At least 5,232 Yucaipa residents, all of them registered voters, have given indication they are opposed to action taken by the city council in August and September that upzoned 1,242 acres surrounding the I-10 Freeway in a way that would have cleared the way from intensive warehouse development on the properties along and around Live Oak Canyon Road.
Consequently, the rezoning has been put on hold and a ballot initiative to rescind the city council’s action will go before the city’s voters perhaps as early as next June.
In November 2008, the Yucaipa City Council adopted its currently applicable development standards and blueprint for land use and its intensity in the 1,242 acres along the freeway and surrounding areas in Yucaipa under what is known as the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan. The planning document allowed for the construction of up to 2,447 residential units on 424.7 acres and up to 4,585,779 square feet of nonresidential uses on 242.7 acres within the designated area.
In recent years, a handful of projects that were proposed and approved, taken together with development proposals within the 1,241-acre expanse prompted calls for the specific plan’s adjustment. Thirteen months ago, the Palmer, Robinson, and Issa families sought permission to construct warehouses along Live Oak Canyon.
Then-Mayor Justin Beaver, Councilman Chris Venable and then-Councilman Matt Garner balked at the proposal, while then-Councilman Bobby Duncan and then-Councilman Jon Thorp were willing to let the projects proceed.
There were at that time two mindsets with regard to the warehouse issue.
Those in favor of aggressive development wanted a more generous allotment of land to be eligible for light and medium industrial use, including property within the mouth of Live Oak Canyon that falls inside Yucaipa’s borders.
There were others who believed that warehouses represent far too intensive of a land use in rustic Live Oak Canyon. Both camps agreed in one respect: They wanted the then-16-year-old Freeway Corridor Specific Plan scrapped. Those intent to see the natural aspect of Live Oak Canyon preserved wanted the specific plan altered to prohibit light and medium industrial uses in the canyon and for the city to encourage that kind of land use to take place elsewhere within acreage along the periphery of the 10 Freeway. In September 2024 and the months thereafter, the council receded from dealing with the calls from both sides to revamp the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan.
With the November 2024 election, Matt Garner, who had been elected to the city council in November 2022, was recalled from office, after which he was replaced through action of the council by Bob Miller. Bobby Duncan, who had been on the city council since 2012, did not seek reelection, and he was replaced by Judy Woolsey.
The Palmer, Robinson, and Issa families did not abandon their designs on constructing warehouses along Live Oak Canyon. The Yucaipa planning division consistently sought to accommodate their overtures. The clash between the Palmer, Robinson, and Issa families on one side and those intent on protecting the sanctity of Live Oak Canyon loomed for months and at last manifested on August 25, when the council considered the update of the city’s blueprint for development in the nearby environs of the 10 Freeway, along with proposals for two warehouses with nearing or exceeding floor plans of a million square feet each.
The Yucaipa City Council’s August 25 4-to1 vote, with Councilman Chris Venable dissenting, to approve the long-gestating update of the city’s Freeway Corridor Specific Plan and a parallel proposal to construct two large warehouses within that designated area triggered an effort by residents of the local area to seek a referendum rescinding that action. Some two weeks later, on September 8, the city council gave a so-called second reading, i.e., confirming passage of the action it had taken on August 25, rezoning the 1,242 acres along the 10 Freeway from Live Oak Canyon Road to County Line Road for “planned development,” essentially opening the property up for “light industrial” or warehouse development.
David Matuszak, the president of Friends of Live Oak Canyon, a core group of Yucaipans mounted an effort to counter what the council had done. Friends of Live Oak Canyon called upon all of those members of both the Yucaipa, Redlands, San Bernardino County and Riverside County communities who value the atmosphere and tranquility Live Oak Canyon to come together in action and prevent the loss of “a lifestyle we commonly value.”
On September 1, after the first council vote to make the zone upgrade but before the second vote to do so, a coterie of Yucaipa residents provided City Clerk Ana Sauseda notification that they were intent on placing a referendum on the ballot. The city, under California law, had ten business days to respond. Upon the city responding on September 13, the residents had, under California law 30 days to gather the valid signatures of 3,617 registered voters in Yucaipa – 10 percent of the voters of the city according to the last official report of registration by the County Elections Official to the Secretary of State – to qualify the referendum vote for the ballot.
