AN INTEGRAL ATTACK ON CIVIL LIBERTIES

Those of us who are engaged in Oceanside's affairs and those who live far away should care deeply about what is happening there. The motives of an avaricious and cynical developer for filing lawsuits of questionable efficacy is to financially destroy citizens who successfully organized a petition drive to put the North River Farms development on the November ballot. 

Integral Communities is attacking your right to petition your government for a redress of grievances. It's an outrage if you care about civil liberties and free speech. It's also an odd derivative form of the "Cancel Culture" but one that is only reserved for the filthy rich. 

Those of us who lived through the days of Carlsbad's famous Measure A campaign in 2016 did not realize how lucky we might have been to have Rick Caruso as an opponent. For even though the campaign to build a mega-mall on a lagoon was contentious, to say the least, and the developer spent 12 million dollars to fight a citizen initiative against his project, Mr. Caruso did not try to break the key activists opposing him financially and as humans with abusive and meritless SLAAP style lawsuits. 

Caruso had his faults but he had an ethical floor underpinning his tactics, at least in comparison with what a Newport Beach developer called Integral has done to advance their North River Farms project in the last vestiges of what used to be the agricultural part of Oceanside. 

BACKGROUND

On November 6, 2019, the Oceanside City Council approved Integral Communities' North River Farms development on a 3-2 vote, with appointed Mayor Peter Weiss voting in favor with Councilmen Jack Feller and Christopher Rodriguez, and Councilmembers Ryan Keim and Esther Sanchez opposed. This vote occurred after months of controversy surrounding the advisability of allowing nearly 600 homes in a 217-acre swath of agricultural lands in Northeast Oceanside and was done despite a Planning Commission vote against the project.

A few months ago, I wrote on many of the reasons why this project was objectionable, and that piece can be found by hitting this link. An observation I made then bears repeating now, for it involved the most tasteless of stunts: 

"The night the Oceanside Council voted 3-2 to approve this development over the objections of their own city staff and planning commission, we saw the political exploitation of the poor and dispossessed. The cynical busing in of 50 plus clients of Vista's Solutions for Change to pack that November 6th City Council meeting is offensive on so many levels. The instructions that were given to their captive audience were hideously demeaning. They did get free pizza. "

Ken Leighton in the SD Reader details what happened next. "The fact that more than 12,500 signatures were collected in less than 30 days by a mostly all-volunteer group indicates that the public is ready to turn down Integral’s project at the ballot box," says Kathryn Carbone, part of the Let Oceanside Vote leadership team. “When we were in the field gathering signatures, most people already knew about the issue and were ready to sign the petition. Some people even sought us out in the field. I had people coming up to me at Vons with a smile on their faces saying ‘Can I sign that?’ before I even got a word out to greet them.”

In an interesting contrast to the insanely quick process to verify petition signatures for a similar scenario in Carlsbad to force a March 3rd Special Election benefitting Corinne Schumacher, the SD County' Registrar of Voters office took nearly 90 days to verify petition signatures. Of those collected, 11,739 were deemed to be valid and 2,130 were deemed to be invalid, as opposed to the minimum figure for a referendum to be triggered of 9,609, which represents 10% of Oceanside's registered voters.  

Then things got toxic. In January, Integral filed a lawsuit claiming “egregious violations” in hopes of killing the petitions. The developer launched a campaign to get signers to withdraw their signatures. Only four requests occurred. Then they cried fraud, with appointed Mayor Weiss claiming that somebody signed his name to a petition. Not shockingly, we learned there is more than one person living in Oceanside who shares a not-so-uncommon name. 

In pre-COVID-19 California, it was a common sight to see paid petition gatherers at the grocery store. Perhaps that is why Integral's legal team could not understand why people would sit for hours exercising their rights to political expression for free, despite often being harassed by Integral's surrogates and sympathizers. Perhaps that is why the developer's law firm sent a private eye to grill petition gatherers to no effect. Mr. Leighton quoted one of those grilled in another SD Reader piece, 

" 'I want to know how they even found out who we were and where we lived,' said one person contacted but who did not want to be identified out of fear of legal retribution. “They either want to sue us as well or they are simply doing this to intimidate us… We are telling anyone who is approached by this man to not say anything except, ‘Please, get off my property.' " 

The personal retribution against the three key organizers of the petition drive has continued. Who on earth could imagine that a law student, a stay at home mom, and a retired school teacher are being sued once by a developer with a national reach over gathering valid petition signatures, under allegations of fraud and forgery? Thousands of dollars in legal fees later, one would have thought the nightmare would be ending for the trio, after trial judge Gregory Pollack released a July 6th letter that said the signatures were valid. thus blowing Integral's case up. 

Then they were sued again as individuals on July 17th, along with the Registrar of Voters and the City of Oceanside, amongst others. The new suit challenges the referendum under SB 330, a law not even in effect when the petition gathering occurred. How a suit over a law designed to address the state's chronic housing shortages and affordability crisis by reducing the time it takes to get building permits, limiting fee increases, and preventing local governments from reducing the number of homes that can be built has validity, seems bizarre to a layman. Most believe it seems to be doomed to meet the same ignominious fate of the first lawsuit. 

Of course, the suit will not be heard until after November 3rd, but it seems designed to break the will of the opposition to Integral. As the clock is ticking to get the referendum pulled from the election ballot, it seems that Integral is tossing a "Hail Mary" to get the "Let Oceanside Vote" team to give up an almost certain victory in November, in return for some token concessions from the developer. 

In the words of one of the group's leaders, Integral has already received their answer.  They can go "pound sand."  

CONCLUSION 

Whether or not you are a YIMBY or a NIMBY, this abuse of process by a greedy developer is a civil liberties issue of a high order. As the article notes, the judge in the first case has indicated their case alleging fraud in the petition gathering process was crashing on the merits.

So now Integral has doubled down on their failed strategy of intimidation while signaling they would be happy to drop their case if a November referendum they are destined to lose gets pulled by the opposition, clearing the way for a development few without skin in the game want. This is a textbook case of litigation being used as a tool to harass citizens, and it needs to be fought aggressively.

We have a way to donate to the legal defense of your rights to free speech, to petition your government for a redress of your concerns, and your right to be protected in the most lawful of political activities. Please see the link here

MANY BLESSINGS

NOEL