Vote for Larry Guenther for City Council. The Council needs more voices committed to more transparency and procedural reform. Larry Guenther is committed to being that kind of voice. The City needs a healthy balance of the "expert" recommendations of staff and the considerable real subject matter expertise of the community and its Citizen Commissions.
The Cannery project, with its litany of developer miscalculations and repeated applications for reconsideration of their ever-changing plan, is a text book example of failure in transparency and procedure. Cannery is just one example of a continued pattern of failure that is a huge problem for the city and its residents. All across the city we have been saddled with months-long traffic problems and extra expenses without meeting our need for low income housing.
We need a city that does not regard the General Plan as an invitation to developers to come in with a half-baked request for an exception. The City Council needs to represent its electorate. There is a long history of the City Council's development decisions that documents its failure to do so. This goes all the way back to the saving of Central Park and the great Farmers' Market we now have there. If the City Council had had its way in 1986, we would have a three-tiered shopping mall, with incalculable damage to downtown business, crawling traffic and more climate carbon footprint.
We really have to get past the "business as usual" mentality, and Guenther will help us do that.
Don Price
Davisite 
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