CAINE: Voters send contradictory messages on city growth
By Eric Caine
On Nov. 3, another local election took place in Modesto. There was less impact than a yawn. Fewer than a quarter of registered voters turned out to vote for the first district elections for City Council and for Modesto Irrigation District directors' races, school board elections and several growth advisories.
The results were both predictable and puzzling. Predictably, growth measures met smashing defeats. The most popular, Measure A, managed to garner only 39.8 percent approval; the rest of the growth measures suffered even worse rejections.
Another predictable result: Candidates for City Council were victorious based on their war chests. The best-funded candidates won.
What's puzzling is that as a rule the best-funded candidates are funded by developers and friends of developers. What this means is that the more voters vote against growth, the more they vote in favor of it. Ordinarily, such behavior is stuff for psychiatrists. Here in the San Joaquin Valley, it's the norm.
It's not difficult to understand why voters continue to reject growth measures. As it is, we can't keep our streets repaired, we're buried under crime statistics that often lead the nation, and too many new housing tracts feature abandoned homes with dead lawns and gardens.
In the face of such daunting problems, the penchant for voting for pro-growth candidates is clearly contradictory. It's easy to forget, however, that in the San Joaquin Valley, as in the rest of the nation, politics and business intermingle.
For many, political contributions are an investment that returns many times over its cost.
And while valley residents as a whole may reject growth and sprawl, that opposition is unorganized and virtually leaderless. There's rarely a candidate who represents their true interests.
Years ago, some of the area's leading citizens formed GOAL (Growth-Orderly, Affordable, Livable). Modesto Mayors Carol Whiteside and Peggy Mensinger embraced smart growth concepts, and it appeared we were poised to enter the 21st century on the leading edge of good planning concepts and sustainable growth patterns.
Then came Village I. Touted as a pedestrian-friendly, self-contained model of smart growth, Village I became a monument to false hopes and broken promises. Saying there wasn't enough money in smart growth, Village I developers essentially offered a middle digit to those who had hoped Modesto and the San Joaquin Valley would lead the way toward more sustainable growth policies.
Residents never really recovered from the disappointment of Village I. Longtime residents shrugged and began a process of gradual resignation to "inevitable" growth.
Newcomers, lured by housing prices far more affordable than those in the Bay Area, were happy enough to occupy the home of their dreams; quality-of-life issues could come later.
Now, those few valley voters who turn out for elections generally reject growth even as they install leaders who are sure to promote it. Barring a new coalition of citizens willing to form a contemporary version of GOAL and a new generation of leaders, local elections will continue to be less an expression of the will of the people than a demonstration of business as usual.
Caine, a Modesto resident, teaches in the humanities department at Merced College. E-mail him at columns@modbee.com.
Read more: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/community/story/938052.html#ixzz0XVccVjMK
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Read Eric Caine's article and then read about Modesto's building
fees. We're going to be in the same situtation we were after the Village I fiasco!
And the same people will be behind it.
Read Eric Caines Article for more Village I information
They(the city council)did it before and they'll do it again.
Caine in 2005
We published a similar column from Caine on Nov. 17, 2005, after Kristin Olsen unseated Denny Jackman. I thought of it because I didn't equate big money as buying this election. The underdogs in this year's council race were fairly unknown, whereas the favorites who attracted more money had pretty considerable records working in different civic groups. They were known commodities.
I bring this up because Caine's 2005 column made more sense to me. In that election, growth was a hot issue and Jackman had a track record as a community leader. Also, I think other slow growth candidates can attract big bucks, too. I wouldn't expect Garrad Marsh to be under-funded if he follows through and runs for mayor in 2011. Jackman, for that matter, probably could've taken the west and south Modesto district from Dave Geer if he had run.
Anyway, here's Caine in 2005:
On Tuesday, Nov. 8, the empire struck back -- again. That's the message sent by Kristin Olsen's thumping of Denny Jackman in the race for Jackman's seat on the Modesto City Council. As of last count, Olsen was a handful of votes shy of a majority needed to win the election outright.
Even if Jackman does better among the absentee votes still being counted and forces a runoff, Olsen would enter with an overwhelming advantage, having outpolled Jackman by almost 20 percent.
Though only a first-time candidate, Olsen raised the most money of anyone in any City Council race. More significantly, she received endorsements and support from an A-list of Modesto's establishment pillars, who seemed determined to avenge Jackman's victory over highly favored Kenni Friedman four years ago.
Though they will insist that farmland preservation, smart growth and good planning are fundamental planks in every political platform they support, Modesto's movers and shakers often find themselves on the very same page with the developers they profess to oppose. These are the people who supported the people who brought us Village I and the Pelandale bottleneck.
It's no secret developers viewed Jackman as the last man standing in opposition to their grand plans for the future.
Jackman is the last of a cohort of citizen-activists who broke establishment control of local politics. By far the most notorious anti-establishment figure is former Mayor Carmen Sabatino, who was taken off the political playing field when he was charged with 11 felony counts just before he ran for re-election. Not long after Sabatino was sidelined, City Manager Jack Crist was terminated under circumstances that have not yet been explained. Crist also had long been a target for developers, who believed he had been a big factor in exposing fee shortfalls during the Village I investigation.
Jackman was the last real outsider in office. Moreover, his opposition to covering prime Salida farmland with houses and strip centers put him in the way of a growth juggernaut that rarely pauses for roadblocks.
Though Olsen portrays herself as favoring higher fees for developers and better planning for traffic control, she targeted Jackman's seat because he provided "the greatest contrast" with her skills. Had she truly been seeking more control over developers, Olsen could have sought another seat. Instead, she targeted the one councilmember who could be counted on to favor more stringent control on development.
So happy days are here again for Modesto's elite, but they shouldn't rest too comfortably. Stanislaus County's voter turnout was around 40 percent, which means Modesto's ruling "empire" consists of about 20 percent of total registered voters. Past victories by Sabatino, former Councilman Bruce Frohman and Jackman suggest establishment control of local politics can be fragile and illusory; the low turnout means there is a silent majority whose preferences may or may not be for business as usual. Someday that majority might well constitute an empire of its own.
We do know Kristin Olsen was funded by the Building Industry Ass
yes the same people who helped Zagaris and Cogdill lower building fees. And despite the fact that her husband had a desk in Zagaris' office she still claimed her independence from Zagaris., In Modesto taking money from his friends is the same as taking money from Zagaris.