PROVO — The petition drive to put an anti-zoning initiative on the ballot in Provo this November failed Monday when the effort couldn't muster enough signatures.

A group calling itself ProvoCitizens.net needed to collect about 3,100 signatures by 5 p.m. Monday but fell well short, organizer Roger Brown said.

Brown didn't have an updated count but said the group had fewer than 400 signatures a week ago, three weeks into the petition effort.

"We're short, so we're just going to keep going until the next city election, which unfortunately isn't until 2009."

The group's Web site attempted to rally support for its effort to end what Brown and others believe is unfair zoning practices that keep singles, especially students at Brigham Young University or Utah Valley State College, from living in large groups in houses outside areas zoned for student apartments.

A headline on the Web site read, "Sign the Fair Zoning Petition — end discrimination against your unmarried/single friends!"

The wording of the initiative is curt: "No zoning ordinance may discriminate based on marital status, family status, real property ownership, and educational status."

Brown said the initiative would open the door for singles to supplement their incomes by renting more rooms in their homes.

Neighborhoods around BYU had successfully lobbied the City Council for zoning laws that keep students from packing into homes in residential neighborhoods.

The zoning ordinances allow only two or three unrelated singles to live in a home.

The briefness of the proposed initiative worried Provo City Council Attorney Neil Lindberg, who believed what he said were broad and vague terms would have to be defined by judges in what he anticipated would be multiple lawsuits.

Lindberg told the City Council during a work session that the proposed initiative would allow homeowners to have as many renters as they wanted.

"I believe there would be no limit on the number because of the way the proposal is drafted," he said. "It would be whoever wants to be wherever. You could have 10 guys in a house in Grandview," a well-known Provo residential neighborhood.

"I think it could be devastating," he added. "It could wipe out everything this council and past councils have done."

State law required a petition signed by a number of registered voters equal to 10 percent of Provoans who voted in the 2004 governor's race. The signatures had to be collected 120 days before the election.

"I don't want people who worked on this to take it too hard," Brown said. "All the work wasn't in vain. It will get on the ballot, we're just going to have to wait two years."

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