After five hours of a public hearing where property owners and environmental organizations weighed in on a highly charged storm water proposal, the Board of Supervisors decided to postpone voting on a clean water measure that would have called for a special election on a property tax assessment to fund beach and storm water cleanup programs.
Instead the board, by a 3-2 margin, voted in favor of a motion by Fourth District Supervisor Don Knabe to allow more time for residents to comment on the proposed measure.
“We continued to hear complaints from residents, businesses, school districts, churches and non-profits that this process has not been open and transparent,” said Knabe, who represents Marina del Rey. “Even as the board was hearing testimonies at the public hearing, my office was receiving emails and phone calls from residents asking where they could get a protest form and how they could protest the measure.
“The Clean Water, Clean Beaches Initiative is the largest protest hearing process that Los Angeles County has ever undertaken. It should have been as convenient, transparent and open as possible, but unfortunately it did not live up to that,” the supervisor asserted. “We continue to receive significant correspondence from the public who do not understand the need for the fee, and some have questioned the credibility of the way the process has been conducted.”
The county proposal would have assessed property owners approximately $54 a year to fund storm water cleanup initiatives locally and regionally and create regional watershed authorities. This would have been decided through a special election among property owners and landlords.
Organizations such as Santa Monica-based Heal the Bay are backing the Clean Water, Clean Beaches initiative. They say it has the potential to drastically improve the water quality not only at local beaches but throughout the region.
Knabe has been the most outspoken opponent of the proposal. He has questioned its transparency and expressed a preference for a ballot initiative, which would allow all voters to cast ballots instead of only property owners. It would also require a two-thirds approval for passage.
Third District Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents Venice and Santa Monica and who supported the special election, had a different point of view. “If you’re a property owner, why would you want others who won’t be taxed to vote on something that you would pay for (as would occur with a parcel tax)?” asked Yaroslavsky before the hearing.
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents Culver City, voted in favor of the 60 -day continuance, even as he claimed to be concerned about preventing pollutants from entering waterways like Ballona Creek, which traverses Culver City.
“We can’t tolerate contaminants in our oceans,” Ridley-Thomas told political reporter Conan Nolan on Jan. 20 on Nolan’s NBC 4’s “News Conference. “We’re attempting to deal with that in an appropriate way.”
In addition, Knabe’s motion also instructed the Department of Public Works to provide a process for placing the initiative on a general election ballot, define a specific list of clean water projects, determine a possible sunset date for the measure and develop a potential alternative method of funding storm water quality projects.
