Update on ‘Power San Diego’: Not Enough Sigs for Ballot But Enough for Plan B at City Council

By Rob Nikolewski / San Diego Union-Tribune / May 14, 2024

Power San Diego, the initiative that wants to oust San Diego Gas & Electric by creating a municipal electric utility within the city limits of San Diego, has fallen short of its goal of collecting 80,000 verified signatures to put the proposition on the ballot this fall.

But the group turned in about 31,000 signatures to the County Registrar of Voters on Tuesday, which it says would be enough to put the question before the San Diego City Council instead.

“Unfortunately this campaign has not collected the 80,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot but this does not mean that we’ve lost — far from it,” said Emma Rodriguez, campaign coordinator for the SanDiego350 environmental organization and one of the groups supporting the initiative.

Power San Diego cited a provision in the San Diego City Charter that the nine members of the City Council have the power to place the question of creating a municipal utility up for a popular vote if the city clerk verifies at least 24,000 signatures are valid.

About 30 Power San Diego representatives dropped off 15 boxes of petitions at the registrar’s office Tuesday afternoon. It’s expected to take several weeks to determine if the number of verified signatures is sufficient.

“I’m fairly confident” that at least 24,000 valid signatures have been collected, said Bill Powers, chair of the Power San Diego ballot measure. “I think the validation effort has been top-notch, first class.”

As for the failure to collect 80,000 signatures, Powers blamed his group’s lack of resources. “Let me be clear — money,” he said. “In order to hire coordinators and consultants, it takes money. It also takes volunteers and we did it primarily with volunteers.”

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