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San Mateo County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
Smart Voter

The right way to love your community

By Harvey Rarback

Candidate for Council Member; City of Half Moon Bay

This information is provided by the candidate
We have an obligation to act when our government is in the wrong.
"Love it or leave it!" That seems to be the essence of a recent letter to the Half Moon Bay Review editor "Only opportunists sue their community". The idea is that if you believe your government's actions or inactions are wrong, immoral, or illegal you should either acquiesce to the wrong or leave the jurisdiction. This has been the outcry against Vietnam War protesters, the recent attempts to disenfranchise some voters in swing states, and now the attempt to demonize "opportunists" who have been fighting to hold our City to its sworn obligation to uphold our laws. If the "love it or leave it" proponents had their way we would still be fighting an immoral war in Vietnam, keeping thousands of poor citizens from voting and allowing our Coastside's natural resources to be despoiled.

Instead, I believe we have a patriotic duty to fight for what we believe is right. The lawsuits against the City's unlawful taking of the land for the Oak Street Park and the City's use of a chainsaw to remove vegetation in the Kehoe stream as a deliberate violation of our Local Coastal Program are examples where citizens did the right thing and should be applauded, not demonized, for their actions. In both cases, the citizens tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get the City to do the right thing. In both cases the citizens only brought suit when they saw no other options were available. In both cases the citizens settled with the City for much less than they could have received from the lawsuit judgments. Their intent was not to hurt the City, but to get it to do what it should have done in the first place without expensive litigation. We need these heroic citizen actions to make the City recognize its obligations to act within the law. That is the right way to love your community.

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ca/sm Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 30, 2014 18:44
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