Leave it to Mark Claffey to miss the most significant story of last Tuesday's council meeting. Just two weeks ago Claffey was lavishly quoting Lou Postage and Doug Parker. Postage assured that the members of city council were swiftly going to place all three peitions on the ballot. Parker was even found it ''disgusting'' that anyone would even suspect them of doing anything else. Claffey played right into thier insincere effort to appear like they were beginning to listen tot he voters and gave them the publicity they wanted right before the priamry election.
Guess what, despite thier promise to swiftly place these issues on the November ballot, last council meeting Parker and Postage voted against placing the legislation calling for a charter amendment restricting the use of emergency legislation on the ballot. Can you spell ''forked tongue''. Parker then goes into the Service Committee meeting where he declares that there needs to be community input on the petition to restrict denisty levels in the city to R-2 (read we need to give the developers enough time to get thier flaks into a council meeting so we can justify not doing what we promised because of the ''will of the people''). Bob Mapes starts saying that they need to be modified and literally cross examines anyone in the audience who dares to speak up in support of the petitions. Can you spell ''bury my heart deep in committee''. The odds are that if this petition ever reaches the ballot it will likely be in a form that guarantees the rights of developers to build up to fifty units per acre, allows them to bull-doze your house at will to construct drug stores and grants them to power to stop citizens directly on the street and demand that they turn over the contents of thier wallets. Gee Doug, do you wonder why even your own precinct doesn't trust you enough to have you represent them in the County Republican party.
At least these two petitions are being discussed. The third petition on restriction of the sewer and water tap giveaways is dying a quiet death in Lou Postage's finance committee.
If I was one of the petition drafters I would not fall into the trap being laid by council. Recirculate the petitions after correcting the alleged ''errors'' and present them to the city as soon as possible. For good measure, I would add even more petitions, like making it improper for a sitting councilpersons to vote in issue issue directly benefiting a person he recieved a campaign contribution from. Try and guess how much money the developers would keep giving to city council candidates if that passed.
By Chief Joseph
Guess what, despite thier promise to swiftly place these issues on the November ballot, last council meeting Parker and Postage voted against placing the legislation calling for a charter amendment restricting the use of emergency legislation on the ballot. Can you spell ''forked tongue''. Parker then goes into the Service Committee meeting where he declares that there needs to be community input on the petition to restrict denisty levels in the city to R-2 (read we need to give the developers enough time to get thier flaks into a council meeting so we can justify not doing what we promised because of the ''will of the people''). Bob Mapes starts saying that they need to be modified and literally cross examines anyone in the audience who dares to speak up in support of the petitions. Can you spell ''bury my heart deep in committee''. The odds are that if this petition ever reaches the ballot it will likely be in a form that guarantees the rights of developers to build up to fifty units per acre, allows them to bull-doze your house at will to construct drug stores and grants them to power to stop citizens directly on the street and demand that they turn over the contents of thier wallets. Gee Doug, do you wonder why even your own precinct doesn't trust you enough to have you represent them in the County Republican party.
At least these two petitions are being discussed. The third petition on restriction of the sewer and water tap giveaways is dying a quiet death in Lou Postage's finance committee.
If I was one of the petition drafters I would not fall into the trap being laid by council. Recirculate the petitions after correcting the alleged ''errors'' and present them to the city as soon as possible. For good measure, I would add even more petitions, like making it improper for a sitting councilpersons to vote in issue issue directly benefiting a person he recieved a campaign contribution from. Try and guess how much money the developers would keep giving to city council candidates if that passed.
By Chief Joseph
