LAKEPORT, Calif. – An initiative effort that proposes to institute rent control in the city of Lakeport's senior mobile home parks has gathered enough signatures to appear before Lakeport voters on the November 2014 ballot.
Initiative author Nelson Strasser of “Save Our Seniors,” the group advocating for the measure, got the news from Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley on Wednesday morning that enough of the signatures he had gathered had been verified.
The initiative qualified to go before voters in fall 2014, at which time it will be consolidated with the next regular municipal election.
The measure would define senior parks as where there is one inhabitant age 65 or older in 80 percent of the homes.
It would roll back all rental rates in such parks to Jan. 1, 2012, requiring that future rent increases be based on the percent Social Security benefits are raised.
Strasser initially had asked the city of Lakeport to consider the matter, but when those discussions didn't move forward he started gathering signatures this spring.
He needed 270 valid signatures from Lakeport voters to get onto the next municipal ballot, according to Fridley.
Fridley told Lake County News that had Strasser gathered 405 valid signatures and had the necessary additional language in the petition, the initiative could have qualified for an earlier special election.
Fridley's office received 690 signatures from Strasser, 317 of which were valid. She said he had a 45.9 percent sufficiency rate.
Of the signatures determined to be insufficient, 24.2 percent were from people who lived outside the city limits and aren't qualified to sign, 13.6 percent were registered at a different address than the one they listed on the petition and 10.3 percent weren't registered, Fridley said.
“Fortunately they collected well above what they needed,” she said of the proponents.
Before the initiative gets to the ballot, there are a few more steps to follow, including going before the Lakeport City Council, based on the municipal code requirement.
Fridley sent the city of Lakeport an Elections Official's Certificate of Examination on the initiative petition.
Kelly Buendia, the city's deputy city clerk and Administrative Services director, said Thursday that the city had received the certificate.
Buendia said city staff will take Fridley's certification to the council at its next scheduled meeting on Aug. 20. The Aug. 6 meeting has been canceled in order for the council to participate in the National Night Out.
On Aug. 20, the council will be presented with options on how to move forward, Buendia said.
According to the municipal code, those options include accepting the initiative as an ordinance without any changes within 10 days of it being presented or directing that it be placed on the ballot.
“Basically, either they approve it or ask the voters to act on it,” Fridley said.
In making a decision on whether to accept the initiative, the council also can direct city departments to create reports on potential impacts and have them report back within 30 days, said Buendia.
If the council requested those reports, it would have another 10 days after the reports were submitted to make the decision, Fridley said.
Now that the main push of his effort is over – “I was sweating it there for a while,” Strasser conceded – he's starting to look forward to what's next.
He said it was starting to hit him “that a small group of people can make a big change.”
Save Our Seniors also is running a parallel effort to get a senior mobile home park rent control initiative on the ballot in the unincorporated county.
The county ballot initiative needs a minimum of 2,115 signatures by Oct. 9 to qualify for next June's ballot, according to Fridley's office.
The language of the second measure differs slightly from Strasser's, with one of the chief differences being that it requires at least one person age 55 or older to inhabit 80 percent of a mobile home park's homes in order to qualify as a senior park.
Heather Powers, a member of Save Our Seniors, said the signature gathering effort for the county initiative is going well.
“Almost everyone who we ask wants to sign,” she said.
She estimated that the group now has about 1,500 of the signatures needed to qualify to put an initiative on the ballot in the unincorporated county next summer.
With about two months left before the deadline, Powers said Thursday, “We don't think we'll have any problems getting the number of signatures we need for the county.”
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