{"id":577,"date":"2010-04-12T16:05:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T23:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/?p=577"},"modified":"2011-02-27T16:08:43","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T00:08:43","slug":"41210-editorial-2010-election-can-we-please-get-a-little-more-accuracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/?p=577","title":{"rendered":"(4\/12\/10) Editorial – 2010 Election – Can We Please Get a Little More Accuracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This editorial is the opinion of Bill Coburn, publisher of Sierra Madre News Net and 15 year Sierra Madre resident.\u00a0 It is not intended to reflect the views of any other person or entity with whom I am associated.<\/em><\/p>\n

Candidate John Crawford has had on his website, for some time now, a photo of what are at least six-story buildings, with a header that says \u201cIs this what you want to see in Sierra Madre?\u201d and a caption that says \u201cThen vote Joe Mosca, 2010.\u201d\u00a0 By his use of this photo with these statements, Crawford is telling readers (voters) that Mosca is in favor of mid-rise buildings in Sierra Madre, when Mosca has repeatedly stated that he is not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Candidate Crawford has repeatedly stated on his website that the DSP called for more than 300 condo units to be built downtown.\u00a0 The fact of the matter is that the DSP didn\u2019t call for anything to be built.\u00a0 The DSP was actually designed to restrict building.\u00a0 It was a set of guidelines to put in place limits as to what could or could not be built downtown.\u00a0 Nowhere did it state that once the plan was in effect, the City needed to build those units, i.e., call for the construction of these units.\u00a0 The problem is that the limits being proposed in the DSP exceeded what Mr. Crawford and others wanted to see built downtown.\u00a0 But it is definitely not accurate to say that the Plan called for things that it didn\u2019t call for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the Candidate Forum at City Hall, Mr. Crawford informed us that the old fire station in the canyon had been sold to help pay for the DSP.\u00a0 The money generated from the sale of the fire station was actually used to pay for the start-up of paramedic service in this town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the Housing Element Workshop about a year ago, Candidate Crawford posted an article on his website with a misleading headline:\u00a0 \u201cHomes Listed as Possible Eminent Domain Seizure Targets For the Purpose of Building Multi-Family Low Income Housing in Sierra Madre.\u201c The article continued the inaccurate information:\u00a0 \u201cBelow you will find a list of those homes identified as candidates for Eminent Domain seizure should the statute be revived. Once these homes are seized by the government they would then be razed and the property used for the construction of multi-unit low income housing. The notion behind this singular act of government violence against a selected few citizens here in Sierra Madre is to jam high-density housing into what is already a very built out town.\u201d
\n\ufffd
\nBoth the headline and the first sentence of the post contain statements that are just completely inaccurate. There were no (that\u2019s right NO) homes listed as possible Eminent Domain seizure targets. There WERE properties that the City identified as candidates to be zoned for higher density. That means the property owners could, should they so choose, build, or sell to someone who would build, more units on the property than it is currently zoned to allow to have built on it. In essence, the move by the City would probably increase the property value for the owners, by increasing the options the owners have as to what they can do with the property. The City has not targeted these properties for Eminent Domain, or even possible Eminent Domain.\u00a0 But Mr. Crawford uses words like seized, razed and act of government violence to whip up a little frenzy among his readers, the fact that it\u2019s not true notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

Now, in Sunday’s Tattler column, John is telling his readers that Susan lied to them in a front page article by claiming that LASD is taking over the SMPD.\u00a0 Anybody who read the article knows this isn\u2019t true.\u00a0 Even John\u2019s first quote from that article specifically quotes Susan saying just the opposite:\u00a0 \u201cDespite the fact that there is currently no executed contract between the city and the Sheriff’s Department\u2026\u201d\u00a0 In her article, Ms. Henderson quotes Police Chief Marilyn Diaz denying that the Sheriff\u2019s Dept. is taking over, she quotes SMPD Capt. Larry Giannone denying it, and she states that Supervisor Antonovich office has not received the necessary request for the supervisors to approve a contract for LASD to begin contracting with Sierra Madre.\u00a0 Yet Crawford\u2019s headline, in big red letters, is \u201cSusan Henderson\u2019s Final Campaign Whopper: L.A. Sheriff\u2019s Dept. is taking over Sierra Madre.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Susan did say that she has been informed LASD officers are discussing the idea that LASD will take over SMPD, and that the deputies are positioning themselves for that possibility.\u00a0 But as shown above, she made it very clear that that is not the current status.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Mr. Crawford is confused, if he was given bad information, if he has misinterpreted information, if he really believes the things he is saying, or if, and I hope this isn\u2019t the case, he is purposely misstating the facts.\u00a0 One would hope that a candidate for City Council wouldn\u2019t purposely mislead the people that he\u2019s asking to elect him to office.\u00a0 One would think that he would have enough respect for the voters that he would check his information before he starts stating things as facts.\u00a0 Yet time and again, Mr. Crawford has made statements that are just not accurate.<\/p>\n

Mayor Maryann MacGillivray, in a letter sent to Sierra Madre voters, describes Mr. Crawford\u2019s website as reliable, accurate and (a) valuable source of information.\u00a0 Uh-oh, looks like it may be catching.<\/p>\n

I want my Council members to be people that I trust will be giving me accurate information about what\u2019s happening in the City.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019ll be voting Moran, Mosca, Walsh on Tuesday, April 13th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This editorial is the opinion of Bill Coburn, publisher of Sierra Madre News Net and 15 year Sierra Madre resident.\u00a0 It is not intended to reflect the views of any other person or entity with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[58,30,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}