LOCAL CONTROL

By David Yuers

In order to do anything - improve traffic and parking, practice fiscal prudence, or maintain our great parks - the citizens of Walnut Creek will continue to require a city council answerable to them. Ceding that authority to "SMART GROWTH" - the ultimate oxymoron - will lose the council's accountability.

"SHAPING OUR FUTURE" is a catchphrase designed to rip away local control. In other cities the catchphrase is "Regional Planning" or "Smart Growth" or "Sustainable Development" or "Agenda 21" or "New Urbanism" or numerous other names. Whatever the catchy phrase may be what it really represents is Central Planning and Social Engineering.

I reject ceding the city of Walnut Creek's rights to any authority outside of its own. The Contra Costa Transportation Authority for example is an unaccountable regional authority with the power to decide how Walnut Creek will grow and change.

Some voters have asked me, "How can this happen"?

It is the law of unintended consequences.

For example: the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) were working together to improve congestion when our State Senator who champions central planning and further state bureaucracy, Tom Torlakson (D), introduced Senate Bill 849 this year. Surprisingly, a Republican governor signed this bill that now requires the MTC (the more powerful entity of the two, thanks in part to the millions it collects in bridge tolls every year) to evaluate a long-opposed merger with the far weaker ABAG. If you believe this merger won't happen then you probably believe that bridge tolls will eventually return to being only a dollar again some day.

I will work to reclaim control over our city and future!

"Smart Growth" requires draconian restrictions on property owners and businesses. It places limits on rural development, maximizes the density in urban areas, and enforces strict rules for retailers and other businesses that all impede economic freedom.

Finally it increases costs to homebuyers and consumers.

Reject Central Planning: Vote For David Yuers!

For more on "Smart" Growth I suggest reading the following links -

http://www.rppi.org/smartgrowthdream.html

http://www.acctaxpayers.com/Pages/SmrtGrth.htm

http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Enviro/SmartGrowth.htm

http://www.americandreamcoalition.org/sggoal.html

http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/bg1770.cfm

http://www.acctaxpayers.com/Pages/SmrtGrth.htm

http://www.freedom21santacruz.net/

http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_04_4_otoole.pdf

http://www.demographia.com/d-amerdr.htm

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/smart_growthfrms.htm

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-361es.html

http://www.newswithviews.com/Coffman/mike.htm

http://www.rppi.org/ppicsurvey.html

I've been to Bucharest many times and do not want to see Walnut Creek look like that city:

http://www.rentalcartours.net/rac-bucaresti.pdf

Here's an article on "Smart" Growth written by Paul Dickey in the Valley Citizen last year:

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones: The Hidden Source Of Smart Growth / By Paul Dickey You may remember the song, "Dem Bones" ("toe bone connected to de foot bone"). The derivation of "smart growth" is similar. One level of government, one community, is connected to the next. Eco-Logic notes: "Smart Growth has become the politically-correct buzz-word to mask a variety of policy initiatives designed to bring about sustainable development of sustainable communities that will produce sustainable lifestyles as determined by the authors and promoters of Agenda 21." This is a song of Creeping Socialism, with its theory that social structures cannot easily be changed directly, but can be transformed gradually by indirect methods. "The objective is to avoid or by-pass elected officials... and put the policy-making authority in the hands of professional bureaucrats."

"Smart Growth" in Contra Costa County is known by the name "Shaping Our Future." Encouraged by Bay Area and State pressures, the "Shaping Our Future" project was initiated by the Board of Supervisors with a $750,000 contract. Both the Contra Costa Times and the Sierra Club have seats on its Oversight Committee. The trail of connected bones goes further back.

De County Bone Connected To De Bay Area Bone

The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities (BAASC), links social equity (affordable housing), the economy, and the environment as a basic tenet. These elements are present at all levels. It is a regional pilot for the Partnership for Regional Livability consortium (major foundations and federal agencies dedicated to advancing sustainable development and smart growth). In 2000, the "Livability Footprint" project (for the "Bay Area to grow smarter and become more sustainable") joined with the "Smart Growth Initiative" project under the Bay Area Council. The Bay Conservation Development Commission, San Francisco Water Quality Control Board, Urban Land Institute and the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition joined the Smart Growth Initiative as advisors. Membership includes the Contra Costa Council and the Contra Costa Economic Partnership, as well as the Sierra Club. The Bay Area Council began a "Smart Growth Fund."

