Here's the short form of Will Winn's statement: We're going to keep an eye on Ken Weir and we're going to run someone against him in two years. And we're going to donate our leftover money to Habitat for Humanity.

Here's the long form:

On behalf of the Committee to Recall Councilman Ken Weir, I want to convey my sincere thanks to:

•    The many volunteers who gave up their days off, evenings and weekends to gather petition signatures for the recall – even in the relentless 100˚+ heat and poor air quality of the southern San Joaquin Valley.
•    The many individuals and organizations who generously gave funds, large and small, towards our effort to recall Mr. Weir.
•    The many from outside and inside Ward 3 who called and emailed their encouragement and support for the recall effort.

We have had great satisfaction in going to homes throughout Ward 3, talking with many citizens.  Walking the streets of the 3rd Ward gave us opportunity to personally present the past and ongoing reasons for our efforts to recall Councilman Weir.  And, we also were able to expose his feeble attempts to mischaracterize what we were doing, to justify and cover-up his illegal acts, and his strong-armed political tactics to change the city’s planning process by manipulating the planning commission. 

Even though 20,400 people are registered to vote in Ward 3, many of them readily admit that they do not vote and have never paid much attention to local politics. 

The “official” recall has reached the end of its 120-day signature collection period.  However, the recall effort is not ended.  Our committee has decided to shift the “official” recall effort into an unofficial recall mode – pointing to the fall 2010 general election when councilman Weir will probably apply for reelection. 

This simply means that we are going to transition our present effort into a 3-pronged process between now and then.

1.    We will continue to carefully scrutinize Councilman Weir’s public actions on the city council, his committee performance, and his possible conflicts of interest in business, professional and political relationships.
2.    We will try to keep the ward three voters apprised of Mr. Weir’s financial support which has previously revealed his bias towards uncontrolled development, growth and sprawl.
3.    We will seek to recruit qualified candidates to run for the council seat of the Third Ward, which is vitally important when actively working to unseat and replace Councilman Weir in the fall 2010 election.

On a positive note, we recognize Councilman Weir’s recent good effort to convene two town hall-type meetings.  However, the public notification for both meetings was woefully inadequate and the meetings themselves were set without reasonable consideration for families’ schedules.  One of the meetings conflicted directly with a well-advertised important public forum concerning the Big West refinery that impacted the very same people in western Ward 3.

Councilman Weir’s attitude and misdeeds are not just isolated to him.  There are others in local government who share guilt for the fiscal and planning problems of the City of Bakersfield. 

Therefore, we will continue our efforts to expose any façade of fiscal conservatism in favor of special development interests – not making development and growth pay for itself, and passing on the economic impacts of development to the Bakersfield taxpayers, such as voting to place a 1% surtax on our PG&E bills.  And, by not raising development impact fees adequately in the past, and misappropriating or shifting operational revenues to support out-of-control development, the city has accumulated tremendous deficits and an inability to match thomas roads improvement project’s funding. 

We will anticipate additional political schemes to make up that deficit by watching for innovatively deceptive efforts to charge more new fees and to increase the sales tax without the required voter approval.  This is neither fiscally conservative nor supportive or friendly towards hard-working families.  

We will also continue to expose some council member’s misguided concepts of personal property rights which are actually selective personal property rights – rights for themselves and their friends, but not for small and middle income families’ needs when the city has neglected its oversight, mismanaged and misplanned.

We will continue to monitor any efforts on the part of city council members and their roles on the planning and development committee to undermine or eliminate the hillside ordinance with its reasonable development and building requirements – designed for the public’s safety, with needed trails access and the recreational enjoyment of the Kern River and the bluffs region.

The members of the city council and city staff need to put in place cutting edge, urban planning policies and procedures that will produce a better attitude and philosophy towards development and growth. 

To that end, the general plan must contain provisions which will control speculative growth and sprawl – addressing the genuine need for projects and shutting off the selfish and greedy side of profit-making.   Urban growth boundaries and area population limits must be prudently set to force building and development infilling.  And, zoning must become more absolute with little room for change and conditional uses. 

Everyone needs to better recognize the economic value of open space.  And, we need to understand that open and agricultural land is tax revenue positive for our city as opposed to the tax revenue negative impacts of subdivisions.  Over 100 studies across the nation show this.

The process to recall Councilman Ken Weir began as a non-partisan grassroots effort and has encompassed and included the active interests of many people from widely diverse political backgrounds.  Councilman Weir has tried repeatedly to mischaracterize this by saying we were started and manipulated by unions and environmental extremists.  That is blatantly untrue.  After beginning the recall, some of the recall volunteers, people who had union and environmental interests, did call to lend their support. To insinuate that they have no right to do this is un-American and is an attempt to disenfranchise these folks.  This recall has never been anything other than ordinary citizens, people who separately and personally saw and finally became fed up with councilman Weir’s unacceptable hidden agendas, misstatements, actions and attitudes.  The motivation to come together to recall Ken Weir came from him.

In closing, because of the generosity of many, the financial health of this recall committee has always been excellent, and we have ended with a surplus that we will be donating to an excellent cause: Habitat for Humanity.

Thank you for your kind attention, and I will be glad to take and try to respond to your questions that will probably start with,”how many signatures did you get?”
 
Will Winn, co chair
For the volunteers and Committee to Recall Ken Weir