Coast resident Mitch Clogg supports the right of the people to demand decisions that are made by government be put to a popular vote. So, he wasn”t deterred when a pushy paid signature gatherer approached him two weeks ago and encouraged him to take a stand against big development in Ukiah. He signed.
“I talked with a roughish guy, gathering signatures at the Safeway. He”s from Orange County, which means that, like New Yorkers, he”s learned that pushiness and survival are linked,” Clogg said.
But when Clogg read online blogs and listservs and learned that his signature would actually support the largest retail development ever in Mendocino County, he decided to withdraw it.
A drive to retract activism is novel, even for activist driven Mendocino County.
A local blogger-led effort has arisen to oppose converting a big Ukiah industrial site into a retail shopping center to rival Santa Rosa”s big box malls.
The online campaign has led an unprecedented number of people to withdraw their signatures. But not enough so far to likely impact whether the issue will end up on the ballot.
Susan Ranochak, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, said roughly 50 people had, as of last week, in writing, withdrawn their names from the petition effort. This was the first time she has seen people actually take back their signatures.
Confrontations between aggressive signature gatherers and property owners, including a case of fisticuffs, also elevated the issue. Suddenly, the tenacious signature gatherers were pulled off their perches outside local stores.
The backers haven”t gotten enough signatures yet and are still at work, albeit in a much lower key way, said Dave Clark, executive director of Mendocino County Tomorrow (MCT).
MCT is the local organization seeking to land the plan on the ballot.
“When you have an issue like this, in a community that feels as passionately about development as our community does, things can happen,” Clark said. “We had hoped everything would go smoothly.”
“The project”s developers include a major national developer of shopping centers [headquarters in Cleveland and Dallas]. They”re the key players in the group that is financing the petition in an attempt to end-run local planning,” said Jim Heid, in an online discussion with Clogg about the project sometimes called Mendocino Crossings.
Clark refuted the notion that his group is a front for Developers Diversified Realty (which is funding the signature gathering and political campaign), saying MCT formed before the ballot measure was conceived. Clark, who had a career working with disadvantaged youth, says he started recruiting board members more than a year ago.
Clark referred to the “silent majority,” as he searched for a term to describe local people who feel they lack representation currently.
“There are a lot of people whose concerns about the future aren”t being addressed by the current board or the current [Ukiah] council.”
There is certainly much more noise coming from the opposition.
Two newsgroup bulletin boards and three local blogs, including one from a Ukiah councilwoman, have been getting big responses to their opposition to mega-mall development. The ballot measure is a result of opposition to the idea from the Board of Supervisors.
The backers have 180 days from April 9 to present 6,167 valid signatures as a special election item for the Nov. 3 ballot. If they can wait until the June 2010 election for inclusion as a general election item, they would need only 3,083 signatures, or 10 percent of the county”s voters.
Opponents argue that Developers Diversified Realty is planning a monster mall that will decimate locally owned business and localization efforts, all for mostly minimum wage jobs. They point out that mega-malls are failing across the country.
Backers point to promises in the petition for solar use, green building and many jobs at all wage levels. The petition promises major sales tax revenues for local government and public transpiration connections
The new local group that actually filed the petition, Clark”s MCT, has its own website to push the plan. Clark works full-time for MCT and has seven local board members.
“Our bylaws require that board members be residents of Mendocino County,” he said.
This reporter encountered unusually aggressive signature gatherers outside the Fort Bragg Post Office, Harvest Market and Safeway.
The woman at the post office was loudly beseeching passersby with statements including, “Sign here to bring us a Costco” and, “Don”t you want to bring a Trader Joe”s to the county?”
Those were not appropriate pitches, said Kellen Arno, an associate for Arno Political Consultants. The Ohio firm behind the signature gathering effort, Developers Diversified Realty, hired Arno”s firm, which hired the company the woman works for, H and H Petitions.
Arno said signature gatherers had been trained twice on how to pitch the zoning change petition and that selling a specific store wasn”t appropriate. He said signature gatherers were trained to pitch a simple message about the jobs and revenue the project will bring into the county.
Asked to comment about people who said they were deceived and withdrew signatures, Arno said he hadn”t heard about that.
While all the signature gatherers interviewed in Fort Bragg were from Southern California, Arno said some were hired locally. He said there were also volunteers, which could not be confirmed before presstime. Arno also couldn”t comment on why signature gatherers had been pulled from Fort Bragg stores. Clark said they are still out, in just a few locations.
Arno said one signature gatherer who went “off message” was fired from the effort.
That was not Jay Taylor. Following a physical altercation between a signature gatherer and shopper, Mendocino County Judge John Behnke granted a temporary restraining order against Taylor, of H and H Petitions, as requested by Geigers Long Valley Market co-owner Michael Braught. Taylor was simply removed from the local effort.
Mega-mall development has hit the skids nationwide. DDR had a bad 2008 but got a “bailout” last month from the Otto family of Germany, who bought one-third of the company for $112.5 million, according to national business publications. That resulted in a positive earnings report last week, one of the few posted in the real estate industry.
Online sources of information: www.mendocinocountytomorrow.com, www.NoMegaMall.com, www.ukiahblog.com, www.mendocinocountry.com, mendocommunity-bb@yahoogroups.com and www.mcn.org (newsgroups).
