PASADENA >> Hoping to bolster opposition to the 710 Freeway tunnel project, Mayor Terry Tornek is proposing a November ballot measure that would ask voters to repeal a 2001 vote supporting the completion of the freeway through the city.

Although the City Council voted in April 2015 to oppose the 710 Freeway’s completion as a tunnel project, Tornek said during a City Council meeting Monday that Measure A legally prevents the city from fighting the project.

The city attorney and outside counsel agreed in legal opinions provided to the city.

“The measure that voters approved would not allow the City of Pasadena to take affirmative steps opposing the completion of the 710 extension,” said City Attorney Michele Bagneris.

Tornek intends to ask the council to vote on a repeal on June 13. The council needs to finalize the measure’s language before a July deadline to make it on November’s ballot. By repealing the 2001 ordinance, Pasadena can fight against the project without restriction, Tornek said.

“As soon as we launch an effort, all it will take is one citizen to sue us and enjoin us from violating the provisions of Measure A, which can only be overturned by a vote of the people,” Tornek said.

Tornek said he believes the tunnel project has been purposefully stalled to avoid hurting Measure R2, the county’s proposed $120 billion transit tax on November’s ballot.

“Metro and the various transportation authorities are very anxious not to do anything that would rock the boat and jeopardize the adoption of Measure R,” he said.

After the vote in November, Tornek expects the tunnel proposal to come out of hibernation.

“The city is going to get ambushed and we’re going to be confronted with a full court press to build that project,” Tornek said Monday. “We have got to be prepared to make a concentrated effort to prevent that from happening.”

Pasadena’s city council argued that the tunnel does not complete the “freeway” when they voted to oppose it in 2015. Tornek, who did not support the council’s 2015 opposition specifically because of Measure A, pushed for a repeal at that time, but his motion failed.

Not everyone is convinced Pasadena’s voters will back a repeal. Barbara Messina, Alhambra Councilwoman and a leader of the 710 Coalition, a group of five cities that supports the freeway completion, said she thinks residents still want to see the 710 extended.

“I would love to see him put it back on the ballot. I think support would be more than 2-1 to finish this project. A tunnel is in Pasadena’s best interest,” Messina said.

As to the cost of the project, she said the project would receive public financing to defray the cost. She said she will attend the June 13 City Council meeting.

“I will be happy to give the residents of Pasadena the other side of the issue,” she said.

While Caltrans has proposed “closing the 710 gap” for nearly 60 years, the tunnel route has replaced the surface route as the most likely alternative. Caltrans and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) released a $40 million EIR and environmental impact statement last year that analyzed the project.

Under the proposal, the 710 Freeway would be extended from where it ends at Valley Boulevard by way of a tunnel under El Sereno, a mostly Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, South Pasadena and Pasadena, where the 4.5-mile tunnel project would reach the surface and connect at the 210/134 freeway interchange.

Caltrans and Metro place the cost of the tunnel at between $3.2 billion and $5.6 billion.

Tornek received support from the West Pasadena Residents Association, which is strongly opposed to building the tunnel. While the group last year was apprehensive about putting a new measure before the voters, that hesitation has disappeared.

“I think the time has come and the mayor is showing real leadership in putting this forward,” said Geoff Baum, president of the WPRA and a member of the Pasadena 710 working group that offered alternatives to the tunnel.

The Pasadena 710 working group wants to see a “multi-modal” approach that includes a combination of the following alternatives: a light-rail line, expanded bus service, improvements to local streets and bicycle transit. In particular, the group would like to see added bus service along Rosemead Boulevard and either a bus line or a light-rail line that would connect passengers from the existing Gold Line to Glendale and Burbank.

Anthony Portantino, a former assemblyman and La Cañada Flintridge City Councilman who has been active against the 710 extension for nearly 20 years, said things have changed since 2001.

“The residents have been given new information and will do the right thing,” said Portantino, who is running for state senate. “You have a more informed, active community who have looked under the hood and said they don’t like it.”