Developer Richland Communities Files Competing “West Sand Creek” Initiative in Antioch

May 1, 2018
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As you know we’re collecting signatures for our “Let Antioch Voters Decide: The Sand Creek Area Protection Initiative,” to give Antioch residents a voice in what takes place on the southern edge of the city between Kaiser and Black Diamond Mines.  We hope to complete our signature gathering in the next 3-4 weeks but will continue collecting until we’re sure we have enough signatures.

Yesterday, Southern California developer Richland Communities, “The Ranch” project developers, announced that they’ve submitted a “West Sand Creek” Initiative to the City of Antioch for title and summary. Learn more – read the article on East Bay Times. 

Their efforts do not change our coalition’s efforts to gather signatures and qualify our “Let Antioch Voters Decide: The Sand Creek Area Protection Initiative.”

  • Richland’s initiative is a complicated measure which will take some time to review. We’ll tell you more about it before long.
  • Typically competing initiatives are meant to confuse voters.
  • It changes and scales back Richland’s 1300-house project somewhat but, if approved, would also approve their project with a development agreement and before environmental review is completed.
  • It would invalidate our “Let Antioch Voters Decide: The Sand Creek Area Protection Initiative” which is more protective.

Media Reports suggest that Richland expects to begin signature gathering immediately. In fact, it may be several weeks before they can begin. The initiative was stamped “received” by the City Clerk April 27, 2018, three days ago. The City Attorney has 15 days to provide title and summary which the City Clerk conveys to the proponent. For our initiative, they took the full 15 days. Then a legal notice must be printed in a newspaper of record, and initiative petitions printed.

It’s now even more important that we continue and speed up our efforts to gather signatures for our “Let Antioch Voters Decide: The Sand Creek Area Protection Initiative.” Signature gathering will get more complicated when the Richland initiative is on the street.