BPA Membership Approves Supporting Referendum Effort

Fellow members of the BPA – The survey of the membership is now over and here are the results.

The subject was whether to approve an expenditure of up to $1000 by the BPA to support the effort to prepare a referendum asking for a city wide vote on the rezoning of the Maybell-Clemo property. A second advisory question asked members whether they supported or opposed holding a referendum.The survey period (5 days) began on June 28th and ended at the end of the day on July 2nd.

The views of the membership are very clear. By more than a 2:1 margin, the membership voted to support the BPA contributing to the referendum preparation effort, and by a 3:1 margin, the membership supports the holding of a referendum.

Q1. It has been proposed that the BPA contribute up to $1000 towards the effort to qualify the referendum for the ballot.

BPA should contribute: 117         (66 % of those who voted)
BPA should not contribute :   50
Abstain (Undecided/No Opinion):          10

Q2. I support/oppose/… having a referendum on this issue, that is, allowing Palo Altans the chance to vote on the rezoning of the Maybell/Clemo property. Note: This is not a question of how you would vote on such a referendum were it to be on the ballot. Nor is this a substitute for signing the petition to have a referendum.

I support having a referendum:                    128        (73% of those who voted)
I do not support having a referendum: 14
I oppose having a referendum :                   26
Undecided/No Opinion :                                   8

The results and a bar chart can be downloaded here

The excellent response from our members is proof of the high level of interest in this issue. We received 150 electronic responses, which was from 43% of those to whom we sent an electronic invitation for the Survey Monkey vote. We received 29 paper ballots, from 54% of those who were given a paper ballot (no email address in our database). One paper ballot was dropped off at 11:45 PM. An eighty-nine year lady hopped on her bicycle and rode it down to my house to deliver it in person. The paper ballots were validated and counted by a two person committee: Lisa (Membership Chair) and me.

I again want to publicly thank those individuals on the Board who worked over the weekend to ensure the voting progressed smoothly and who made extra efforts to contact all members: Membership Chair Lisa Landers for handling the database, Doug Moran for supervising the Survey Monkey process, and both Lisa and Doug for handling the last minute additions and changes to the invitation emails. Gwen Luce deserves special credit for personally taking charge of preparing and delivering the paper ballots to members we could not reach by email.

And I want to congratulate you, our membership, for taking this issue seriously and participating in this vote and letting the Board know your views. It is appropriate that this exercise in local democracy happened at the same time as our national holiday. A number of memberships to the BPA were received during the survey period and we believe it is because they wanted to be part of the process. We welcome them to the BPA and hope that this will motivate others to join the BPA. I also want to thank those of you who have sent me emails with your comments, both about the issue and about the process we followed. If you have some more thoughts to share in the upcoming days, please send them to me. I’d like to hear from you.

Art Liberman, BPA President

BPA Membership Approves Supporting Referendum Effort

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