”
Let’s challenge the anti-growth/anti-capitalist proponents to
their article in the Nov. 21 paper. Four members of the Board
apparently collaborated with the anti-growth/anti-capitalist group
behind closed doors to construct the map and draw up the
initiative.
“Let’s challenge the anti-growth/anti-capitalist proponents to their article in the Nov. 21 paper. Four members of the Board apparently collaborated with the anti-growth/anti-capitalist group behind closed doors to construct the map and draw up the initiative. The anti group used a professor and environmentalist group from outside the county with lots of money to draw up the ordinance. Their collaboration with the 1, 2, 3 and 5 district members of the Board is an apparent violation of the Brown Act. How lawful is this? Before the Board approved this into law, which affects so many of our citizens, shouldn’t they have held a number of public hearings? This also should have gone through the channel of the Planning Commission for approval or denial before it went to the Board. Why was none of this done?
The Board placed the referendum on the ballot because of the outcry of the citizens that were adamantly upset about this and not giving them a chance to vote. The anti-growth group was telling people when they circulated the petition that this was going on the ballot. This was contradictory to what the Board did and they knew trouble was brewing.
Now the anti-growth group says the Board was just being consistent. The Board was not being consistent when it chose not to defend the McGovern lawsuit. In fact, just the opposite. How much did the Board spend on the lawyer, Zen Hansen, and the lawyer from San Diego to help them decide which was to vote and delayed their vote for a month while the lawyers collaborated? A month worth of legal bills charged to the taxpayer!
In the special session of the Oct. 16 meeting, they hired Sacramento attorneys to defend the McGovern case. This is stated in the minutes of that meeting. They disguised it to protect themselves from Los Valientes so the taxpayer would pick up the bill instead of it coming out of their own pockets. See how this saves their own individual bank accounts and shifts the bill to the taxpayer.
The money spent by the farmers group was their own money to defend the rights of San Benito County citizens. How much money came out of the pockets of the anti-growth group? None! A 1-percent growth cap was put on by the Board two years ago, therefore an initiative was not needed.
In 1984, the people through six long years of many public hearings voiced to the Board their desires for the general plan and it was approved. This action by the anti-growth group reverses all that and implements a flawed plan without public input. And now we see the anti-growth group asking for donations to further their cause to be delivered to 355 South Street, which is Colonial Cleaners, which is owned by Gordon Machado, a planning commissioner.
Any smart attorney should be aware of this on any vote Mr. Machado makes as a sitting member of the planning commission. Isn’t that a conflict of interest when he is receiving money for his cause?
How come the signatures of the letter on Nov. 21 does not include Mandy Rose and Gordon Machado since they too were authors of the initiative? Citizens of San Benito County read between the lines! The 1-percent growth cap is already managed growth without taking away voting and property rights!”
“Why can’t someone get the time right on the historic clock at Fourth and San Benito streets? Surely there must be a way to set it so that it’s at least close to the correct time and we don’t look foolish to visitors.”
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