Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment
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14622 Ventura
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Valley VOTE is a diverse, Valley-wide coalition of San Fernando Valley residents, educators, business leaders, community activists and organizations who support a LAFCO study (Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission) on the issue of creating an independent Valley City.
Final Two Weeks – Please Return all completed Petition! The San Fernando Valley’s petition drive calling for a study of Cityhood for the Valley is in its final two weeks. Therefore, we are asking anyone who has completed petitions to turn them in immediately. If you do not intend to collect any more signatures, please send in your petitions to Valley VOTE even if your petition only has one signature. Each signature counts. Petitions do not need to be full inorder for them to be turned in.
For those intending to collect more signatures, please note that signatures may be collected up until Midnite, Friday, November 27th which is the day after Thanksgiving. The law gives us several weeks after the deadline to collect petitions so your petition forms should be mailed back to the Valley VOTE office as soon as possible after November 27th. Valley VOTE intends to hand the petitions into LAFCO in early December. Call (818) 501-5862 if you need more petitions.
The San Fernando Valley petition drive may be charged for verifying signatures- True or False? Valley VOTE has recently learned that the Petition Drive may be hit with a fee to check the signatures gathered on the San Fernando Valley petition for a study of Valley Cityhood. To date 190,000 Valley residents equating to 36% of the Valley’s registered voters have signed the petition. The fee could be as high as $272,000. If imposed, the fee would be more than the cost to collect the signatures. California State, County and City election laws do not allow charging to verify signatures on petitions. The US Constitution provides that the people shall have the right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. Residents of the San Fernando Valley are unhappy with quality and representation of local city government and are engaged is a peaceful petition drive to have their grievances addressed one way or another, even if that means forming our own new city. To our knowledge, no other state in the country charges to verify petitions signatures except recently Florida imposed a 10 cents per signature charge and that is being challenged in court on the grounds that it is a poll tax and therefore unconstitutional. Even at that rate the fee on the San Fernando Valley petition drive would only be $19,000 not anywhere near $272,000. Neither the Charter Reform or MTA petitions were charged to verify signatures.
The law governing the LAFCO process allows them to establish a schedule of fees for their services provided the fees do not exceed the estimated "reasonable cost of providing the service". This is however, in our case being interpreted to allow for a per signature charge which we believe infringes upon our right to petition and is unconstitutional and at a rate of $1.36 which we believe is much higher than the actual cost. Several other LAFCO petition drives in the past have paid a fee to verify signatures, however, the fees they were charged were so nominal it didn’t make sense for these other areas such as Malibu or Santa Clarita to challenge it in court. Valley VOTE is considering its options if the fee is imposed. At $272,000 it would make sense to challenge the fee in court which could establish a precedent regarding fees for all California LAFCO’s. We will not let it stop our progress!
Hosted by: David Fleming, Bert Boeckmann & Valley VOTE Inc.Join Valley leaders to Celebrate the successful completion of the SFV Petition Drive for a study of Valley Cityhood and what might become THE BIRTH OF THE SIXTH LARGEST CITY IN AMERICA Sunday, December 6, 1998 1 pm
Valley Presbyterian Hospital - Main Auditorium 15107 Vanowen Street, Van Nuys Suggested Donation: $75.00 per person/$135 per couple Send checks to "Friends of the Valley" 14622 Ventura Blvd. #201-B, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
SUPPORT THE PETITION DRIVE
Please help and contribute to support this Valley-wide effort: