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Despite significant public opposition,
on January 3rd, 2023, Chico City Council approved Valley’s Edge, the largest proposed housing development in Chico's history.
Chico needs housing, affordable housing.
Valley's Edge dedicates less than 1% of the housing-designated land to affordable units.
Chico needs housing that is climate resilient.
Valley's Edge is planned along the back-burn used to stop the Camp Fire, projected to burn every 6-8 years.
We cannot ignore the deficiencies
of the Valley's Edge Specific Plan.
We deserve to choose the kinds of neighborhoods we want for our community, so we've gathered over 8,000 signatures from Chico voters to push Council to reconsider their vote, or let the people vote.
We say let the people vote!
Valley's Edge Specific Plan
The Valley’s Edge Specific Plan covers nearly 1,500 acres in southeast Chico and is poised to become a sprawling, unsustainable and luxury development designed with 2,700 dwelling units, the size and approximate population of Gridley.
The development will have many detrimental impacts, including increasing traffic, a fiscal burden, environmental destruction, obstructing Chico’s climate goals.
We cannot stand by as this development moves forward with little public input. For these reasons, we have launched a referendum to bring the development to a public vote by the residents of Chico.
What is a Referendum?
A referendum is a political challenge by voters to an enactment already made by the legislative body.
We are challenging the vote of approval by the Chico City Council on the Valley's Edge Specific Plan. The goal is to gather 8,000 signatures from Chico voters to force a public vote to determine whether to overturn a decision made by the City Council.
The referendum campaign has only 30 days to circulate the petition. The clock has started and we have until February 13 to gather all the signatures to get this on the ballot.
UPDATE: We successfully collected over 8,000 signatures from Chico voters! Now, we wait patiently for the County Clerk to verify the signatures.
Sprawl Development
Sprawl describes the result of unrestricted and rapid expansion of development into the periphery of metropolitan areas, and has been around since the 1950’s. It is most categorized by low density single-family residential housing, the separation of neighborhoods from homes, shops and work land uses (in general more distinct and separate land uses), lack of activity or community, and the increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation due to an unsafe and inaccessible street network for anything other than automobiles.
This type of development impacts people’s lives negatively. It increases driving due to inaccessibility of the street network for alternative modes of transportation, destroys open spaces and natural lands, increases water, land and air pollution, increases housing and transportation costs, increases energy use, and due to the lack of community and activity centers coupled with neighborhoods more sprawled out, leads to a lack of community and social cohesion.
