The Town of Los Altos Hills is attempting to redesignate the O’Keefe Open Space Preserve — a voter-protected, ecologically irreplaceable public resource — to allow multifamily residential development. This effort is being advanced through a sham “citizen initiative” that was drafted and directed by the Town and structured to unlawfully avoid environmental review.

If a city can remove voter-approved protections from public open space through insider processes and procedural shortcuts, then no protected land is truly protected. The precedent would allow environmental safeguards, transparency laws, and voter mandates to be bypassed whenever they become inconvenient.

No. This is not opposition to housing — it is opposition to an unlawful process. Environmental review and open-government laws exist to ensure that housing decisions are made transparently, lawfully, and with public participation. Some land was never intended to be developed, and we’re insisting that the law be followed. 

The Town is under pressure from the State to comply with housing requirements after failing to secure sufficient viable sites through the normal planning process.The city was unduly reliant on a few sites to meet its requirements.  Private property owners and residents pushed back on redevelopment proposals. That possibly leaves the Town without sites it could rely on to demonstrate compliance.

Rather than transparently evaluating alternatives, the Town turned to an unlawful expeditious process of rezoning publicly protected open space.

O’Keefe Preserve is approximately eight acres of protected open space that includes wildlife habitat, creek thickets, and public recreational trails. The land was conveyed to the Town by the State of California for public purposes only.

In 2002, voters adopted the Los Altos Hills Open Space and Public Recreation Initiative, amending the Town’s General Plan to prevent the Preserve’s designation from being changed without a vote of the people.

 “Citizen’s Initiative” is a draft ballot measure written by the City Attorney at the direction of the City Council. It would amend the 2002 voter initiative, redesignate O’Keefe Preserve from protected open space to multifamily residential zoning, and allow the Town to lease or convey portions of the land without a future vote of the people.

Detailed purposes, General Plan amendments, maps, development footprints, and setbacks relating to thThee initiative — all prepared by the Town and shared at the City Council meeting.

The Coalition alleges the initiative is a sham because it was conceived, drafted, and strategically advanced by the Town itself — specifically to avoid environmental review.

City staff advised the Council that a Council-sponsored measure would be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), while a citizen-sponsored initiative might be exempt. The Council unanimously chose the latter approach and directed the City Attorney to draft the initiative and a signature-gathering strategy.

Courts have held that government agencies cannot evade CEQA by disguising their own projects as citizen initiatives.

According to the demand letter, CEQA poses a significant obstacle to the City’s plan.

Full environmental review would require the City to publicly disclose and analyze impacts to wildlife habitat, creek corridors, trees, fire safety, infrastructure, and land-use compatibility — and to consider feasible alternatives and mitigation measures. That process would also invite public scrutiny, potential litigation, and delays.

City staff advised the Council that a Council-sponsored ballot measure would trigger CEQA review, while a measure advanced as a “citizen initiative” could be framed as exempt. The Council chose the latter approach.

The Coalition alleges this decision was made not because CEQA is unnecessary, but because CEQA would require more scrutiny than the City wanted to confront.

The demand letter alleges violations of multiple California laws designed to protect transparency, the environment, and democratic integrity, including:

• Open-meeting laws that require public deliberation

• Environmental review laws that require impacts to be studied before decisions are made

• Laws prohibiting the use of public resources for political campaigning
  
  

Full legal citations and analysis are detailed in the demand letter.

The Coalition is demanding that the Town:

• Immediately suspend all work on the sham citizen initiative

• Conduct full CEQA review before advancing any redesignating 

• Cease all unlawful coordination with purported citizen proponents

• Rescind prior unlawful actions taken in closed meetings

• Provide a full accounting of public funds spent on the initiative

• Preserve all records related to the initiative strategy and committee deliberations

The demand letter alleges that the City’s actions violate multiple California laws and long-standing court rulings designed to protect transparency, the environment, and the integrity of the ballot process. These include:

Open Government and Transparency

• The Ralph M. Brown Act — requiring that City Council business be conducted in properly noticed public meetings, not through private committees or backchannel deliberations.

Environmental Protection

• The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — requiring environmental impacts to be studied and disclosed before a public agency commits to a course of action.
  
  

• Friends of Sierra Madre v. City of Sierra Madre (2001) — holding that a city cannot evade CEQA by disguising a government-sponsored project as a citizen initiative.

Election and Public Resource Laws

• Government Code §54964 — prohibiting public agencies from using public funds or resources to campaign for or against ballot measures.
  
  

• Stanson v. Mott (1976) — establishing that government agencies must remain neutral in elections and may not use public resources to promote ballot measures.