Editorial

Carmel Pinecone
Posted June 8, 2007

What the voters decided

WHEN YOU demand an election and then campaign with the slogan, “Let the Voters Decide,” you’re pretty much stuck with the results.

Activists have a habit of deriding the electorate when things don’t go their way. But, thankfully, LandWatch hasn’t been doing that since the group’s Measure A was resoundingly defeated Tuesday. In fact, there are hopeful signs that some cooperation and civility may actually result from the defeat of Measure A and its companions on the hopelessly confusing ballot this week. While the ballot may have been hard to make sense of, we think there was nothing ambiguous about what the majority of voters were saying: “We don’t want to vote on the general plan. That’s the board of supervisors job, and they should be allowed to do it.”

So while civility may prevail for a while in the board’s chambers, eventually LandWatch will again confront the reality that the board isn’t going to do the group’s bidding. When that happens, it is up to LandWatch to accept defeat gracefully, because while voters also failed to endorse the supervisors’ version of a general plan this week, the supervisors still have the upper hand — morally and legally — for the simple reason that they are elected officials. Lou Calcagno, Fernando Armenta, Jerry Smith, Dave Potter and Simon Salinas aren’t sitting on the dais for nothing. The people chose them.

LandWatch, on the other hand, wasn’t elected to anything. The group’s officials may be interviewed by the media a lot. But they’re still just private citizens with an agenda, like everybody else. And that’s the way they should act.

Speaking of the voters . . .

ALMOST SEVEN years ago, Monterey County voters supported another Measure A — one proposed by the Pebble Beach Company to facilitate its plans for a new golf course, equestrian center and a few homes in Del Monte Forest, while locking up in protected open spaces hundreds of acres of Monterey pine forest. The measure was backed by two-thirds of the county’s electorate, which was smart enough to recognize a good deal when it saw one. The Pebble Beach plan envisions much less development than one approved by the county and the California Coastal Commission in the 1980s, and that’s why not only the voters, but also the Del Monte Forest Property Owners association, the planning commission and the board of supervisors supported it.

Next week, the coastal commission will be asked to let the P.B. Measure A go into effect. Incredibly, executive director Peter Douglas and his staff are recommending commissioners reject it.

If they do, it will open the door to much more development in Pebble Beach — which would be a colossal blow not only to common sense, but also to the very things the coastal commission is supposed to protect.