Yes, I was away on a planned (and needed) family vacation for the last City Council meeting and could not attend. For those that did heed the call to action to make your pro-growth presence known, I can't thank you enough.
I watched the online video of the meeting this morning and I have to say that I'm proud of the community. Of the 18 members of the public that spoke to the issue of changing the land use designation of the city owned property, 4 of them were Realtors and Members of the Association. One of them spoke against private property owners that were not from Kingman with multi-generational connections. Of course it was easy to see through his agenda because he is considered 'old money' from these parts and has many of his own interests and I don't blame him for wanting to reap the rewards from his holdings (like his family has for years). Of course this didn't have anything to do with the proposed land use designation on the city property.
Additionally the 6 or 7 speakers against the proposed major amendment barely spoke of the actual issue that was on the agenda, they instead were simply stating they were against needed infrastructure for the well being of this city's future. The theme from the anti-growthers was either delay the whole thing for one year (at this time) or their concern was about perhaps more traffic on THEIR OWN street. In either case no solution was offered by the critics.
One detractor from the group RAID questioned the traffic concerns that she has for her own property. She said that a traffic impact study was needed to determine how this project could affect her. She seemed to say that there was no traffic study at this time, but actually there is one -- and in fact it shows that if the traffic interchanges aren't added then she will be besieged by even more traffic ON HER STREET than with the proposed interchanges. She makes faulty arguments all the time in her column that runs occasionally in the local paper.
Other RAID members simply said things like, "it's too early" and "delay this decision for one year" or "let the voters decide in a referendum". RAID would rather that you sit for longer periods of time than necessary on Stockton Hill Road than improve access routes in this city. Think about that next time a loved one needs to get to the hospital and the ambulance is stuck in traffic in this small town (emergency services have told me that it has affected residents of Kingman in a negative way). Think about RAID the next time someone runs a red light on Stockton Hill and crashes into your car because that person was tired of waiting in traffic (this happened to my brother-in-law). RAID is dangerous to your health and when you really break it down you see these folks in their big houses in elite neighborhoods telling the rest of us to 'eat cake' because they think they know better. Members of RAID have 'theirs' and don't want you to have even a chance to get 'yours'.
I'm very proud of our Association president Rita Zumwalt and the Realtors that showed up to support. On the video you can see about half the room rise and stand as Rita spoke. Rita spoke on behalf of those residents and she made some great points. She even offered up a compromised solution of having the city keep some of the acreage for parks and open space to provide a buffer to the more residential areas, yielding to the RAID groups ONLY legitimate concern.
Another speaker that night (and I didn't get his name from the video) sort of echoed some of my criticisms of the poor arguments that RAID members have made. The speakers first name was Mike and I simply couldn't understand the last name. I'll correct this once the minutes from that meeting are posted. Mike is not a Realtor or an affiliate, simply a concerned citizen looking out for the whole of the community and made some solid and simple points.
It is likely that the decision that the City Council made will go to a referendum later this year. Last election there was an approximate total of 4700 voters that voted. Most likely all of the RAID folks participated in the previous election. If there is a referendum election there will be a huge effort to energize eligible voters of Kingman to vote in favor of the major general plan amendment that the council indeed approved by a needed 5-2 vote. RAID will have proved nothing in the end and even cost the city valuable resources that could go to much needed programs instead of expensive referendum elections.
The meeting on Monday was simply the first step in seeing a better Kingman of the future. It is not over by any stretch and more community support will be needed at future meetings. Please get involved where you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment