August 31, 2026
By Katie Luna
Menifee is one of California’s fastest-growing cities, and with that growth comes a steady need for new homes, roads, transportation infrastructure, schools, water infrastructure, and healthcare facilities. How quickly and affordably those projects get built depends in large part on a state process most people never see: the environmental review every major project must clear before construction can begin. Proposition 45 is a chance to make that process faster and more predictable while keeping the protections Californians value.
That process is set by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. The goal was a sound one: understand a project’s impact before building it. Over 50 years, though, the review process has grown long and open-ended, which slows the very projects a fast-growing community like ours depends on.
Proposition 45 addresses that while keeping the protections we care about.
Prop 45 doesn’t repeal CEQA. Every project still must comply with California’s environmental laws. What changes is the clock. Prop 45 sets a firm deadline, about a year to complete an environmental review, and a deadline for courts to resolve legal challenges, so that a single lawsuit can’t freeze a needed project for years. It replaces “someday, maybe” with a predictable timeline.
For Menifee, that has real benefits close to home. Faster, more cost-effective approvals help bring housing costs down for the working families, seniors, and young people trying to stay in the community. Faster approvals speed up the road projects, water infrastructure, healthcare, and school facilities a growing city need. Prop 45 can help us build wildfire and drought resilience before the next emergency, not after.
Just as important is what Prop 45 keeps. It preserves environmental review. It keeps local control, so Menifee and Riverside County still decide what gets approved here. It protects workers and tribal cultural safeguards. It is not a shortcut around accountability, but instead puts a deadline on the delays of projects.
Prop 45 is backed by a coalition of more than 140 organizations including housing advocates, healthcare providers, clean-energy builders, water agencies, labor, and business groups. Early polling found roughly three in four likely voters are supporting it across party lines. That kind of agreement is rare.
Menifee shouldn’t keep waiting a decade and paying a premium for the projects our community needs. Prop 45 keeps the protections that matter and cuts the delay that doesn’t. This November, vote Yes on Prop 45. Visit https://yesonprop45.com for more information.