Next stop on path to cityhood will be LAFCO
San Martin – Proponents of San Martin’s leap to cityhood learned Friday they’re on the verge of completing a petition that moves them forward in the incorporation process.
Residents circulating the petition required by state law needed 25 percent of San Martin’s registered voters to sign, but for more than a month that number remained a mystery to residents and county officials alike.
On Friday, with 690 signatures already tallied in the petition, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters revealed the number of San Martin’s registered voters to be 2,834. Twenty-five percent of that is 709, which puts incorporation proponents 19 signatures short of clearing a preliminary hurdle.
“I am so excited,” said Sylvia Hamilton, president of the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance, a group that formed in 2000 to lead an effort to incorporate.
But Hamilton knows some signatures may be invalidated when the registrar of voters checks the petition. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, she said incorporation proponents are seeking to collect at least 800 names before the end of January. “We’re still going to continue to get the word out,” she said.
The San Martin petition is needed as part of a package of application materials that will go to the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission, the land-use body overseeing the incorporation process. After the petition’s signatures are certified by the registrar of voters, the community of San Martin must pay for a comprehensive fiscal analysis and an environmental impact report that could cost more than $150,000.
Members of the neighborhood alliance are hoping to meet all requirements in time for a March 2008 election when voters could finally decide the matter.
Incorporation proponents want to keep the ball rolling because a 2006 law to make it easier for newly incorporated cities to draw state funding expires in 2009.
Calculating the number of registered voters in San Martin took about two weeks. Employees at the registrar of voters had to study the proposed San Martin map and manually count addresses in precincts split by map’s boundaries. If San Martin does incorporate, new precincts that don’t overlap its boundaries would be drawn.
Tony Burchyns covers Morgan Hill for The Times. Reach him at (408) 779-4106 ext. 201 or tburchyns@morganhilltimes.
