Brilliant Blackmail?

Naturally, I have been trading Emails with various individuals about the proposed ballot initiative petition gathering document and other documents Dr. Susan Soldoff, a trustee for Marymount College has filed with the City Clerk.

Here is a reply from a top official with Rancho Palos Verdes City Government to an email I sent pertaining to a question of my own:

"Mark,

One of the ramifications of the Marymount initiative is that if the residents of the city sign the petition in sufficient numbers, (it's either 10 or 15% of the registered voters) the City Council will have to either adopt the initiative as the act of the City Council, or place the matter on the ballot for the residents to decide.

I obviously do not know what the City Council will do in that circumstance, however, at that point the signatures themselves would not necessarily indicate that a majority of the residents wish the City Council to adopt the Marymount initiative.

Unless the City Council adopts the Marymount plan, it is required to call for an election. In that case, the residents will pay tens of thousands of dollars to conduct the election, no matter what the outcome.

So no matter what, the city will be spending a lot of taxpayer money dealing with this matter."

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Can the recent action by Dr. Soldoff and others desiring on-campus housing on the campus of Marymount College be something some may call brilliant blackmail?

Ms. Ashley Ratcliff, in her article written for the Palos Verdes Peninsula News, stated that to qualify for the November ballot, supporters of the proposed initiative need 10% or about 2,700 valid signatures of registered voters residing in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes to qualify the measure to be placed on the ballot.

Rancho Palos Verdes currently has somewhere in the neighborhood of 41,000 residents and, according to math, about 27,000 of these residents are registered voters.

If the petition-gathering action, slated to begin on or about March 18, 2010 is successful, residents and our City Council members basically have three options.

The first option is to have the Council members actually override the certified Final Environmental Impact Report and grant Marymount, the right to build on-campus housing, even after the Applicant removed that portion of the document from consideration by the Rancho Palos Verdes Planning Commission.

This would probably avoid the taxpayer funding of the proposed ballot measure because Marymount officials and Dr. Soldoff would hopefully, remove the ballot measure from consideration.

The second option is that if the City Council Members do not adopt the current plans for Marymount's Project and the proposed ballot measure qualifies for the ballot, they are required to call an election, and taxpayers' funds would be used for that purpose.

The third option is to watch the qualified measure become part of the ballot in the General Election on the first Tuesday in November, which taxpayers fund, even the proposed ballot measure regarding Marymount's expansion.

Now is this brilliant or not!

Before you answer that simple question, you should be reminded that Marymount College is currently operated as a private college associated with a religious organization and therefore not required to pay many taxes other organizations and residents are required to pay.

While it is true that taxpayers fund most elections, there would be added costs, paid through tax revenue, associated with the proposed ballot measure from Marymount.

I do not know what the amount of taxpayers funds would be required to fund the portion of the election that would have the proposed ballot measure part of.

If enough valid signatures are gathered for the measure to become a possible ordinance or ordinances, the City Attorney would draft the ballot measure and it would include the costs of the measure taxpayer funds would be required to cover.

So it looks like taxpayers may be, once again, on the hook for an institution that pays relatively no taxes to the city.

Do it their way and/or pay for the highway?

Marymount's supporters have the same rights as the rest of us, perhaps. Only we may have fewer rights than they do.

It is also true that there are a number of supporters of Marymount's plans who live and pay taxes in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes. I am sure they feel their taxes should go for what they want.

But there are a number of residents and business owners who have property or spend money in R.P.V. that do not want their taxes paying for a portion of an election that would ultimately benefit a private enterprise or for religious institutions.

What it looks like right now to me, is that taxpayers will continue to be on the hook to an organization that claims to be a good neighbor in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.