22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY august 10-16, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com house-to-house visits and skullduggery of various types are running rife, much of it without foundation. Persons who signed the pro-annexation petition are changing their minds and signing the protest papers and vice versa.” A pamphlet put out by the anti-annexation group reportedly read, in part, “Despite the claims of the pro-Monterey group, this is NOT a choice between Seaside and Monterey…Seaside cannot and will not take us…It looks like the pro-Monterey faction NEEDS the boogyman of Seaside to scare you into Monterey.” (By all appearances, it should be noted, Seaside could have taken in Del Rey Woods when it incorporated, if the subdivision’s residents wanted it.) A Herald story from Nov. 20, 1951, the day of the meeting, reads in part: “Anti-Seaside people, however, fear that if Monterey annexation is defeated, a move to be included with Seaside might be inaugurated and succeed.” That night, at the meeting in Monterey, City Clerk E.C. Walker had the protests laid out to count while Assistant City Clerk Chester H. Stalter, per the Herald’s reporting, sat next to his side with an adding machine. Before the protests were counted, Walker announced that 267 parcels were in the area, and that 134 would stave off the election. As the protests were being counted in alphabetical order, “there was a growing murmur in the crowd.” The required threshold of protests, 134, was reached while the names were still in the letter “S”—it was clear the election to join Monterey was off, at least for now. “After the crowd left,” a contemporaneous Herald article reads, “Police Chief Charles Simpson closed the door to cut down the jubilant noise from outside.” But it wasn’t the end of something. It was the beginning. • • • In the spring of 1953, momentum began to build in Del Rey Woods to incorporate, with efforts advancing both to become part of Seaside and to become part of Monterey. In May, the board of the Del Rey Property Owners Association decided to prepare a petition to that end to be submitted to the County Boundary Commission at a May 25 meeting. DeMello would draw up the legal description of the boundaries. All the while, leaders of the movement to incorporate Seaside—and include Del Rey Woods in it—had already submitted their petition to the County Boundary Commission, which approved it. And in Monterey, the City Council had already referred to the Planning Commission the boundaries for an annexation of Del Rey Woods. The next step for any of these efforts was to submit a petition for a special election to the County Board of Supervisors with the signatures of at least 25 percent of the property owners in the area, and whichever faction submitted the petition first would nullify the other efforts until the election was held on the matter—in other words, it was a race. On the evening of May 25, DRPOA members voted 128-30 to incorporate and to immediately begin the circulation of a petition to do so. At the meeting, DeMello said the community was caught in a “squeeze play between Monterey land grabs and Seaside incorporation.” He suggested a different plan. “If we form our own city,” DeMello continued, “we will have no problems with parking and shopping and no particular police problem.” The plan, DeMello said, was to have one policeman on call on a 24-hour basis, have a part-time treasurer and city clerk, while legal and engineering duties would be outsourced. Those looking to incorporate moved fast, and submitted their petition to the County Board of Supervisors on June 1 with signatures of 292 residents that comprised 40.4 percent of the area’s property owners whose land accounted for 48.5 percent of the area’s assessed valuation (both had to hit the 25-percent minimum threshold). Donald Smith, a Soledad attorney hired by incorporation proponents to navigate the process, reportedly told the supervisors, “Inasmuch as we appear to be in a race with the city of Monterey to annex this area, I feel these petitions should be verified as soon as possible.” In June, the county assessor certified the petition, and a special election for incorporation was set for Aug. 25. An Aug. 24 Herald article about the election reported that on Saturday, Aug. 22, pro-incorporation proponents began circulation leaflets with bullet-point arguments for why— representation on a local level, local control of tax money, preservation of community identity, etc.—and that anti-incorporation proponents responded with their own leaflet the next day. “Two newspaper carriers were induced by incorporation supporters Saturday to include pro-incorporation leaflets in their wrapped Heralds,” the article reads. “This was done without authorization of The Herald and, in fact, is contrary to the rules of this paper.” That pamphlet argued that the yearly fights among residents whether to annex to Monterey or Seaside, or stay in unincorporated county, has led to divisiveness in the community. “Each faction takes sides in the argument with resultant animosity between neighbors. We believe we have struck a common ground where all can work together for the good of Sand City, once defined by industry, is now hip. Far left: The South of Tioga project, when completed, will include a hotel and two apartment buildings that will double, if not triple, Sand City’s current population. Immediate left: Though Sand City has under 400 residents, its population swells daily with visitors who frequent its big box shopping centers. In a program started in 2020, artists have been invited to create murals that now grace the buildings of Sand City’s West End district, splashing the industrial neighborhood with color and bringing it to life.
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