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plastics, and was obligated to be a party member. He said later that the problem
with the party was that it was rotten to the core because too many people like him
were required to join in order to advance their careers.
On August 27 Jill Klajic moved to have the CARRING initiative placed on
the April 1992 ballot by a vote of the city council. She did not get a second. Had
Jill not been so confrontational she might have accomplished a great deal. On
several motions she was able to win a three to two vote with support from Jan
Heidt and me, but she could not seem to help antagonizing all of us. Prior to the
meeting Jan Heidt had said, “I think she is trying to make us look bad. I think we
have told them all individually just how we feel about” growth. She favored
using the general plan to control growth. “I think that will be very, very sufficient
in managing the growth.” 28
With the council failing to support putting the growth control measure on the
ballot, in part because it would look as if the council supported the proposal,
CARRING went to work quickly to gain the necessary signatures. We had no
doubt that the proponents would get them, but I was not sure they would win at
the polls. The measure bowed to state law by allowing an unlimited number of
low-cost homes to be approved by the city council, and I said, “If I didn’t think
this initiative was absolute idiocy, I would support it. All it does is put a cap on
higher-priced homes. I don’t want to put a ghetto in the Santa Clarita Valley.”
We did need lower-cost housing for people who worked in the valley, as well as
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for seniors who wanted to live near their children in the valley.
It would only have taken a lawsuit to force us to approve more low-cost
housing. Another possibility was that the developers would support candidates
who would approve low-cost housing. I had no idea what they would do to fight
a cap on residential growth, but did not want the Santa Clarita Valley to be the
testing ground. I did not believe the council would betray the 1991 general plan,
and in the long run I was proven to be right.
John Drew, who called himself a government professor but could not get a job
teaching government full time, also knew that the measure called for a complete
halt in residential building if a water shortage developed. That draconian
provision would have put a lot of local people out of work. I pointed out that
people use less water than agriculture, so that residential growth would actually
reduce demands on our local aquifers. 30
When the city was getting close to its fourth birthday we began to consider the
problems of signs. At first we began to work on illegal signs, those that had never
conformed to the county sign ordinance, or which had been put up without a
permit but conformed otherwise. Part of forming our government had been
building a code enforcement department with Vyto Adomaitus as chief. We
kidded him, calling him “Vyto the Enforcer,” but he was a skilled diplomat and
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very effective.
On September 12 we held the ground breaking for the mall. By taking off
from school for two periods, my conference period and a class period covered by
a volunteer, I was able to participate. My picture was on the front page of the Los