FULLERTON : Error Invalidates Anti-Noise Petitions

A community group that spent five weeks collecting signatures to qualify an anti-noise measure for the November ballot learned Thursday that an error on the petitions had invalidated all 7,700 signatures.

“We’re going to have to redo them and get the signatures all over again,” said Mary B. Homme, a leader of Save Our Bastanchury. The group formed last year in reaction to a city plan to widen Bastanchury Road from four lanes to six.

The petition seeks to halt nearly all road widening and improvement projects that would increase traffic noise above levels spelled out in the city’s general plan. Since traffic on most streets already creates noise above those limits, city officials have said the proposed law would cripple attempts to ease traffic flow in Fullerton.

Homme learned of the invalid signatures Thursday morning after she and fellow Save Our Bastanchury member John Bastian turned in the signatures to the Fullerton city clerk’s office, hoping to get the measure placed on the Nov. 6 ballot. The petitions failed to include a statement explaining the group’s reason for circulating the petition, as required by state election law.

Not including that 500-word notice invalidates the entire petition, Deputy City Clerk Audrey Culver said.

Unless the group can collect 5,133 signatures of registered Fullerton voters quickly, the measure will be too late to appear on the November ballot, Culver said. Before the measure makes it on the ballot, the county registrar of voters must certify the signatures as valid and the City Council must consider the measure and either adopt it as law or put it on the ballot for voters to decide.

Certification by the county could take as long as 30 days and must be complete by Aug. 10 in order for the city to get the measure on the November ballot, Culver said. “If the county took its full 30 days, they’re not going to make it,” she said.

Homme said she hopes to collect the required signatures in a couple of weeks.

If the group misses the deadline for the November ballot, it can collect 7,699 signatures, which is 15% of the city’s registered voters, to force a special election.