After 16 days, On September 29, the petitioners submitted to Sauseda the petitions for a referendum petition to halt the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan until Yucaipa voters have their say at the ballot box endorsed by 5,707 signatures. The petitioners photocopied the original petitions together with the signature pages to prevent Sauseda from pulling a fast one and claiming the petitions were somehow insufficient. Sauseda submitted the petitions and their signature pages to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters. The County Registrar of Voters ultimately determined that at least 3,618 of the 5,707 signatures purported to be Yucaipa voters were valid, stating that the  petitioners had met the burden of qualifying the referendum for the ballot.
In the meantime, as a precaution, Friends of Live Oak Canyon and their associates, now calling themselves Yucaipa Now, informed Sauseda they were once more going to circulate a petition to force a referendum with regard to the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan. The second petition called for a referendum which would restrict the land use authority of the city council in such a way that it would no longer have sole discretion over large-scale development proposals, such that any projects that called for a deviation from the city’s existing zoning and development standards would need to be approved through a majority vote of the city’s residents.
Yucaipa Now had concerns that Sauseda, as a sop to her political masters on the council, believing they were committed to the version of the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan they had approved on August 25 and September 8, would arbitrarily rule that the petitions for the referendum had come in too late to place the referendum on the ballot for the special statewide election being held on November 4, 2025, allowing her to cancel the referendum outright. By making a second submission of petitions and signatures, Yucaipa Now hoped to straitjacket Sauseda, who has a history of using the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm to thwart Yucaipa residents seeking to hold specially-called elections with regard to local policy and elected officials, into agreeing to conduct the referendum.
This week, on Monday, October 20, Yucaipa Now, working in conjunction with another group, Yucaipa Neighbors Opposing Warehouses, submitted the second petition for a referendum on the council’s August 25/September 8 vote to alter the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan to the city clerk’s office to which 5,232 signatures of those purported to be Yucaipa voters were affixed.
“This second referendum proves the people of Yucaipa are paying attention and taking a stand,” said Ro Randolph, one of the referendum’s official proponents. “Residents want a voice in what kind of city Yucaipa becomes—and they don’t want it turned into another warehouse corridor.”
Upland-based campaign consultant Chris Robles, whose company, Vantage Campaigns, assisted Yucaipa Now in coordinating the signature-gathering effort, called the momentum behind the group’s success in forcing the referendum “unprecedented.”
Said Robles, “In my 25 years of experience, it’s rare to see this level of sustained civic engagement. To qualify two referendums back-to-back in just weeks is a clear message: Yucaipa residents want to protect their valley, not pave it over.”
The second referendum challenges a land-use ordinance that opponents say gives the city council unchecked power to approve large-scale projects without meaningful public review.
“Developers shouldn’t be writing our future,” added Randolph. “This is about keeping Yucaipa rural, livable, and accountable to its people.”
Both referendums aim to restore public oversight and ensure residents—not special interests—determine the direction of growth along the I-10 corridor, Robles said.
Unspoken is the widespread perception among Yucaipa residents that graft played a part in the council’s August 25 and September 8 votes. While the proponents of some warehouse project proposals were in favor of liberalizing or loosening the city’s standards with regard to warehouse development, the overwhelming sentiment expressed by the community’s residents when the subject of the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan came up in late 2024 and into 2025 was that the city is already saturated with enough warehouses and that the specific plan update should involve greater restrictions on their placement and monopolization of available land not less. Some Yucaipans have openly stated that monetary inducements to sitting members of the council, whether in the form of campaign contributions, laundered payments disguised in some benign form or cash in paper bags, influenced the August 25 and September 8 votes.
Matuszak characterized the four-mile stretch of Live Oak Canyon from Interstate 10 at the north end and San Timoteo Canyon to the southwest as “an oasis of open space, cattle ranches, horse ranches, large, five-acre estate homes and protected open space. Roughly 25 to 30 percent of the property along the road is under the control of the Redlands Conservancy, which includes nature trails and three preserves. The action taken by the Yucaipa City Council on August 25 will begin the gradual destruction of the Canyon as it now exists. We don’t want that natural beauty spoiled.”
At its October 27 meeting, the city council, despite four of its members – Beaver, Woolsey, Thorp and Miller – being in favor of allowing warehouse to proliferate throughout the canyon, will discuss the city’s need to comply with the petition’s call for the referendum to be placed on the ballot.