Starr v. Chaparro
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In 1973, the Oxnard city council received an initiative petition. Instead of proceeding on that petition, the City ordered the questions placed on the ballot. The majority of voters voted to have an elected mayor with a two-year term. In 2019, the city council adopted a resolution placing Measure B on the March 2020 ballot, seeking to amend the Oxnard City Code to extend the mayor’s term to four years and to establish a limit of three terms for city council members. Two weeks later, Starr delivered an initiative petition, seeking to extend the mayor’s term to four years but prohibiting a person from indefinitely alternating between mayor and council member without a break. The Ventura County Elections Division certified the signatures on Starr’s petition. Instead of placing Starr’s initiative on the ballot, the City exercised its option under Elections Code section 9215(a) to adopt the initiative as an ordinance without alteration.
The court of appeal ordered the city to place the initiative on the ballot. The city’s action was a nullity under section 9217: “No ordinance that is either proposed by initiative petition and adopted by the vote of the legislative body of the city without submission to the voters, or adopted by the voters, shall be repealed or amended except by a vote of the people, unless provision is otherwise made in the original ordinance.”
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