Anyone ever got chickens on the ballot?

[poprocksncoke]

Last year a group of us got an ordinance passed in our city to allow for the keeping of backyard hens by a vote of 4-3.

Days before it was supposed to go into effect a group filed a CEQA lawsuit and the ordinance was suspended. In the settlement meeting their demands were to rescind the ordinance and they would drop the lawsuit.

Since it was passed 2 council members left and one of the new council members are against it. It came to a vote this past Wednesday to rescind the ordinance and it passed 4-3.

I was looking into how to go about getting it on the ballot and let the people decide. We have had overwhelming support so I believe there is a good chance it passes.

I am also aware that if it doesn't pass it would be hard to get the city council to look at it again in the future.

Has anyone been involved with doing something like this? I have seen it been put on the ballot in other cities but it was done by the city council, only one I can find that was attempted to be put on the ballot was in Visalia. I don't believe it ever made it to the ballot.

Thanks

 

[U_Stormcrow]

CEQA?

You are in CA. Move. I'm sorry, but I've seen CEQA litigation hold up projects in court for literally decades. It doesn't matter whether or not you can get it passed again, any single objector willing to file a CEQA suit can bring the people's choice to an absolute halt, functionally, indefinitely.

 

[poprocksncoke]

CEQA?

You are in CA. Move. I'm sorry, but I've seen CEQA litigation hold up projects in court for literally decades. It doesn't matter whether or not you can get it passed again, any single objector willing to file a CEQA suit can bring the people's choice to an absolute halt, functionally, indefinitely.

But if its not initiated by the government CEQA should not apply. Correct?

Should not have anything to do with CEQA to begin with, notice of exemption should have been enough.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Wrong. CEQA can be used to stop or delay almost anything in your State. And your Courts have been increasingly willing to set aside a "Notice of Exemption" - indeed, your Supreme Court actually made it easier to object, virtually indefinitely, to things a municipality ruled exempt. Plaintiffs are increasingly finding means to circumvent your legislature's very weak efforts to reduce abuses of CEQA, as well.

This isn't a terrible summary of the 2012 decision. I'd normally not trust another's summary, but at the levels we are discussing, its close enough.

 

[poprocksncoke]

Well then we have a negative declaration done before it goes out for a vote?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

That would help, yes, and a lengthy comment period.

It will still be tied up in litigation before it ever goes into effect.

However well meaning the CEQA Act was, with its EIRs, when initially conceived, in the years following its been weaponized in completely predictable ways, most typically (it seems to me) in order to protect property values by preventing zoning changes, building easements, etc or to ensure Union labor was used on a project.

By your comment in the first message, it seems to me that one of your neighbors believes, rightly or wrongly, that allowing backyard chickens will negatively impact property values, and has discovered CEQA litigation as a way to raise the costs so high that the local municipality is unwilling to invest in defending the change to its ordinances.

Are you in Bakersfield, by chance?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

and this is your Court's recent decision regarding zoning changes and exemptions to CEQA.

I am not an attorney. I am not admitted to the Bar in an any state in this nation, any of its territories, or any other place in the world. This is not to be construed as legal advice. As a reasonably well read layperson, your City's position on Exemption looks untenable, and the likelihood of you seeing an amendment allowing backyard chickens to go into effect in the near term (say, the next decade) look, to me, quite slim.

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

Just get somes hens and keep things tidy.

 

[Snooky doodle]

CEQA?

You are in CA. Move. I'm sorry, but I've seen CEQA litigation hold up projects in court for literally decades. It doesn't matter whether or not you can get it passed again, any single objector willing to file a CEQA suit can bring the people's choice to an absolute halt, functionally, indefinitely.

Yup,CA is your problem...

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

is your problem.

Clearly it is someones problem