De Bay Area Bone Connected To De State Bone

At the State level, the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency's Report of the Commission on Building for the 21st Century, "Vision for 2020," uses the definition of the UN's Brundtland Commission for "sustainability." The Speaker's Commission on Regionalism has a seat for the Bay Area Council, as well as for the Irvine Foundation (as does the Collaborative Regional Initiative Network). In the year 2000, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) with grants from the Irvine Foundation, Bank of America and the ULI Foundation advanced a regional initiative for Smart Growth. Since 2002, a law (AB 857, Wiggins) requires a Governor's "comprehensive Environmental Goals and Policy Report," to include the goals of "equity, economy, and environment." AB 829 (Salinas) encourages local jurisdictions to "supplement local and regional smart growth objectives."

De State Bone Connected To De Federal Bone

Nationally, the Smart Growth Network (SGN) is a nationwide effort coordinated by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Urban and Economic Development Division, through cooperative partnerships such as the International City Managers Association (home of the SGN), and Congress for the New Urbanism. SGN is maintained by the Sustainable Communities Network (SCN), which is supported by funding from the EPA. SCN notes: "A community must develop a vision in order to address sustainablility. A community visioning process can often provide guidance for citizens who are unclear about a future course." Quoting Lynne Plambeck, President, Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment: "If you don't have the carrot and the stick, it's impossible to pull this off."

De Federal Bone Connected To De UN Bone

In 1993 President Clinton signed the UN's RIO Summit Biodiversity Treaty, (Agenda 21) and created the President's Council on Sustainable Development, with the goals of "stabilizing world population growth" and responding to Agenda 21. The program includes "visioning councils" to develop sustainable communities (live-over shops, bicycles, light rail, walk to work). Each community is defined as a "neighborhood" to be governed by a "neighborhood council." Councils report to and are ruled by a "regional council" which reports to a "national council" and the UN.

De UN Bone Connected To De NGO (non-Governmental Organization) Bone

The UN was established in 1945. In 1972, the Club of Rome began the phrase "think global, act local." Since 1973 there has been a UN Commission on Environment and Development. In 1974 the UN General Assembly asked the World Conservation Union and the World Wildlife Fund to develop guidelines "to help governments manage living resources." In 1980, together with UNESCO, they published a "World Conservation Strategy" to "help advance the achievement of sustainable development." In 1976, the UN Conference on Human Settlements concluded: "the only way to protect the environment is to control the activities of the people who use it." In 1983, the General Assembly appointed the Brundtland Commission. Their view of sustainable development was that too many people will use up and eat up all resources, so the UN will monitor, manage, and preserve the resources of the planet.

Dem Bones Is All Connected Together

In 1992, at the UN CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENT & DEVELOPMENT (The Earth Summit) in Rio, the AGENDA 21 report stated: "private land ownership is an instrument of accumulation, and therefore contributes to social injustice... public control of land is indispensable." This plan was adopted by 178 governments. Agenda 21 states: "By examining all uses of land in an integrated manner, it makes it possible to minimize conflicts, to make the most efficient trade-offs, and to LINK SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WITH ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND ENHANCEMENT, thus helping to achieve the objectives of sustainable development." Also, "by 1996, most local authorities in each country should have achieved consensus on a local Agenda 21 for their communities."

In 1992, a UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was created. In 2000, the "Report on Integrated Planning and Management of Land Resources" noted: "efforts are under way in many countries to harmonize legal provisions governing land use and incentives for sustainable land management... land management includes: waste management, recycling, groundwater agriculture, industry, transport, air, water, health hazards, pollution, noise." The CSD view is that: "animals can travel coast to coast but humans are to be in confined communities and walk or bike to work or to community market centers." In 2002, commitments to the RIO principles were strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg, South Africa. To quote the Institute for Sustainable Development: "Western style development could never be sustainable because it is premised upon capital accumulation."

