MROSD opponents have produced 5,344 petitions. What comes next?

Citizens for Responsible Open Space produced 5,344 signed petition cards to put the expansion of the MROSD (Midpeninsula Open Space District) up to a vote. The petitions were delivered to the LAFCo meeting today at the Ted Adcock Center. While it’s unclear whether they will have the roughly 4000 signatures they need to put MROSD’s expansion on the ballot, after duplicates, invalid signatures, and requested removals have been eliminated and this weekend’s signatures have been added, they certainly appear to be in the ballpark.

If there is an election, we’ll be covering it in depth, from both sides, on Coastsider. But this is a good occasion for me to say a few things that have been on my mind. I’ve been silent on the petition so far, unless you count the "Decline to Sign" sign in my front yard.

Illustration: MROSD’s boundaries, which currently barely cross Skyline, would be extended to the coast under the proposed annexation.

With few exceptions, the people that I’ve met gathering signatures in front of Half Moon Bay Safeway and the ones I heard at the meeting today seem sincerely concerned about whether the MROSD will be a good neighbor. I’m not convinced that MROSD is as bad a neighbor its opponents think. There is an excellent colmumn in this week’s Review by Tom Ferenz, my son’s fourth grade teacher and thirty-year resident of the rural coastside, saying that the MROSD has been an excellent neighbor.

While they may be sincere, MROSD opponents have been using scare tactics. Probably because they’re scared.

But we need more than the good intentions of private landowners to protect open space on the coast for more than a generation or two.  It’s also deeply ironic for private landowners to use existing regulations as a reason to oppose government involvement in protecting open space. In the long run, the economic pressure to develop open space is inexhaustible and we will have to fight it over and over, whatever structures we put in place to protect it.

However, you can’t fault the argument that people should be allowed to vote on such a significant matter.  I didn’t support the election because I favor MROSD’s expansion, and there has been plenty of due process. An election will be expensive, exhausting, and divisive.

If there is an election, the issue won’t be the apple pie proposition that people deserve to vote.  The issue will be whether open space on the coast should be protected by more than noblesse oblige. That’s going to be a much tougher case to make.