[Occupymendocino] Fort Bragg City Council mtg. Monday, 8 Sept. IMO

[Jessie VanSant]

A lot of ‘audience' showed up.  Mayor Turner put the public comment item up to the top of the agenda.  Numerous people spoke.  Several spoke in general terms of keeping the meeting civil and agreeing to disagree without enmity.

If I were a betting person, I’d betcha that it was a 50% - 50% audience.

There were controlled angry people who said that the City Council is not listening to constituents.  Heather Drum specifically said the Council was not being responsive to the people who elected them to those seats.  (I disagree - I think probably it was a 50-50 split in the election too and that 50% voted against the current council members)

Paul Clark Century 21 was interesting.  He essentially said he didn’t care about climate change or plastic bag/styrofoam bans or any outer world stuff but wanted access returned to how it was X time ago in the past - that staff was not doing their job properly and so forth.  He wants his ideas to be the driving force of Fort Bragg.

The other speakers of the other 50% praised and thanked council staff for sensible actions and council itself for policy which lead to a more sustainable future.  

Information from the past was referenced when Fort Bragg was deep in the financial hole, in trouble in all sorts of ways with the state, water use and so forth  and, how thru dint of hard, steady work and choices, those deep holes were gradually filled in and made green, growing places again.

I remember when the GoodOldBoy's in the BadOldDay’s let stuff happen that would choke us all now - little creek headwaters filled up with rubble and construction debris then covered over and covered up…. that kind of eco-crime.  There was a lot of corruption going along as SOP.  I remember being told to shut up and sit down because I didn’t live in the city limits - my thousands of dollars in consumer spending didn’t count, didn’t give me the right to have an opinion in the BOD’s - it was pretty incredible but those council members felt absolutely OK in their actions towards me as a concerned community member.

IMO --“Things” are /much/ better in Fort Bragg now and the city councils of the past 10 plus years have done an amazing job keeping Fort Bragg in better shape financially than most other similar towns.  This is a lot due to good staff and good policy choices brought forward.   (IMO)

What the crowd asked for is a meeting of city council which would focus/concentrate on the ‘problems’ that the 50%have identified.  Of course city council did not respond to the speakers.  The public comment part of the meeting ended after 7 pm and the crowd left - gathering outside Town Hall discussing it all.  The reportage will be interesting!!
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