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LAW OFFICES OF BEST BEST & KRIEGER LLP State CEQA Guidelines section 15378 was also the focus of the Supreme Court's ruling in Friends of Sierra Madre v. City of Sierra Madre (2001) 25 Cal. 4th 165. In that case, the City passed an ordinance creatine a process for owners of property listed on the local historic register to have their property de -listed. Several owners of listed properties subsequently petitioned the City to have their properties de -listed. The City Council determined that its decision to de -list the properties would be subject to CEQA and that an EIR, costing property owners approximately $2,500 each, would need to be prepared. To avoid this expense, the City Council placed an initiative on the ballot by which voters could decide whether to de -list the properties. The City argued that the ballot initiative was exempt from CEQA under Guidelines § 15378(b)(3), which exempts the "submittal of proposals" to voters from the definition of a CEQA project. The Supreme Court held that a decision to place the question of de -listing on the ballot was discretionary and not ministerial, so that the activity was a "project" requiring CEQA compliance. The Court reasoned that Guidelines section 15378(b) was intended to exempt only voter -sponsored initiatives because the City Council's placement of a voter -sponsored initiative on the ballot is merely a ministerial act. When the City Council's decision is merely ministerial because it is merely responding to a petition drive initiated by voters, CEQA review is not required. In contrast, when the initiative was generated by the City, the City Council's decision to place its own measure on a ballot should be considered a "project" to which CEQA requirements apply. In Save Our Peninsula Committee v. Monterey County Board of Supervisors (200 1) 87 Cal. App. 4th 99, several environmental groups challenged the findings and an EIR for the development of a 117 -unit property in water -short Carmel Valley. The Court agreed with the environmental groups and held that the EIR was inadequate in its treatment of several critical water supply issues. Primarily, the court was concerned with the determination of the baseline for determining the project's impact on water resources. The baseline is the statement of pre -project environmental conditions that is used to determine whether the project's impacts are significant. The EIR initially established a water -use baseline of 45 acre-feet per year, based on the developer's representation that some of the land was irrigated when the Notice of Preparation was prepared. However, the EIR did not contain any analysis regarding the choice of baselines and ultimately the Board determined the baseline by choosing from among various calculations of raw numbers. The figures in these calculations did not reflect water actually used for irrigating the property. The Court reasoned that this choice of baseline violated the basic principles of CEQA, which require that an EIR start with a description of the existing environment. Because the Board selected the baseline without any explanation of its analysis, it abused its discretion. Moreover, the selected baseline was not supported by substantial evidence of actual water use on the property, and the introduction of a new methodology for baseline determination at the end of the environmental review process without any analysis or public review was improper. The environmental baseline is normally determined according to the environmental conditions existing on the date of the issuance of the Notice of Preparation for the EIR. The Save Our Peninsula Court recognized that there are instances when a different date should be used to RVPUB=_Y\625913