Five years ago, the people of Clearlake voted for a bond issue which allowed them to borrow $17 million for up-grading their community. Of that money, $7 million went immediately for pre-payment of interest. Fifteen percent per year went to the city administrators to distribute those funds which, so far, have not been distributed. A significant portion was used to pay off fines levied against past city managers and administrators for mismanaging the city”s money. At this time, $6.5 million remains.
The current city manager, Dale Neiman, has arranged for the Clearlake City Council, in a special session to be held today at 6 p.m., to dedicate those remaining funds, plus other development monies, for several projects of questionable value to our community, while ignoring public input created during countless hours when dedicated citizens participated in many sessions of a vision task force in order to create a redevelopment plan for their seriously dilapidated downtown area. Most of these people are not aware of this impending sellout.
Among the proposals to be voted upon are several which have been found objectionable by a significant portion of the Clearlake citizenry. These include:
A) Selling off the airport property to create a shopping mall where Lowe”s home development chain and Safeway would locate stores which would directly compete with or replace other such stores more centrally located in our community. It is possible that these new corporate chain stores would offer jobs to people at lower wages and less benefits than those already existing jobs that they are replacing. These corporations would pay $1 million for the property, but the City of Clearlake would pay $2.5 to $3 million to create a sewer district to service them.
B) This same sewer district would also service a development project which has been found to be truly odious to the people of Clearlake, which is a housing development-cum-golf course known as Provensalia. The land to be used for this project is a very beautiful and an ecologically irreplaceable, pristine tract of land alongside the creek which provides the outflow for Clear Lake and its marshlands. Each time the developers of Provensalia have put their proposal before the people of Clearlake, there has been a huge public outcry against it, identifying numerous insurmountable problems with its implementation.
By doing an end-run around public opinion, in order for the city council to vote in favor of using our redevelopment funds for these unpopular projects, our city manager will be tying up all remaining monies which might otherwise be better-used in our downtown district, according to the plans created by the vision task force committees.
The special city council meeting scheduled for today at 6 p.m. will be the only opportunity for citizens of Clearlake to have any input on these proposals. Then the council will vote. The legislation is written in such a way that once it is voted upon, it cannot be re-visited or undone.
Hopefully, the entire population of Clearlake will go to this meeting and ask their council representatives to delay this vote until we can examine the consequences a little more thoroughly. Otherwise, those council members may later be accused of subverting the democratic process by dedicating public funds to projects upon which the people of Clearlake were not fully informed, and were not given the opportunity to participate in this very important decision!
This opinion piece was written without access to public records or officials who could verify the veracity of the assertions made. Therefore, all statements are here-made with the qualification that they may need revision as further information is provided.
Bronley Heintz
San Francisco
