Supporters of general plan initiative will take fight to court.

Community general plan supporters say they will file a lawsuit to ensure that their anti-sprawl initiative—blocked by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday night—will get on the ballot.

“Democracy was just hijacked in Monterey County,” said Chris Fitz, director of LandWatch, immediately after Supervisors voted 3-2 to not place the general plan initiative on the June ballot. “We’re going to get our rights back. We’re going to file a lawsuit.”

And so the battle over the County’s plan for future development continues.

“Democracy was just hijacked in Monterey County.”

Earlier in the month, a group called Plan for the People launched its campaign against the anti-sprawl plan. Then, on Feb. 27, initiative supporters released a report showing that about 57 percent of financial contributions to County Supervisors during the past seven years have come from big developers and their friends—many of whom now oppose the community general plan initiative.

Opponents lashed back, calling the report a “smokescreen.”

The same day, three Latino voters filed a federal lawsuit against Monterey County because the initiative petition wasn’t translated into Spanish.

At the Feb. 28 meeting, an attorney representing Plan for the People also threatened to sue the County should Supervisors put the initiative on the ballot. The threat didn’t scare Supervisor Dave Potter, who made a motion to let voters weigh in on the slow-growth plan in June.

“I’m not personally interested in standing in the way of the public’s right to vote,” he said. “If I’m to be sued for allowing the public it’s democratic right to vote, so be it.”

His motion died because none of the other elected officials would second it.

Supervisor Butch Lindley made the subsequent motion to kill the initiative, which was supported by supervisors Jerry Smith and Fernando Armenta. It passed 3-2, with Potter and Calcagno dissenting.