Helping Our Peninsula's Environment

 

Measure A - Pebble Beach Company's Bait and Switch "Save the Forest for Clint" ballot measure

Measure A is Not Law now - Probably Never will Be

 

State Law Always trumps Local Laws - Measure A is a Local Law

Measure A is a local proposal (not a law) approved by tens of thousands of Monterey County voters. But to become law, Measure A cannot in any way violate state law. The law it most directly confronts is the Coastal Act created by a majority of millions of California voters in the 1970s. The California Coastal Commission is the final arbiter of whether Measure A conflicts with our Coastal Act.

Why are Pebble Beach Company and Monterey County Hiding Measure A?

  Measure A was on the Ballot in November 2000, yet as of February 2006 Pebble Beach Company and Monterey County have not yet given enough materials to Coastal Commission staff so that it can be considered a "complete application!" As of February 2004, more than three years after they put it on the ballot, Pebble Beach Company and Monterey County had systematically refused all requests to give it to the Coastal Commission. Any local law including any affecting Coastal Zone development must be approved by the Coastal Commission as not violating our Coastal Act. 

Pebble Beach Company and Clint Eastwood publicly claim the County voters voted to let us have our development. They exude arrogance that the voters created a law that allows their new forest destroying golf course and mansion development. 

Well no one at HOPE believes your fun-house mirror Clint, as the script you want us to read is far more fiction than reality. 

  • Why have Pebble Beach Company and the County colluded to keep Measure A from the Coastal Commission? 

For the same reason most local public interest groups decided to sit that election out and save their resources for court -- because the Measure A is so blatantly illegal. 

  • Measure A patently violates the Coastal Act and no local initiative can overrule the state Coastal Act or any other State law.  

Pebble Beach Company and Clint spent more than one million dollars selling Measure A, yet their literature is uncontaminated with information. Their literature instead is only filled with endorsements by local politicians.

Here's a few items you probably never heard about during the campaign --

    • Measure A would allow destruction of protected vital habitat for imperiled species including a local orchid, an endangered tree (the Gowen Cypress) and Mark Twain's celebrated red-legged frog 
    • Measure A would allow destruction of 17,000 trees. PBC sent out 6 Mailers to every county voter. None of the 6 mailers are contaminated with the news that Measure A would allow logging of 17,000 trees.
    • Measure A would allow a golf course! PBC sent out 6 Mailers to every county voter. None of the 6 mailers are contaminated with the news that Measure A would allow yet another golf course!
    • Measure A would create false facts to allow forest destruction. It wrongly creates facts that there are no longer any resource problems (water supply, sewer capacity, imperiled species) in Pebble Beach. Then because of these false facts it removes the B8 zoning restriction placed because of the actual water supply constraints, sewer capacity limits, imperiled species constraints 
    • The "Permanent" protection for the imperiled Monterey pine forests can be easily removed when Pebble Beach Company wants more development later. 
    • Measure A would allow destruction of land (the proposed Equestrian Center site) already protected in exchange for an earlier Pebble Beach Company forest destruction development - Spanish Bay. 
    • Measure A only rezones the property of a single owner.  
      Courts have consistently refused to allow zoning of a single owner's property as it could allow hatred (racism) to prevent an owner from building. 

My guess (since they've used it before) is that Pebble Beach Company wants to wait for Measure A Re-Zoning to go to the Coastal Commission at the same time as their development project. 

Then Clint Eastwood and Peter ("We are Not developers") Ueberroth will cry (in harmony) "You have to give us this approval because we've spent so much time and effort doing this project !"

So remember - when Clint Eastwood or Peter Ueberroth tell you they want to protect a forest, quickly insert your earplugs to safeguard against the roar of chainsaws and bulldozers.

 

Complete text of Measure A (on website of Concerned residents of Pebble Beach)

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Feedback - Info(at)1hope.org

831 / 624-6500 P.O. Box 1495, Carmel, CA 93921

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This Page Last Updated Sunday, March 05, 2006

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