El Toro Airport Foes Launch Signature Drive

Opponents of plans to develop an airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station began collecting signatures Tuesday for a ballot initiative that would require a two-thirds vote by county residents to approve development or expansion of airports, large jails and hazardous-waste landfills.

If the group gathers 71,000 valid signatures by the end of August, the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative would be on the March 7 ballot. If the initiative passes, it would effectively force a third countywide vote on the fate of El Toro when the military leaves the base this summer.

County Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson, airport opponents and honorary chairmen of Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities, were the first to sign the petition.

“It’s a citizen movement that’s going to crisscross the county with the message of more citizen involvement, not less; open government, not closed; and inclusiveness, not divisiveness,” Spitzer said. “That’s the goal of the initiative.”

Jim Davy, the group’s petition drive chairman, said, “We call it a voters’ rights petition, and that’s justified because it really addresses the planning process in Orange County.”

If the initiative passes, it would require that “environmental impact reports and other meetings must take place before any issue that has a dramatic impact on residents is put to an election by the board,” Davy said.

Such information could have made a difference in March 1996, he said, when county residents approved the El Toro airport proposal by a narrow margin. Many voters at the time were not familiar with all of the issues involved, he said.