Sebastopol's Future - by Sebastacat
:waccosun:Recently, two Sebastopol business women and a few of their cohorts submitted some ultra-critical letters to the editors of The Press Democrat and The Gazette. Having lost traction with the readership of the Sonoma Times West after submitting -- and having had published -- several letters containing the same tired, old rhetoric, they have now attempted to shift the battleground to other untried venues. They are continuing to use the media as part of a misguided effort to turn public opinion against Mayor Michael Keyes and -- more recently -- Vice-mayor Robert Jacob, as well as the entire progressive Sebastopol City Council. Their harsh, mean-spirited letters have, unfortunately, inspired a few others to post some of the most vitriolic, hurtful online comments on public comment boards that I have ever read. Those doing the writing -- as well as those doing the posting -- should be ashamed of themselves for putting their own destructive agenda ahead of what is good for Sebastopol and for dragging the local political discourse down to what surely must be a new low.
Based on the content and number of their sore-loser letters over the past two months since the last election, it is almost a certainty that we will be agonizingly subjected to more of the same for the next two years until the next election unless they come to their senses soon.
This is the same handful of people whose candidates were soundly rebuffed at the ballot box in the latest Sebastopol City Council election. Apparently, the results of the last election aren't good enough for them. I will remind them -- once again -- that elections are one of our most cherished democratic traditions.
We must put such pettiness aside. The problems facing our newly elected city council are numerous and complex. Accordingly, its members need our faith and support, not more venom and derision.
I am a 15-year resident of Sebastopol and a LIFE-LONG resident of Sonoma County, having lived for 32 years at the WEST END of Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa, in one of Santa Rosa's last old agricultural districts where prunes and walnuts were raised in an orchard outside my door. You could walk outside the door on the second story of the old farmhouse where I lived and hear a pin drop, that's how peaceful it was...
Now I live just outside the city limits of Sebastopol, next to an old apple orchard. While it is not quite as quiet as my old neighborhood, it is still quite peaceful. Let us hope that this is the year that some peace and civility will make its way into our current political discourse.
Re: Sebastopol's Future - by Sebastacat
"What is good for Sebastopol" is a value judgement lacking consensus. There is a substantial segment of our community that are less than thrilled with the outcome of this election. Many consider the agenda of the new city council to be the agenda that is most destructive, so, again we're speaking of value judgements. Yes, the electorate have spoken but the results were not so overwhelmingly one sided as one might infer from so many of the posters on this site.
These folks who you so readily dismiss are only exercising their rights to freedom of expression, also one of our "cherished democratic traditions". Their "mean spirited...hurtful...vitriol..(and) venom" would be hard pressed to hold a candle to that expressed on this site time and again by many to whom you call "progressive" in the months leading up to this recent election. Hard to imagine the political discourse being dragged deeper into the mud than it was by those who were so unhappy prior the seating of the new City Council.
I haven't heard a single person suggest the legitimacy of the democratic process was in question. I HAVE heard people express disappointment and concern over statements made by, and the intentions of, this newly elected body. As so many mobilized to elect our new city council when they were concerned about the city's direction, so too are these folks, who you so quickly malign, simply exercising what they see as their civic responsibility to speak out against that which they perceive as being harmful to OUR community's future. I fail to see anything wrong with that, except that it's THEM instead of US.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by sebastacat:
:waccosun:Recently, two Sebastopol business women and a few of their cohorts submitted some ultra-critical letters to the editors of The Press Democrat and The Gazette. Having lost traction with the readership of the Sonoma Times West after submitting -- and having had published -- several letters containing the same tired, old rhetoric, they have now attempted to shift the battleground to other untried venues. They are continuing to use the media as part of a misguided effort to turn public opinion against Mayor Michael Keyes and -- more recently -- Vice-mayor Robert Jacob, as well as the entire progressive Sebastopol City Council. Their harsh, mean-spirited letters have, unfortunately, inspired a few others to post some of the most vitriolic, hurtful online comments on public comment boards that I have ever read. Those doing the writing -- as well as those doing the posting -- should be ashamed of themselves for putting their own destructive agenda ahead of what is good for Sebastopol and for dragging the local political discourse down to what surely must be a new low.
Based on the content and number of their sore-loser letters over the past two months since the last election, it is almost a certainty that we will be agonizingly subjected to more of the same for the next two years until the next election unless they come to their senses soon.
This is the same handful of people whose candidates were soundly rebuffed at the ballot box in the latest Sebastopol City Council election. Apparently, the results of the last election aren't good enough for them. I will remind them -- once again -- that elections are one of our most cherished democratic traditions.
We must put such pettiness aside. The problems facing our newly elected city council are numerous and complex. Accordingly, its members need our faith and support, not more venom and derision.
I am a 15-year resident of Sebastopol and a LIFE-LONG resident of Sonoma County, having lived for 32 years at the WEST END of Sebastopol Road in Santa Rosa, in one of Santa Rosa's last old agricultural districts where prunes and walnuts were raised in an orchard outside my door. You could walk outside the door on the second story of the old farmhouse where I lived and hear a pin drop, that's how peaceful it was...
Now I live just outside the city limits of Sebastopol, next to an old apple orchard. While it is not quite as quiet as my old neighborhood, it is still quite peaceful. Let us hope that this is the year that some peace and civility will make its way into our current political discourse.
