Growth Initiative Qualifies for Ballot

The Orange County Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative officially qualified for the June ballot Thursday, assuring a high-stakes debate in the next three months over the future of development in the area.

The Orange County registrar of voters announced that his staff had confirmed that an estimated 74,000 of the 96,000 petition signatures submitted last week by initiative sponsors were those of registered Orange County voters. At least 65,110 valid signatures were required to qualify the measure for the ballot.

The initiative will now be forwarded to the Board of Supervisors, where it can be adopted as an ordinance or offered to the voters on June 7.

“This is a turning point for Orange County,” said Tom Rogers, a leader of the initiative movement. “This came as a result of the greed and avarice of those people (developers). Now everybody is of one mind: It can’t go any farther.”

The initiative would bar major construction projects in unincorporated areas where the average speed of traffic is below 30 to 35 m.p.h. and where vehicles cannot make it from one traffic light to another within one cycle of the light. It also sets minimum response times for emergency vehicles and new standards for county flood-control and park systems.