Redevelopment Opposition Rallies Familiar Faces

In both theory and practice, I'm not opposed to citizen initiative and referendum and have successfully executed something similar (a mayoral recall) some 15 years ago.

The issue I do have is that the requirements (number of signatures necessary) to void a local ordinance (15% of the total number of people who voted in the last general election in which state assembly seats were contersted) and present the matter as a ballot question are so minimal as to have the potential to paralyze local government.

We elect people to govern and legislate on our behalf and the time and place to make our pleasure or displeasure with them known is at the ballot box, during the next relevant election. I don't subscribe to the notion that "a substantial number of people in our town feels like their representatives aren't representing them properly."

The nucleus of the current group of petitioners are some of the same people who've been impeding progress and, yes, actually costing us all more money in the long run, for more than 20 years!

If memory doesn't serve, a little research will confirm that many of the same people opposed a $50 million school bond referendum (circa 1992) that sought to address the burgeoning school population and managed to get it defeated at the polls through a mixture of misinformation and fear mongering.

What was the net result? We wound up doing virtually the same expansion, years later and at greater cost, with hundreds of kids schooled in trailers during the intervening time.

They then hit the streets in favor of a change of government referendum (November 1997), having been completely oblivious to the fact that the whole charade was nothing more than a last gasp attempt by a documentably corrupt administration (all of which they remained strangely silent about) to maintain power and influence.

Thankfully, most people understood what they didn't (that giving up the votes one was entitled to and diminishing the power of those that remained benefited nobody) and the question was defeated by a better than 2 to 1 margin.

Going back to an earlier game plan (and being habitually unable to elect candidates of their choosing through plurality in an election), they are impeding progress through the far less daunting task of submitting a petition. To gain the necessary signatures, they are doing nothing more than playing on people's fears, the pessimism they breed and the general ignorance that abounds concerning a not uncomplicated redevelopment process long underway.

You don't lead or succeed motivated by fear but, it can damned sure make you fail.