PETITION AIMS TO REVERSE FANITA RANCH APPROVAL

Group needs to collect more than 3,500 signatures

A petition is being circulated to reverse the Santee

City Council’s decision last month to allow about 3,000 homes to be built on land above and beyond Santee

Lakes.

Preserve Wild Santee, an environmentally based political action group that has been fighting the development in the hills off Fanita

Parkway for more than 20 years, has until Nov. 4 — the day after the election — to collect more than 3,500 signatures of Santee residents.

The project envisions 2,949 housing units with an elementary school (or 3,008 units without a school), up to 80,000 square feet of commercial uses, parks, open space and agriculture uses on about 2,700 acres of land.

The development is expected to add more than 8,500 people to the city’s current population of about 58,000.

Preserve Wild Santee’s objections include fire safety hazards and related evacuation struction concerns, and traffic habitat con- degestion.

Volunteers from Preserve

Wild Santee have been canvassing the city and setting up at spots close to local stores like GTM and at the

Wednesday Farmers Market, according to the group’s spokesman, Van

Collinsworth. Referendum seekers are asking residents who are against Fanita

Ranch’s development to sign the petitions, which will need to verified by the San

Diego County Registrar of

Voters.

If the referendum petition is certified, the City

Council its decision must or either submit repeal the plans to the voters at either the November 2022 election or at a special election.

This isn’t the first time the group has tried to stop a

Fanita Ranch development from being built. In 1999, a city-approved, 2,988-unit project was halted after twothirds of Santee’s residents voted against it on a ballot measure spearheaded by

Preserve Wild Santee. Other plans for developing homes on the land previously approved by the City Council have been consistently rejected in Superior Court.

“If I didn’t know that people then on Collinsworth it’s clear are I wouldn’t against a from said. referendum,” the this be landslide working “I project, think vote against (in 1999) the project. that people There are may be some different (Santee residents) now but the sentiment is the same. People don’t want a project that size on Fanita Ranch.”

The development was passed 24. by a 4-1 vote on Sept.

Fanita Ranch has been part of the city’s General

Plan since the 1980s, but needs council approval for an increase in the number of homes that are planned.

Several bought ty HomeFed property Separate over and the in companies first 2011. sold from decades, acquiring the the proper- peti- have with the Santee the tion council’s drive, is hoping Preserve decision to reverse with Wild a

General tiative on Plan the November Protective bal- Inilot.

If passed, Proposition N would allow residents to vote on developments that deviate from the city’s legally allowed plans in density or zoning.