Court Setbacks Don’t Deter Foes of General Plan

After failing last week to get a court order to block the city from issuing building permits for major subdivisions, proponents of a referendum on the new General Plan say they will continue their legal battle to protect the community’s environmentally sensitive areas.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen E. O’Neil on Friday rejected a request for a temporary restraining order against the city. O’Neil also refused to force the city clerk to put the General Plan referendum on a citywide ballot but agreed to let challengers return to court in November.

Referendum proponents contend that the city clerk improperly disqualified their petition and that until the General Plan challenge is decided, building permit applications for large projects should be suspended.

William Gross, chairman of Diamond Bar Citizens to Protect Country Living, said his group intends to try again Friday for a temporary restraining order and hopes to get a hearing on the clerk’s rejection of the referendum bid when the group appears before O’Neil in November.

The citizens group says the General Plan, adopted in July as the blueprint for the city’s future growth, does not adequately safeguard such areas as Tonner Canyon, one of Los Angeles County’s last large undeveloped areas.

City officials, miffed by the group’s persistence, say the clerk’s action was legally correct.

“They don’t want to accept the fact that they did it wrong,” City Clerk Lynda Burgess said of the summer referendum campaign.

Burgess ruled that the group failed to collect the required minimum of 2,481 valid signatures of registered Diamond Bar voters. Leaders of the group say they more than met the requirement.

Petition organizers said Burgess told them that she determined that only 2,967 of 4,371 signatures on the petitions belonged to registered Los Angeles County voters. Burgess disqualified 1,083 of those signatures based on errors in the procedure for circulating petitions, organizers said.