Response to City Attorney re: Terraces Proposal

For the full response, click here:

Response to City Attorney re Terraces Proposal:

Here are some highlights from the response:

The Save Lafayette organization hereby responds to the city attorney’s misleading “Informational Update Regarding whether Terraces of Lafayette Apartment Project could be subject to a Referendum.” She states that the Terraces proposal sought permits which are administrative and, she claims, not subject to referendum. But she ignores essential provisions which would indeed be “legislative” acts subject to the constitutionally protected power of the People to override the Council by both referendum and litigation.

Supporters of the “Homes at Deer Hill” proposal attempt to scare voters into believing that a “No” vote on Proposition L will result in the Terraces project with 315 apartments on the sensitive parcel between Deer Hill Road, Pleasant Hill Road and Highway 24. The truth, however, is that the apartment project has never been approved; and it would face the same extreme obstacles as before if the developer elects to resurrect it — including but not limited to the People’s referendum power.

The certified Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Terraces proposal describes 53 “significant adverse impacts,” 13 of which would be “unavoidable” even with permissible mitigation. The EIR is so devastating to the developer that it appealed the Planning Commissions’s certification of the EIR and then threatened a lawsuit when the Council affirmed the certification in 2013.

As Mayor Tatzin explained, “the Council has taken no position with regard to the project. All the Council has done is certify the EIR ….” (City Council Minutes, Sept. 23, 2013, p. 55.) And when the Council decided to shelve the Terraces application, then-Vice Mayor Andersson declared, “there are places where the original 315-unit project would be a great project, but this was not the place and people came out and made that point clearly and overwhelmingly ….” (City Council Minutes, Jan. 22, 2014, p. 16.)

Thus, the possibility of the Council approving the Terraces apartments is highly problematic at best. And if it were to do so, the citizens of Lafayette could override that approval by referendum and/or litigation.