Welcome to our letters to the editor/opinion section. To submit yours for consideration, please send to matthewplafever@gmail.com. Please consider including an image to be used–either a photograph of you or something applicable to the letter. However, an image is not necessary for publication.
Remember opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect that of MendoFever nor have we checked the letters for accuracy.
Dear Editor-
Existing Council has for several years ignored Downtown Merchant pleas for essential things like proper directional signage, decorative lighting, landscaping, more public rest rooms, legal and safety attention to abandoned buildings, and grants that should be pointed towards things that need doing now (instead of funding pet projects earmarked for ten years into the future).
The present sitting Council has failed to even formally declare Downtown to be an “Improvement District.” This shameless refusal to assist our core small business economy comes with a corresponding black eye. Tax Revenue collected from these same businesses is being funneled by the millions into a detrimental lawsuit with the Skunk Train, while legally gag-ordering us local citizens thirty-five times over the last two years from learning the facts about the case. Not the democracy we were taught!
This is why the two available City Council seats should be filled with new faces, not the same old status quo. More than ever Registering and Voting is not only a right, but a necessity.
Bill Mann
Sue Rogers
I will sum this up is fewer words: Anybody but Lindy for Fort Bragg City Council. Bill and Sue moved to Fort Bragg to try to improve the downtown area and have been met with disinterest or outright hostility from City officials, particularly Lindy. They were neighbors to a proposed cannabis dispensary with manufacturing and plant nursery on site that nearly all of the neighbors in the block were opposed to (some didn’t get involved so we don’t know their positions). Lindy tried to ram it through in what appeared to be a favor to the applicants, who were well-known as problematic neighbors in their other locations. Lindy even pushed through a change in the code to ALLOW people with criminal backgrounds to work with the dispensaries as their agents or employees because the main proponent was a known felon. This is the kind of treatment Lindy has provided to downtown property and business owners and residents. They all know what kind of councilmember Lindy is and want nothing to do with more of his nonsense and self-serving BS.
You may have better luck with trying to change the (North Coast) Coastal Commission’s agenda like allowing development in and around FB. Building housing and/or businesses in FB would improve the community and bring in people with new ideas and dilute the pool of dead end reactionaries in the city and surrounding areas. This may help shuffle up future city councils in FB. Best of luck to FB’s future.
The Coastal Commission can be challenging for sure. Luckily, the City of FB is working on updates to the Local Coastal Program (the planning document that governs development in FB’s Coastal Zone) and we hope to remove barriers to beneficial development that have proven problematic in the past. We dropped the ball a bit moving those updates forward but the effort is revived under our excellent new City Manager, Isaac Whippy. I am optimistic and excited that development seems to be picking up with several housing developments in planning right now, three of which are actually in the Coastal Zone.
Great news. The time it took to build anything in the coastal zones killed any prospects on developing the area or bringing new life into the FB area. This may be the back door sort of way to change the politics in FB if you build it change will come.
100% agree
1) There should be an occupancy tax for owners of empty buildings –doubled for owners who don’t live locally. Empty buildings are a bad optic which hurts everyone.
2) Bring back the benches downtown, and then add a few more. Include chess table tops. This encourages community and socializing.
3) Ditch the tacky tall thin sidewalk flags that several businesses fly.
Oops, meant “vacancy tax.”