May 15, 2008

Push is on for open space

Signature gatherers busy trying to qualify measure

By Bil Paul

Push is on for open space

Signature gatherers are out in force the recent day I visit Woodside Plaza in Redwood City - one in front of the Rite Aid drugstore and two in front of the Lucky supermarket.

I shadow volunteer Gita Dev for a time, wanting to see how the locals are responding to her efforts to help collect enough signatures to place an open space measure on the November ballot. The drive will have to gather signatures from 15 percent of the registered voters in the city, about 5,300 of them, to succeed. The prime organizations behind the drive, Save the Bay and Friends of Redwood City, have until the middle of September to submit enough names.

In case you're not familiar with the effort, the two organizations, as part of the Open Space Vote Coalition, are trying to put a brake on housing and commercial developments on existing open space within Redwood City. Mostly, they're trying to prevent half of the huge expanse of Cargill salt evaporation ponds being converted to those uses. If they get enough signatures, and voters approve the ballot measure in November, the city charter will be amended to require that any further commercial developments on Redwood City open space gain a two-thirds vote of approval from city residents.

The proponents of the charter amendment claim that a telephone poll earlier in the year revealed that 71 percent of Redwood City residents favor a city charter amendment, but some have criticized proponents for only offering limited results from the poll. I decide to watch volunteer Gita Dev for a while before judging for myself how visitors to the shopping center react to the open space initiative.

I soon realize that perhaps one-third of the shoppers are either from out of town or too young to vote. Another one-third are either in too much of a hurry to sign anything or don't want to be bothered (mostly women in the first category and men in the second category) - or they've already signed the petition. It's the final third segment that yields rewards to Dev (an architect living in Woodside).

She tells me she's overcome her inhibitions enough to make a quick approach to people entering the grocery store - knowing she's got a one-or-two sentence chance to get their attention. With clipboard in hand, she throws out, after learning that they're a bona fide local registered voter: "Would you be willing to sign a petition to try to save our open space?" and if she gets their full attention, "... I mean our parks and baylands."

After engaging in a little conversation with Dev, shopping cart in hand, some shoppers decide they don't want to sign at the moment - in which case Dev hands them an information sheet. If they do sign - and some do on her verbal pitch alone, while others want to read the entire initiative proposal first - Dev's work has paid off. This is her eighth time gathering signatures for this cause (she's also stood outside the city library) and it's a slow process. She admits that chasing after people is repetitive, slow work, so slow that "it's like watching the grass grow." In an hour and a half, she's signed up only five voters.

She's learned that approaching couples entering the store is usually fruitless because they're "too into each other" while I personally observe that women, in general, are the most willing to engage in conversation with her. Men either say, "I already signed," or a few crusty older gents wave her off, declaring "I don't sign things" or "I get too much of this stuff in the mail."

Dev belongs to the Sierra Club, Save the Bay and the Peninsula Open Space Trust. She believes the Bay belongs to everyone.

There are two other signature gatherers there, both paid for their time. James Johnson has gathered seven signatures at the other supermarket entrance, while the winner is musician/realtor Mark Capestany with 19 signatures over at the Rite Aid store. He tends to be more outgoing. Capestany, a former Redwood City resident now living in San Carlos, is a veteran of previous development battles.

Capestany is fully in favor of amending the city's charter to require a two-thirds approval for private development on open space land (some have suggested that a simple majority would be more appropriate), and doesn't see this drive as just a Cargill issue. He points to more and more traffic congestion that big developments would contribute to.

Initiative proponents have already collected more than 5,000 signatures, according to Jessica Castelli, communications director for Save the Bay. With the amount of support being received from citizens (my observation was that the 71 percent rate of approval from the phone poll is probably accurate), I expect that the initiative being on the fall ballot is a given. Save the Bay tells me the signatures will be submitted for a count within several weeks. The measure on the November ballot needs only a simple majority to pass.

Already-approved projects by the city wouldn't be affected by the charter amendment.

One lady Gita Dev approached for a signature had a good excuse for not signing: "I'm can't, with this ice cream cone I'm holding." Perhaps if Cargill and DMB (its local development agent) want to derail the open space preservation movement, they'll go to shopping centers and offer free ice cream cones to registered voters. The flavor might appropriately be Rocky Road.



Bil Paul's column appears Thursdays in the Daily News. Reach him at natural_born_writer@yahoo.com.