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The Registrar of Voters says not enough valid signatures were gathered against the Word Logistic Center, but its foes say that finding is faulty because it’s based on a random sampling. Meanwhile, lawsuits continue to be filed against the development.
Officially, the battle being waged by some Moreno Valley residents to get a proposed mega-logistics project on the local ballot is over.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters ruled two weeks ago that opponents of the World Logistics Center had not gathered enough valid signatures to force a special election on the warehouse-distribution project, which at buildout would cover 40.6 million square feet.
To get the issue before voters, referendum supporters had to get 10 percent of the city’s registered voters to sign their petition, which worked out to 7,609 signatures.
Despite submitting close to 10,000 names, only 6,059 of those were determined to be valid. That means Moreno Valley residents will not decide the fate of the World Logistics Center, which the city council approved in August by a 3-2 vote.
Not so fast, says Penny Newman, executive director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice in Jurupa Valley. Newman is a leader in the battle to block the project, or at least bring it more in line with California environmental laws.
The registrar’s office, at the request of the Moreno Valley City Clerk, counted a random sampling of 500 signatures and based its ruling on that. A full counting could find enough valid signatures to get the project on the local ballot, Newman said.
“There are a lot of reasons to believe that the counting was not adequate,” said Newman, a longtime environmental activist in the Inland Empire and a frequent critic of the region’s mania for developing large warehouse-distribution projects. “We want a full counting, and we want to be allowed to look at all of their materials and the methods they used when they did their count.
“At the very least, their final count was close enough that they should look at all of the signatures.”
The sheer size of the World Logistic Center, which Moreno Valley developer Highland Fairview wants to build on the city’s east side, all but guaranteed the project would generate controversy and create factions within the city.
When finished, a process that’s expected to take 20 to 30 years, the World Logistics Center will be large enough to cover approximately 700 football fields, making it one of the largest industrial projects ever proposed in the western United States, if not the entire country.
One dozen lawsuits have been filed against the project since the council approved it, including one by the Riverside County and another the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
Filed in mid-February, both lawsuits challenged the project on environmental issues and sought to overturn three initiatives passed by Moreno Valley voters, all of which supported the development.
The city immediately issued a statement regarding the district’s lawsuit, accusing the environmental agency of “overstepping its authority” in order to block a project that does comply with state law and will create thousands of local jobs.
“The will of the people is clear,” Mayor Yxstian Gutierrez said in the statement. “Moreno Valley voters overwhelmingly support the World Logistics Center project. It’s time to move beyond frivolous lawsuits which disrespect Moreno Valley residents and attempt to delay the arrival of long-needed jobs in our community.”
Supporters of the World Logistics Center routinely outnumbered the project’s opponents when the issue was heard by the planning commission and city council last year. Proponents argued that the World Logistics Center will bring 20,000 jobs to Moreno Valley, jobs that eventually will end up in other Inland Empire cities if the project isn’t built there.
Opponents of the World Logistics Center argue that the planning commission and city council did not take into account pollution, noise and other environmental problems the project might create when they voted for the development.
They also maintain that the council’s vote approving the World Logistics Center was designed to give it added protection against future lawsuits, while allowing it to bypass provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act.
The latter argument is based on a California Supreme Court ruling two years ago, when the court ruled that development initiatives approved by voters are exempt from most CEQA regulations. The court also ruled that such initiatives don’t have to be approved by voters but can be passed by a legislative body, with the environmental quality act exemptions still in place.
“It’s called a citizens initiative, which means it goes right past CEQA,” Newman said. “That’s not right. The environmental reports on this thing were done so poorly, so shabbily, they [Highland Fairview] knows they will never stand up in court.”
Moreno Valley is setting a dangerous precedent by approving such a large project without a full accounting of all of the environmental issues involved, opponent Tom Thornsley said.
“There are a number of environmental concerns associated with this project, and we believe that means people should be allowed to vote on it,” said Thornsley, a longtime Moreno Valley resident. “The CEQA legislation exists to protect the environment, but apparently there is a loophole and the city is able to get around it. They shouldn’t be able to do that.”
Highland Fairview has already made major concessions regarding environmental concerns associated with the World Logistics Center, enough to ensure project complies with state environmental laws, said Iddo Benzeevi, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
“The people of Moreno Valley have spoken, and they’ve said they want the World Logistics Center and the jobs it will bring to the city,” Benzeevi said. “The people who are criticizing the project aren’t qualified to judge. They’ve never done anything for the community.”
Ultimately, attorneys will have to decide if the random sampling count was sufficient, but it’s not clear if all of the signatures would be counted even if the attorneys ruled in the opponents’ favor, Registrar Rebecca Spencer said.
“It’s an unusual request,” Spencer said. “But they aren’t necessarily entitled to a full counting”
