Is opposition to tax hikes now a form of extremism? Bay Area homeowners field insults for defending their property
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What won’t they say when they don’t get their way? Housing activists wanted RM4’s $20 billion in bonds (which would cost homeowners and renters over $48 billion). After a bipartisan group of concerned citizens pointed out that the measure was misleading, BAHFA pulled it from the ballot. Activists then hurled all sorts of fantastical insults at the group, as if participation in the democratic process were some kind of extremism. Marin Post’s Bob Silvestri writes.
In response to the news that RM4 bit the dust, legions of self-appointed housing “experts” and professed housing advocates unleashed a campaign to kill (defame) the messenger. In particular, Ken Kirkey, the Chief Partnership Officer of All Home issued a scathing press release, titled “This isn’t over,” lamenting RM4’s demise as “truly devastating” and accusing 20BillionReasons of being,
The same anti-government, anti-housing extremists who have been blocking progress in California for decades unleashed a barrage of well-timed lawsuits, and they got lucky. These are the people who tried to declare the City of Woodside a mountain lion refuge, and who recently got two Millbrae City Councilmembers recalled for failing to sign a letter of opposition to a single permanent supportive housing development. These are the political descendants of the people who designed Prop 13, which has been sapping the ability of local governments to provide the public services our communities need— education, transportation, housing, public health, and much more—since 1978. [Emphasis theirs]
When will “housing advocates” get past this kind of distorted and mean-spirited political rhetoric that has so poisoned our national political debates? Just because a majority of home-owning taxpayers reject a bloated and poorly-crafted bond measure does not make them the Devil nor do demands to correct glaring addition and subtraction errors rise to the level of being a conspiracy.
The truth is that the 20BillionReasons’ effort was a typical, hastily organized, grassroots, ad hoc story. A group of individuals serendipitously coalesced around shared concerns in a very short time frame and brought a legitimate legal challenge against the gross errors, omissions, and misstatements found in the RM4 bond measure ballot description.
It’s really that simple.
20BillionReasons consisted of a diverse mix of liberals, conservatives, and independents, none of whom lived in or had anything to do with mountain lions in Woodside and many of whom were not even living in California or old enough to vote when Prop. 13 was “designed” and voted into law in 1978.
The group included ex-mayors, councilmembers, and other local elected officials, public advocacy groups, several private sector experts in municipal finance and statistical analysis, grassroots community activists, and a bunch of plain old homeowners. And, the timing of the lawsuit was anything but “well-timed.” They all just came together very quickly and filed their complaint as soon as they could.
Read the whole thing here.
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