Town Center review looks at 'blockers' in petition drives
One interesting aspect of a Town Center Performance Review written by interim City Manager Bill Kelly is an “alleged civil rights violations” section discussing the use of “blockers” to thwart signature gathering during two city-wide petition drives.
Anyone visiting a grocery store in Yorba Linda during summer 2005 and the Christmas-New Year holiday period 2005-06 probably recalls being asked to sign petitions related to Old Town issues and seeing counter-petitioners trying to dissuade those who signed.
The two petition drives were the most contentious in city politics, easily exceeding the 1998 effort to stop Imperial Highway widening and the 1970 fight to kill an apartment zone near where Henry’s Market is located today.
The summer 2005 initiative petition gathered 8,647 signatures and resulted in the passage of Measure B, which requires a public vote on major changes to city planning documents.
The two December 2005-January 2006 referendum petitions gathered 9,790 and 9,771 signatures and resulted in a past council rescinding higher density Town Center zoning ordinances and a law allowing the use of eminent domain for economic development.
Kelly’s review, requested by the City Council at a October 2008 meeting, notes “issues arose at or around major shopping centers…concerning the legality of the actions of the signature collectors and the counter blocking of citizens from signature collectors.”
Old Town Yorba Linda Partners, the company once holding an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city for Town Center redevelopment planning, hired the blockers, according to Greg Brown, who was a principal in the firm with Michael Dieden.
Brown in 2006 released an e-mail he received from consultant Dennis DeSnoo: “Joon will be there…he is a 250-pound Korean. Sounds like a central casting blocker.” And one from Dieden: “The blockers should be more like guerillas (think Che)….”
In the review, Kelly notes, “Although these blockers may have been intimidating and physically obvious, if they were only suggesting actions, there was no legal violation,” but “if any citizen felt victimized…a citizen’s arrest could have been executed.”
Kelly concludes that blockers are “predominantly used in labor-related issues at industrial businesses” but “unusual” and “extremely hostile” in local land use issues and “apparently made the situations worse, rather than allowing both sides freedom of speech.”
A FINAL NOTE
Kelly appears to be an admirer of Winston Churchill, since he quotes him twice in the review, including the insightful “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
Anyone visiting a grocery store in Yorba Linda during summer 2005 and the Christmas-New Year holiday period 2005-06 probably recalls being asked to sign petitions related to Old Town issues and seeing counter-petitioners trying to dissuade those who signed.
The two petition drives were the most contentious in city politics, easily exceeding the 1998 effort to stop Imperial Highway widening and the 1970 fight to kill an apartment zone near where Henry’s Market is located today.
The summer 2005 initiative petition gathered 8,647 signatures and resulted in the passage of Measure B, which requires a public vote on major changes to city planning documents.
The two December 2005-January 2006 referendum petitions gathered 9,790 and 9,771 signatures and resulted in a past council rescinding higher density Town Center zoning ordinances and a law allowing the use of eminent domain for economic development.
Kelly’s review, requested by the City Council at a October 2008 meeting, notes “issues arose at or around major shopping centers…concerning the legality of the actions of the signature collectors and the counter blocking of citizens from signature collectors.”
Old Town Yorba Linda Partners, the company once holding an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city for Town Center redevelopment planning, hired the blockers, according to Greg Brown, who was a principal in the firm with Michael Dieden.
Brown in 2006 released an e-mail he received from consultant Dennis DeSnoo: “Joon will be there…he is a 250-pound Korean. Sounds like a central casting blocker.” And one from Dieden: “The blockers should be more like guerillas (think Che)….”
In the review, Kelly notes, “Although these blockers may have been intimidating and physically obvious, if they were only suggesting actions, there was no legal violation,” but “if any citizen felt victimized…a citizen’s arrest could have been executed.”
Kelly concludes that blockers are “predominantly used in labor-related issues at industrial businesses” but “unusual” and “extremely hostile” in local land use issues and “apparently made the situations worse, rather than allowing both sides freedom of speech.”
A FINAL NOTE
Kelly appears to be an admirer of Winston Churchill, since he quotes him twice in the review, including the insightful “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
<< Home