Introduction and Background to the Initiative
Around the year 2000, some members of the Los Altos Hills Town Council raised the idea of possibly selling off some of the town-owned "redundant" real estate and using the funds
for town expenditures, possibly to fund a Parks and Recreation Department. The jutification for this idea was that this would be "The highest and best use" of these town assets.
One of the suggested proposals for instance was to "move" Westwind Barn into Byrne Preserve, and sell off the underlying 24 acres for housing development.
As this idea gained momentum, a group of residents got together and put together an "Initiative" which qualified for the ballot. This initiative would essentialy lock
in the land-use desgnation of certain identifed large parcels of town-owned land as either "Open Space" or "Recreation", and this designation could not be changed except by a vote of the residents.
Furthermore, the land could not be sold or otherwise disposed of in anyway without a vote of the residents.
Some members of Town Council tried to derail this initiative by having the town sponsor a competing initiative. This alternative initiative would have defined the land-use designation
for certain parcels
as including a "residential" option, but this movement never gained any significant traction.
In fact, the pending "Resident's Initiative" became a major plank in the campaigns of two new challengers in the Town Council election that was held in the fall of 2002.
With these two candidates being outspoken supporters of the initiative, the duo (referred to popularly at the time as "Breene and Deane") easily won seats on the Town Council and displaced the
incumbents who had originaly raised the idea of selling the land.
With new members in place, a vote was taken by the Town Council to accept the initiative directly, thus avoiding the costs of a special election. This vote passed unanimously with one abstention by a member who
had to recuse himself because he lived next to one of the affected parcels. Thus the provisions of the initiative became incorporated into the Town's General Plan in the closing days of 2002.