All
First thank you to everyone who showed up and supported the petition to give citizens a vote on what is built in the Preserve. We still believe it is critical that citizens get the final say on ANYTHING built in the Preserve.
Unfortunately we have a majority of the city council that does not care what the public thinks and will do whatever they want because they have a majority of the votes on the city council to do it. Last night was just another example of that. Guy Phillips and Kathy Littlefield were both fantastic in their recommendations and even more so in their comments supporting a charter amendment to grant the public vote, but it all fell on deaf ears with the rest of the council. In the end it was 4-3 against taking any action on the petition, so it is clear citizens will not get a vote on either the DDC or anything else the council wants to build in the Preserve.
The next major milestone is the election. As a corporation, we can’t take a position on the candidates or election but it should be clear we have to keep those who are against the DDC and elect those who are clearly against the DDC. Doing so will give us a better chance to defeat the DDC when it comes back to the council in the spring of next year.
Beyond that, this issue is not over by any stretch but without implementation of this petition, it will come down to opposing the DDC unless it is moved outside the Preserve. There are a number of strategies to employ that will announce soon as events unfold, the first one of which is to get residents more informed and build a database of voting residents to prepare for a referendum on any decision the city council makes with regard to the DDC. To that end, if you can volunteer to hand out flyers at trail heads, contact Betty Janik at info@protectourpreserve.org. We will also be looking at getting the word out in other media, including the local papers. In general informed residents are highly opposed to building this in the Preserve so our issue is to let them know this is happening. If you have your own e-mail lists, social media accounts, etc. please help spread the word about what is going on and how to become involved if they want to.
So while Monday night was a big disappointment, it isn’t the end of the road and will just force us to focus our attention on some of the other strategies, including getting legal opinions on some of the city’s legal position expressed so far and some things they will have to do to force the DDC into the Preserve.
Hope you will all stay involved this will be a long and hard fight but keeping the DDC out of the Preserve, and also killing any another idea to commercialize the Preserve, is worth the effort.
Protect Our Preserve (POP) Board