenue.
Consultants said because those homes were not preserved 20 years ago, nearly two-thirds of those homes have either been demolished or altered enough to render them historically insignificant.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 28, 2002. Read the original PDF.