How MHRGC is Taking Action to Save our Community

The time for exercising our rights is NOW 

We have four possible options to stop the Trammell Crow project and other massive distribution centers from taking over prime real estate here in our city of Morgan Hill.

Option 1: Convince city officials to engage in a good-faith, honest, and transparent process which involves a willingness to require significant changes or to completely reject these distribution center projects. Even though the odds of achieving meaningful changes are low, we will continue to inject ourselves into the city planning process in every way possible.

Option 2: File legal challenges based on CEQA / EIR and the Morgan Hill Planned Development processes, findings, and decisions. This is the method communities use most often to oppose misguided local land development. Challenging a city in court typically involves a significant amount of expert analysis and legal counsel, which tends to be very expensive. Securing a favorable and meaningful outcome is also subject to the mountain of legal ambiguity surrounding these issues, making the probability of success difficult to predict. However, as the Shoe Palace Distribution Center project showed us, the city is willing to use egregious arguments that have “significant omissions and flaws”[1] which are “inadequate as a matter of law”[1] to characterize the adverse environmental impacts a project will have on the community. Courts would almost certainly rule these practices to be unfair and harmful to citizens of Morgan Hill. MHRGC believes that if similar tactics are used by the city with the Trammell Crow project, it is likely we could find legal counsel willing to represent our citizens on a contingency basis, after an initial discovery phase is completed.

The final two options allow registered voters of Morgan Hill to ultimately control whether the General Plan and Zoning amendments are granted to allow the developer to proceed with this project. The right of citizens to use these ballot processes is enshrined in the California Constitution. This means that, even if the city continues to ignore our legitimate concerns, residents can decide if Trammell Crow will get the changes they are requesting.

Option 3: Exercise our rights to be the ultimate decision-makers through the referendum process. This process can begin only AFTER a proposed change in City Code is formally enacted by our city council. Therefore, if the Trammell Crow General Plan and Zoning amendments are approved, we would qualify a referendum to be put before the voters through submission of a petition signed by at least 10% of Morgan Hill registered voters. The petition would be very simple, basically saying “we, the voters of Morgan Hill, seek the repeal of the amendment passed by the City Council of Morgan Hill.” This relative simplicity makes the associated legal cost less than an initiative.  In addition to having to wait until after the amendments are formally enacted (signatures can’t be collected now and used later), another significant disadvantage of the referendum is that all of the required signatures, approximately 2,400, must be collected within a 30-day time limit. Based on the response from our concerned supporters who have indicated they want to participate in stopping this project, MHRGC believes signature gathering could be done with an all-volunteer effort, avoiding the need for paid signature collectors, which is typically the costliest part of getting a referendum placed on the ballot. This assumption does have a risk due to the 30-day time limit, as we would need a volunteer-based signature gathering campaign organized well in advance.

Option 4: Exercise our rights to be the decision-makers through the initiative process. In contrast to a referendum which, in our case, is a challenge by voters to a zoning or general plan amendment already enacted by city council, an initiative is a proposal by the people; it is a legislative act placed on the ballot by voters, to be decided by voters. The text of the initiative would include a list of purposes and a specific amendment that, if approved, would become part of Morgan Hill code. We won’t be asking voters to reject the developer-requested amendments but instead proposing an amendment to meet our objectives. Notice of our intent to circulate a petition, accompanied by the written text of the initiative, will be filed with the Morgan Hill elections official. The elections official forwards the request to the city attorney who has 15 days to publish a ballot title and summary. Once approved, the city council could not simply repeal the voter-approved initiative or enact some other conflicting amendment. Like a referendum, an initiative is qualified to be put before the voters through submission of a petition signed by at least 10% of Morgan Hill registered voters. However, the collection of signatures can begin as soon as the initiative is ready (upon receipt of title and summary) and the time limit to get required signatures is 180 days. As compared to a referendum, both the ability to begin the process when we want, and having 180 days to collect signatures, are extremely advantageous. The initiative process is essentially an offensive tactic, allowing us to move forward without any dependency on the Environmental Impact Report, non-standard Planning Development processes, or any other questionable actions the city or developer want to engage in. With more time to collect signatures, organizing an all-volunteer effort to avoid the use of paid signature collectors also carries far less risk and keeps the required funding to a minimum. Read about our Responsible Growth for Morgan Hill Initiative.