By Clarence Cromwell
Campaign debate heated up last week as parties for and against the Neighborhood Preservation Initiative, now known as Measure G, took shots at their opponents' ballot statements, handed to Saratoga City Clerk Betsy Cory on Jan. 5.
First, authors of the initiative demanded changes in a statement opposing the measure. Then, when the initiative committee's legal advisers began negotiating the changes with City Attorney Michael Riback, he demanded changes in their ballot argument.
"They started it off by complaining about ours, so we responded by saying, 'Well, we don't like yours, either,' " Saratoga Mayor Paul Jacobs said.
Jacobs and Vice Mayor Gillian Moran wrote the argument against the measure. City officials get first crack at opposing a measure that would change a city ordinance, Riback said.
Both City Manager Harry Peacock and County Registrar Dwight Beattie said they would accept changes to the statements, as long as they can be made before Jan. 26, when the city hands the final versions of arguments to the registrar.
At press time, however, neither side was willing to make changes the other side wanted. "At this point, we seem to be at loggerheads," Jacobs said.
Initiative author Jim Shaw said his group objected to five of the 17 sentences in the "Argument Opposing Measure G."
Jacobs conceded that one statement in the argument was inaccurate: the line claiming that no parcel had ever been rezoned from residential to commercial. He said that after writing the statement, he learned that one such parcel had been changed.
The other four lines dealt with the cost of a special election, whether the measure would affect minor home improvements and the flexibility allowed to decision-makers under the measure.
Opponents of the measure identified two points of the pro-initiative argument are untrue. Jacobs said the initiative would not let the city build a project designed specifically to meet state affordable-housing requirements. Initiative proponents claim Measure G would allow such an exception.
Jacobs also questioned the statement that described a piece of property at Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road and Cox Avenue as parkland.
Both sides' objections are detailed in the rebuttals they were required to submit to the city clerk by Jan. 16. Voters will receive the final versions of the arguments and rebuttals in the mail, inside the county's sample-ballot booklet.
If an agreement on the initiative arguments is not reached, either side could force the other to change its statement by getting a court order. The City Council agendized a closed session Jan. 22 to discuss the possibility of such a court action.
Shaw said he'd like to see the dispute solved peacefully.
"We're hopeful that they will see where they have, innocently or not, made errors and correct them," he said. "We're trying to do this in a cooperative mode so they can revise and we get a chance to rebut their revision. All five [sentences] should be deleted, but it's possible they could be rephrased to make them truthful."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, Wednesday, January 24, 1996.
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