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In the last election, a campaign group against Measure N- Strada Verde- went to great lengths to make sure it wasn’t gonna pass. They created this whole smokescreen campaign about a city being planned there and a massive housing project. But if you took the time to read up about the project you’d realize none of it’s true. Even a few local politicians and candidates for office jumped on their bandwagon in order to pander for votes.
This Strada Verde project is a tech park, a commercial business, not some city or housing project. I wish people would pay more attention and see through their gaslighting. This slick group has been feeding people trigger words over and over again (they did it with Measure K too)–words like how they are going to stop ‘housing growth’ and ‘traffic’ – the things that people are really upset about. People see red and vote no, not realizing they are being manipulated and that these measures have nothing to do with residential housing or traffic.
Instead they buy into the lies and end up fighting against a wonderful commercial project that would bring money for things residents really want: updated roadways, money for more police and fire, and for our schools. It would also bring a lot of good-paying jobs and get people off the road to Silicon Valley.
This same group is at it again, even though they changed their name. Now they call themselves ‘Protect San Benito’ and have this ridiculous initiative they are calling ‘Let the Voter Decide.’ Once again laying on the misinformation big-time to lure voters and get them to sign their petition by claiming its going to slow residential growth, using those same trigger words as before. I was stopped by one of them, and he told me that they were building cities at each of those commercial nodes on 101. What a load of horse manure!!
This initiative isn’t about controlling residential growth at all. I know we all hate it, but residential growth is something controlled by the state’s housing crisis laws and we will still be forced to build houses even if this were to pass. But this thing is really aimed at stopping commercial growth here and will make it almost impossible to get new business—which spells economic disaster for our county. They want to change our general plan and strip out areas already planned for commercial growth. Which gets us to what they are really after.
Their real goal is to get rid of them 4 nodes along highway 101 near their homes in Aromas!
This group has worked for years fighting to stop the development by their homes along 101. They are what’s known as a NIMBY (not in my backyard) group looking out for themselves–they are definitely not about protecting the whole county.
At the end of the day, this is it what all their efforts boil down to. If they were interested in protecting the whole county, they’d be out there fighting those horrible distribution centers Hollister is putting in—they gonna snarl up our traffic worse than anything! But not a peep from them about that growth.
And this group will do anything to get what they are after; they bring in environmental groups, Native American groups, wildlife preservation groups and use them to get money and help fight their battles—they even tried to attach themselves to Don’t Dump on San Benito group and ride their coattails to get more support.
Another revealing example. They created an ‘anti-bully’ campaign in the last election. They made a huge deal claiming some people were mistreating and bullying their high school volunteers standing outside stores. They even claimed a local candidate (who didn’t agree with them on those nodes) was one of those who did the bullying. Sounds awful doesn’t it? Didn’t any of you wonder why, in an age of technology when fights and even natural disasters are caught on video, not a single incident of actual bullying was ever recorded on a cell phone? Yet they managed to have all these people generate videos to ‘stand against bullying.’ Very slick, and manipulative.
One truth you might like to know about those young ‘volunteer’ protestors. While there may have been one or two local children of campaign leaders protesting, the majority of those young protestors were not actually local high school students. They were paid protestors from outside the area. Shocked? A former Salinas Councilman and his wife are political consultants, and they hire groups of students, bring them in and pay them to be ‘protestors’ and wave signs. Tricky huh? It’s well known in local political circles—several local politicians have hired them in the past to hold signs and pass out literature for them.
And after all this talk about the evils of bullying people, this group is out there right now, resorting to bullying and harassing people leaving stores in order to get them to sign their petitions. Many residents have begun to see through the manipulations and don’t want to sign. But this group won’t take no for an answer. They follow you out to your car. You tell them NO several times and they still won’t stop talking. One poor woman with a child was trying to get into her car and leave and they were blocking her car, still talking at her. The one who accosted me would not stop or leave me alone; it took awhile to get away from him. They are intimidating people and it’s just not right. I mean who’s really doing the bullying here?
We need jobs. We need revenue to keep our county strong and provide services. We need to regain our sanity in this county and not let a small NIMBY group lead people around by the nose and manipulate us. Wake up and say it with me people–we won’t be fooled again!