City to Count Mall Petition Signatures

The City Council has decided not to appeal a decision by a Superior Court judge who ruled this month that election officials must count signatures collected in support of a referendum aimed at halting the Buenaventura Mall expansion.

The Ventura council agreed in closed session Monday that an appeal would be too expensive and time-consuming to pursue, city officials said. “We are not going to go appeal something when we really want the process to go forward,” City Atty. Pete Bulens said Tuesday.

The council approved the $50-million mall improvement project in January. But plans have been on hold for months as a result of four lawsuits filed by the project’s opponents.

The decision not to appeal the referendum lawsuit means that election officials will now have to count a portion of the pro-referendum signatures that had been thrown out because some of the petition circulators were not registered to vote in Ventura.

At the city’s request, county elections officials invalidated 45% of the signatures submitted by referendum backers. Nearly half of those were deemed invalid because the circulators were not registered city voters. Legally, signature gatherers must be registered to vote in the jurisdiction in which they are trying to qualify a ballot measure.

But in his decision this month, Judge William L. Peck ruled that although city officials were justified in their actions, the voice of the voters should not be silenced because a signature gatherer was unqualified. Peck’s ruling, and the council’s decision not to appeal it, means referendum supporters will get another chance to see their measure placed before the voters.

If the signatures thrown out are enough to qualify the referendum, the council will be forced to either repeal its decision to approve the mall expansion or place the matter before the voters this fall.