“Shall the ordinance regarding the proposed development of “The Home Stretch at Hollywood Park”, a retail commercial project adjacent to Hollywood Park Race Track, be adopted?”

Wal-Mart spent over $1 million on the ballot measure—in an election where only 11,000 people vote! Despite this huge expenditure, Wal-Mart only got 39% of the vote.

What's interesting about this ballot measure was that it literally would have allowed Wal-Mart to be independent of a number of city regulations. Once passed, it couldn't be changed by the City, and it would exempt the Wal-Mart from all sorts of zoning regulations. I've extracted the first twenty pages in this PDF (2 MB). It's worth a read. This literally is secession:

Page 1: "The project requires approval of the voters of the City and cannot be changed except by the voters of the City." This means that if 04-A passed, the City Council would be powerless to adjust it. Another referendum would have to be started in order to change it.

Page 4: "The Home Stretch Specific Plan shall only be amended by another initiative measure(s) approved by a two-thirds vote of the electorate.

Page 5: "Chapter 12 of the Municipal Code contains the City's Zoning Ordinance…the Home Stretch Specific Plan shall, with respect to the Plan area…preempt and replace all of the standards, criteria, procedures for review…and other requirements of Chapter 12…" This means that the development would be exempt from zoning of the City of Inglewood.

Page 5: "No ordinance or regulation shall be adopted…if applied to the Plan Area…would conflict with the Home Stretch Specific Plan…impose development standards, criteria, design, signage and landscaping requirements, restrictions, subdivision requirements, review procedures, exactions, mitigations, and other requirements…" With this, we are moving back to company-owned towns, where private interests literally control the law!

What's also interesting is that in the voter guide (600k PDF), opponents to the Wal-Mart articulated verifiable and cogent arguments against the development's legal standing. Wal-Mart's response was wholly unsubstantive. It didn't answer the accountability objections to the provisions on pages 4 and 5 that exempt the development from zoning laws. Instead, Wal-Mart used mindless PR messaging, such as: "How can anyone suggest that a new shopping center with hundreds of new jobs would be bad for Inglewood?…And it's pretty obvious that having convenient retail outlets like Wal-Mart that offer quality goods at low prices is important to families who want more value for their shopping dollar."

The full ballot application is online here (20 MB PDF).

Secession? Wal-Mart isn't trying to become king, is it?

sorry about that.