Santa Ana : Pro-Stadium Group Begins Ballot Drive

Members of a group opposed to plans to raze Santa Ana Stadium to make way for the Westdome sports arena said Tuesday that they intend to begin collecting signatures for the June ballot.

Legal notices of the effort were published this week, but City Council clerk Janice Guy said the group had yet to file its intent with her office, as required by law. She said the group would have to get at least 6,288 signatures of registered city voters to force the proposition onto the ballot.

The proposition calls for the city to “preserve, maintain and operate” Santa Ana Stadium. Save Our Stadium spokesman Ron Heike said group members will try to collect 9,000 signatures.

If they succeed, he said, they hope to convince the council to delay a final decision on Westdome, scheduled for March, and to call a special election in June rather than wait for the next regularly scheduled election in November. “We predict that they’ll postpone the decision based on the wishes of the citizens,” he said.

The move follows an announcement by a coalition that it will begin collecting signatures in an effort to put another proposition on the ballot in June.

The coalition, called SAMSON (Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors), hopes to have the voters decide whether to have a mayor elected by popular vote rather than by the seven-member City Council and whether to have council members elected by wards, or areas of the city, rather than on a citywide basis.