Initiative Petitions Submitted in Corona

Three groups have been circulating growth-related initiative petitions here in recent weeks, but only one submitted signatures to the city clerk by Monday’s deadline to qualify for the November ballot.

The two others--competing proposals to guide the development of the South Corona agricultural area--were given instead to a neutral party to hold until the City Council gives final approval to a mutually agreed-upon compromise.

The initiative proposal that City Clerk Diedre Lingenfelter received Monday would institute a strict 7,200-square-foot minimum lot size for new single-family homes in Corona.

Councilman William Franklin, the leader of that initiative drive, submitted 2,025 signatures, he said. To put the question on the November ballot requires 1,946 valid signatures or 10% of Corona’s registered voters.

(Franklin said his group, the Corona Registered Voters Assn., had used official voter-registration lists to check signatures as they were collected door to door. That way, he said, they could be sure all were valid and avoid the need to collect many extra signatures.)

Compromise Awaited

Franklin’s initiative, which over the last year has seen several provisions dropped in a series of revisions, would also require the city to give residents 14 days’ notice before voting on a “negative declaration”--a formal statement that a project would have no significant environmental impact on properties within 500 feet of it.

The initiative petitions that deal with South Corona development are in the hands of a neutral party until the City Council takes a final vote on a compromise master plan hammered out between opposing factions of greenbelt residents and large landowners.

The residents circulated a drastic “growth-control initiative” that would restrict greenbelt development to just 7,500 homes--half the density that was in a plan favored by landowners--at a rate of only 400 homes a year.

Landowners responded with their own initiative petitions calling for a limit of about 14,700 homes. But both sides agreed to drop their initiative drives if the City Council approves a compromise plan with a cap of 12,500 homes.

A final vote on that plan, which passed 5 to 0 in a preliminary vote last week, is expected on July 16. “Once everything is finalized, then the petitions are to be destroyed,” Caseldine said.

Petitions in Norco

In neighboring Norco, where petitions were submitted a month ago to prevent growth on 80 acres of vacant land now owned by the U.S. Navy, the City Council is expected to consider the petitioners’ demands at its regular meeting next week.

Deane Financial Inc. wants to build about 150 homes on the Norco parcel, a plan that would be consistent with the city’s traditional minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, or slightly less than half an acre.

The petition’s 1,006 signers want the land to remain undeveloped.

Last week, the council accepted their petitions, which City Clerk Shirley Russell certified to have the signatures of more than 10% of the city’s 8,731 registered voters, she said. But the council delayed a decision on the matter until its next meeting.

Council members have a choice of rescinding their unanimous May 7 vote to allow the land to be rezoned for residential development or putting the question to a citywide vote in November.