Stop the Funding signatures will most likely be turned in this week. The final roundup and petition gathering will be occurring over the next couple of days (in other words, if you have sheets GET THEM TURNED IN ASAP!)
The collection process has been anything but uneventful. Co-Chair Bruce Danielson has told me along the way that approximately only 1 out of 8 or 10 refuse to sign. Most can’t wait to sign, and others usually don’t need much convincing. Bruce has always kept the argument simple, keeping politics and personal feelings for politicians out of it. He basically says that if we spend $25 million on a building we don’t need, that is $25 million over the next 20 years we won’t be spending on roads or other infrastructure. That usually convinces them to sign.
There has been road bumps along the way to the democratic process, ones you wouldn’t expect. For instance Bruce has been asked to stop taking signatures at the VFW and the VA (he was actually on the public sidewalk at the VA) he was threatened with arrest by the VA rent-a-cops Federal Law Enforcement agents. But an interesting thing happened yesterday at the Backpack handout event. He was on the public sidewalk getting signatures (and registering people to vote) when he was accosted by a city contractor who hosts public affair shows on channel 16. Of all the people that should understand the democratic process, it should be her? Right? Well she didn’t. Bruce held his ground and said he had a 1st amendment right to be their on public property collecting signatures and wasn’t leaving. She sent out another person (we assumed a city employee) and after a picture of him was taken, he had a change of heart. He said something like, “That better not end up on the internet!” LOL. You never know.
The Argus wrote an editorial today supporting the petition drive and election (but it is not posted online yet) but it wasn’t to nice to councilor Erpenbach.
So what happens next?
Well first the petitions need to be verified using a sampling, this should only take a day or two (actually a couple of hours) there is NO reason these signatures shouldn’t be verified by Friday.
If and when the sigs are verified they need to be presented to the council. By law, they must set a special election date. Ideally, this should be before the bond sale. But the mayor can stop or delay the bond sale.
So now it is in the council’s hands. They need to call a special meeting and get it done. We will be watching and waiting.
They aren’t rent-a-cops at the VA, they’re Federal Law Enforcement.
I’ve found them to be more professional and more forgiving than the local Pokemon Go playing, tweet-sending, free meal eaters the City has.
So since they have actually completed a Federal law enforcement academy course, and follow ethical rules that prohibit accepting free gifts unlike the local Huether stooges, maybe save the rent-a-cop name calling for the Tuthill ghostbusters.
Thanks for the clarification, but I would have to say it is a little troubling that agents of the government didn’t know it was legal to petition on the public sidewalk, and of all places, in front of a Veterans Hospital.
So was Bruce out on the 22nd Street sidewalk in the middle of nowhere? Because that’s the closest City public sidewalk.
Because if he was “in front of the VA Hospital”, that is part of the Federal Campus, and not a ‘public sidewalk’, it’s a Federal VA Campus sidewalk.
While it is legal for petition circulators to gather signatures in front of federal property, it is illegal to gather signatures or circulate petitions ON Federal property.
So while you’re trying to make the VA out to be the bad guys, sounds like Bruce was in the wrong.
They cut him some slack when they caught him violating Federal law and you’re on here making the VA out to be the bad guys when you don’t know what’s Federal property and what’s not.
So I’m guessing if Bruce was on a ‘public sidewalk’ like you claimed (22nd Street, 26th Street, Garfield Ave, or Western Ave), The Federal Officers assigned to the VA wouldn’t even have approached him and there wouldn’t have been any interaction at all.
Tell me again, who doesn’t know the law?
It’s common knowledge channel 16 is propaganda that should not be funded by taxpayers. Someone representing they harrassing a citizen is worthy of an ethics complaint and dismissal. Perhaps the next petition should be to cut both TV channels from the budget.
I think you are correct Vet. I talked to someone who works with the VA and they told me that the VA does control the property, even though it is city sidewalks.