Last night, the Anaheim City Council voted 3-2 to save Disney the trouble and expense of making it’s case to Anaheim voters and simply adopted the ballot-box zoning SOAR initiative as an ordinance.

From now on, lucky property owners within the Resort District will be governed by their own very special set of zoning rules. Unlike the ordinary joe who can seek a zoning change through the normal process via the Planning Commission and City Council, Resort District property owners seeking a zoning change will have to seek approval from a majority of a combined Planning Commission/City Council of 132,000 voters.

Anyone feeling adventurous enough to try it better have a big wallet and Disney on their side.

Just last week, it looked as though the SOAR initiative would actually have to be voted on by Anaheim. After all, wasn’t that what all the Disney/SOAR breast-beating last year about "the right to vote" was all about? 

Anaheim Councilman and SOAR supporter Harry Sidhu agreed,, and his vote added to those of Councilmembers Lorri Galloway and Bob Hernandez would stop any attempt to bypass the voters and adopt SOAR as an ordinance.

Sidhu was quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

Last night, Harry Sidhu decided the price was $250,000 — the cost of the special election that e cited in executing an absolutely stunning, Olympic-class flip-flop by providing the third vote to do exactly what he said he wouldn’t do only days ago: pull SOAR from the ballot and adopt it as an ordinance.

To put this breathtaking nature of Sidhu’s flip-flop in proper perspective, read his statement (H/T Around Disney Blog) from last week on why he absolutely, positively could not support pulling SOAR off the ballot:

I simply cannot now disenfranchise the voice of the tens of thousands who signed the initiative petition demanding their right to VOTE.  These facts mandate that I vote against removing the initiative from the ballot by enacting it as council policy.

If every single resident who signed the initiative petition has not had an opportunity to state that THEY no longer wish to vote on this matter, then I will not disenfranchise their right to VOTE.

The right to vote was demanded by tens of thousands.  Let the democratic process work as planned – let it proceed to a VOTE, as Tens of Thousands of residents requested. It is my hope that everyone will understand the basis for my decision.  I support the Resort District, but this vote must not be taken away from those who have demanded it through the democratic process.

How do run away from a statement like that? There’s no wiggle room there. No escape hatch. That’s not just staking out a position. That’s an entrenchment ringed with barbed-wire and machine gun nests.

Yet, a few days later, Harry Sidhu voted to take away precisely what he said "must not be taken away."

There must have been a serious beat-down in someone’s woodshed between that statement and last night’s vote.

And he wants to be a state Senator? In the wake of this collapse, how much wait should we give to a Sen. Harry Sidhu declaration that he would never vote vote for a tax increase or a smoke-and-mirrors budget? If Harry Sidhu can be so quickly strong-armed into so completely abandoning that boldly-drawn line in the sand, how is he going to fare in the far more pressure filled environment of the State Legislature?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.