The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is an international association of local governments implementing sustainable development. ICLEI is an endorser of the Earth Charter and a promoter of Local Agenda 21. Earth Charter co-chairmen are Canadian billionaire Maurice Strong, and Mikhail Gorbachev. ICLEI's Local Agenda program in the US is entitled "Communities 21" The primary mission of Communities 21 is to improve the ecological health of communities across the nation while promoting economic vitality and social justice. It includes the "formulation of procurement, transportation, and development policies that integrate sustainability criteria."

Sociologist Lester Ward wrote "All results are accomplished by FORCE. The so-called `abstract rights' of mankind must be denied if society is ever to become the arbiter of its own destiny."

In 1994 an Interior Dept. spokesman referred to private property as an "outmoded concept."

"I think all private property should be in the public domain. We should get it all. Be unreasonable. You can do it. Yesterday's heresy is today's common wisdom. So, I say, let's take it all back." + Brock Evans, VP, National Audubon Society

"We reject the idea of private property." + Peter Berle, former Pres. National Audubon Society, Board member of Sierra Club

"We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects... We must reclaim the roads, and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness, millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land." + Dave Foreman, Earth First

Here's another article from the same issue:

Smart Growth And Sustainable Development In Santa Cruz Smart Growth is not just an idea originating in and for Contra Costa County. The "vision" and "consensus" are statewide, and even nation-wide. At the October meeting of the Contra Costa Republican Assembly, speakers Lisa Rudnick and Joanne Shaw described their Smart Growth experiences in Santa Cruz County.

They participated in the same kind of consensus-building meetings that Contra Costa citizens are becoming familiar with, "envisioning" the same kinds of results. The one big difference between Contra Costa and Santa Cruz Counties is that in Santa Cruz the Smart Growth proponents openly admit they are trying to implement Agenda 21, the "vision" that resulted from the UN's 1992 (Earth Summit) Rio Accords.

Rudnick got involved with land use planning when a mudslide damaged her home. She joined a forestry management committee, and was surprised to find out that the "consensus" results were actually pre-determined, and that her recommendations were being sabotaged by Earth First committee members. She began to dig into Agenda 21, and discovered some chilling facts.

Agenda 21 has many different names in local communities. While Santa Cruz openly admits it is "Local Agenda 21," in other places it may be labeled "Smart Growth" or "Sustainable Development." In Plumas County it is camouflaged as "Vision 20-20"; in Monterey County it is "Common Ground," and in Contra Costa County it is "Shaping Our Future." Communities in other states have other names, but in every case the vision is the same.

According to Rudnick, the plan is un-Constitutional and even anti-human. The power to control property is shifted away from elected officials to bureaucrats. The goal of the UN is to eliminate private property in favor of "public ownership." If you have no private property, you lose your freedom Rudnick pointed out. The job of your local government is to protect your property, not turn it over to an unelected regional government, she concluded.

Joanne Shaw had a similar experience with Local Agenda 21 meetings, and also came to startling discoveries. The philosophy of Agenda 21 is: "Think globally, act locally," she said. Agenda 21 controls everything: education, transportation (rails, trails, cars, roads) land use, housing (high density, affordable) and behavior. The land use "vision" is a green belt surrounding high density housing, with open space outside the green belt. The Wild Lands Project "envisions" converting at least fifty percent of the land area in the U.S. to "wilderness" and twenty-five percent to "buffer" areas. Most of this land would be off limits to human presence.

She told the audience that Agenda 21 has a "different ethic": Humans are no more important than bugs or rocks. In fact, too many humans are not good for the planet. All enterprises should be "public-private" partnerships. We are not to live as individuals because we have a "collective spirit."

Rudnick and Shaw are members of a new organization called Freedom 21 Santa Cruz which is both education and activist oriented. Their activities are centered in Santa Cruz, but they hope to see citizens from other areas become aware of the collectivist mind-set of Smart Growth which is gradually taking over private property.