Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Where is our Voice?

[Many quotes from various sources]

It is just very easy for the city officials to ignore our opinions. Honestly, I think they know we are not happy but they are not going to speak up for us.

The whole thing is puzzling me: "the mayor & city council" push for a stadium plan to ask "the mayor & city council" to approve? while the "councilmembers", who are supposed to speak for the residents, are also the proponents of the plan? The current plan has too many flaws.

We need to organize multiple demonstrations at different locations and date to draw the attention of more people in the community and get them involve.

Our opponent has money and connections and we need to get as much help as possible. I believes that many people in our community do care and want to do something. We need to be visible to them and allow them to join our effort easily.

Yesterday, 12/09 meeting, the person who represented the Pacific Commons business park was extremely well prepared. They probably have an attorney (or a set of them) who has done enough leg-work to strengthen their case.

In our residential community, do we not have any attorney who can "voluntarily" take this issue up? I mean, there is a lot of difference in making ourselves present in these meeting, and representing ourselves in the right manner.

Secondly, I also had the same question as to how to make this petition that requires the city to vote. For if it comes to Fremont city residents to vote, we definitely stand a better chance to negate this proposal.

In the media, we only hear the rosy picture from the A's, Cisco and City official. The local residents don't have the money or resource to battle against the big corporations. Who will speak for us?

I think the Fremont Council and the Mayor, especially who was voted to look after the people's interest should all be recalled. They are doing a disservice to their people, trying to push the ballpark in a neighborhood full of children and not take in account of their voters and the proximity of the housing.

Let's recall any council who support this!!!

The leadership of Fremont is showing very poor judgment and poor stewardship of our city. The new location is a terrible choice given the surrounding neighborhoods.

In last month's election, Mayor Wasserman only got 41.86% of vote, not a majority.

8 comments:

  1. If you didn't want the A's in Fremont, you should have elected Cho as Mayor of Fremont. He was against it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Demonstration is a good way, better still, connect with the mass media and have them come and report.
    A vote for all Fremont residents may not be effective, some residents living farther away may not concern about the issues we have been talking about.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Before we bash our elected officials, it's important to acknowledge that every property owner/developer has the right to file an application for a project and the City has to hold community hearings to gather issues. concerns etc. These are then debated in a public forum and all factors are weighed in before a decision is made. So how do we go about presenting our concerns with adequate evidence to ensure that the Council rejects such an application? We need to convince only 3 council members!

    Having just a stadium near the proposed BART station in WS will definitely blight the neighborhood in a few years.

    I suggest that we organize through a series of community meetings and gather the facts. We should encourage and ensure that our neighbors attend and sign up and contribute some funds. Fighting this will call for some expense!
    WS alone cannot fight this alone. we need to muster the support of other fremont residents. Assuming that we can gather about 10,000 signatures, the council will have no option other than to listen.

    What we are up against is the fact that the Mayor's re-election was based on his platform to bring the A's to Fremont. He has the implicit support of two council members already - Chan and Harrison so this will be a tough fight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very good thought. Please see more comments from "myth" section. Quote:

    Many people also mention Mayor Bob Wasserman won the November election because he supports the A's stadium in Fremont. Wrong! He only got 41.86% of vote, while the combined vote of Steve Cho and Gus Morrison (both against the plan) is much higher (33.05%+20.84%=53.89%).

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is next to impossible to get anything in favor of residents with
    the present Mayor and City Council. Case in point is Sabercat
    Development in Mission Area, Patterson Ranch development in Ardenwood
    and so on where developers were favored heavilu. Get ready for long
    nights and nothing at the end. We got to fight with money, an informal
    organization and attorneys.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The coucil member suppose to speak for us, now we need to hire a lawyer to fight the city council! Something must be wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Agree with everyone! We need to take this battle and against our City official. Since Cho and Morrison were against the plan, can they lead us and help us out? The online petition is not enough. We need to protest! We need media and lawyer to help us. We need to RECALL the MAYOR!

    ReplyDelete
  8. How do we recall the inappropriate person who runs this city?

    Can someone start to lead us?

    ReplyDelete