DEAR EDITOR:
Isn’t it amazing?
Gilroy City Council authorizes a $5.5 million incentive package
to the Newman Development group in early March.
DEAR EDITOR:
Isn’t it amazing?
Gilroy City Council authorizes a $5.5 million incentive package to the Newman Development group in early March. On Monday evening April 14 Council gives final approval to the plan. In less than three days, an oxymoronic group proclaiming itself the Committee for Responsible Development forms, registers itself with the state, solicits and receives approval from some 550 alleged Gilroy residents to use their names within a proposed full-page ad, rents a Post Office box and raises enough money to not only prepare that full-page newspaper ad but submit and pay for that ad to appear in The Gilroy Dispatch and The Pinnacle on April 18. All in less than three days!
Isn’t that amazing?
The predictable result: this Committee for Responsible Development shows itself as totally irresponsible. Well, why not? Its featured “supporters” include one meaningless Council member, Peter Arellano; two used-to-be Council members, Connie Rogers and Guadalupe Arellano; and one “I so-wanna-be a’ Council member, Paul Correa. Their basic premise: this committee is more knowledgeable and insightful into Gilroy’s needs than those elected to fulfill those needs.
Their claims become contaminated when Danny Beagle, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 128, alleges “We found in our conversations with people around the community that there was a lot of outrage (concerning the incentives).” Outrage? About what, Mr. Beagle? The unending flood of pro-union, anti WalMart, letters to this paper since early March? Visits by union drones to Gilroy firms seeking to frighten merchants with union fantasies WalMart will put them out of business? You say (Dispatch – April 18) “People simply don’t buy the idea that (this incentive package) has nothing to do with WalMart.” Perhaps you missed one point in Dispatch staff writer Jonathan Jeisel’s April 18 report “…city officials have stressed that Newman will not receive incentive credits for the WalMart if it moves in because it’s an existing business that’s relocating within town.”
So what’s the problem? WalMart is non-union and that’s something unions and their supporters cannot abide. Thus this Committee for Responsible Development – nothing more than a pro-union front – which will do and say anything and everything to sabotage any city efforts that resemble giving WalMart aid.
In his opening drivel toward another desperate bid for a City Council seat, Mr. Correa shuck-and-jived the union line unendingly, even claiming “(the incentive program) is not about union and non-union” (Dispatch – April 15). Why should Gilroy citizens believe that considering Correa’s blatant association with and promotion of, the anti-WalMart union propaganda?
Three final points:
1. The full-page ad allegedly paid for by the committee contains an estimated 550 names. If you remove repetitive last names (entire family listings) you reduce the “support” by 60 names.
2. Morgan Hill’s John Reese (Letters to the Editor – Dispatch – April 18) would have readers believe he has personal knowledge of the many wrongs he cites against WalMart. Mr. Reese, if you’re going to peddle the union line, have the integrity, honesty, ethics and principles to admit from where you get your material. Don’t shill for the union and sound like you’re concerned.
3. If Peter Arellano and Correa are so bothered by decisions of Gilroy’s elected leaders toward this community’s future, they should do their best for the city: resign (Arellano from City Council; Correa from the Planning Commission) and work promoting their union-directed anti-Gilroy, anti-growth, rhetoric. Remember, Paulie, your union associations didn’t get you on City Council before – though they tried. Stick with them and you won’t make it next time around. Hey, that’s a good idea daily reinforced by your continuous pathetic posturing.
James Brescoll, Gilroy
Submitted Sunday, April 20
