By Daniel Payne, Our Neighborhood Voices
This past week the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative received a title and summary from the office of Attorney General Rob Bonta that is false, misleading and likely to create prejudice against the initiative.
The title and summary provided by Bonta’s office falsely claims that the measure “automatically” overrides the state’s affordable housing laws. It does no such thing. It gives communities the power to shape local growth in a way that better meets affordable housing requirements – and it restores the ability of local communities to negotiate even higher affordable housing rates, which one-size-fits-all laws passed in Sacramento have taken away.
In 2021, Bonta’s own office issued a title and summary for the first draft of this initiative that did not include this misleading language. It correctly stated that the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative would return land-use and zoning decisions back to local communities – instead of forcing top-down mandates on cities that damage neighborhoods and only benefit for-profit developers.
Brentwood District 1 Councilmember Jovita Mendoza is one of the three co-sponsors of the initiative which has been endorsed by the Contra Costa County city councils of Brentwood and Clayton, as well as Oakley Vice Mayor Randy Pope.
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