Mayors: Global to Local?

from Freedom 21 Santa Cruz

2/22/06

Not Open to General Public - Mayors Meet in UN-sponsored International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Meeting

The Associated Press reported on June 10 2005, that former Vice President Al Gore was to be the keynote speaker at a private global warming conference in Salt Lake City. The participants included 45 mayors from big and small cities across the country including Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin, a University of California teacher of Marxist Studies. Other participants included global warming advocate scientists, and energy officials including New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Sponsors of the event included actor, Robert Redford, the town of Salt Lake City and “ICLEI”, which is the United Nations-sponsored, “International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives”. ICLEI’S purpose is to advance Agenda 21 policies, including Smart Growth (rails, trails and high-density government controlled real estate) in cities and towns across the globe.

The three day ICLEI conference began in Salt Lake City and then moved to actor Robert Redford’s Mountain Resort for the “Sundance Summit.”

The Associated Press article stated that news reporters needed security badges and that increased numbers of Utah troopers and city police had been assigned to the conference per reports from Michelle Wyman, USA Executive Director of ICLEI

Gore’s keynote remarks were private so that he could “speak ‘candidly’” to the group.

Regarding the three-day conference: “None of it will be opened to the general public,” said ICLEI USA Executive Director, Michelle Wyman.

Click here to see the list of Mayors attending the summit.

Berkeley Mayor Collaborates with Other Smart Growth Proponents - Demonstrating the Agenda 21 Pattern

Contra Costa Times News Beats:
Posted Friday Jan. 27, 2006
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/alameda_county/berkeley/13725533.htm

Mayor Bates Attends New Cities Project Meeting

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates joined more than 30 other mayors from around the country at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. this week for the third meeting of the New Cities Project. The project brings together researchers, policy innovators and mayors to share best practices and develop innovative policies for American cities.

Mayor Bates participated in the previous two meetings, and was selected to serve on the national steering committee along with the mayors of Madison, Wis.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Burlington, VT; and Camden, N.J.
-- Craig Lazzeretti

Livable Berkeley Hires Coordinator

Livable Berkeley, a local political group that says it favors "smart growth," has hired economist/community organizer Miriam Walden as its professional coordinator.

Walden, who also serves on the Albany school board, previously worked for Urban Habitat and Just Economics. Livable Berkeley is an outgrowth of the successful No on P campaign in 1963, which rejected a ballot measure to cap building heights on Berkeley's major streets.

Two regular members and one board member of the group are on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.
-- Martin Snapp

Panelists Favor Higher Density for Downtown

Higher density makes a better downtown was the consensus among panelists at the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee symposium on the subject. But making firm rules about development and sticking to them was considered just as important.

Four of the five experts invited to address the topic of building a better Berkeley downtown last week are design professionals held in high regard. They included Allan Jacobs, a retired UC Berkeley professor of city and regional planning and former planning director for San Francisco; Donlyn Lyndon, a retired Cal professor of architecture and urban design; Paul Okamoto, former board member of Urban Ecology and the Greenbelt Alliance; and Dena Belzer, a board member of the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.

Each of the panelists encouraged the city to allow mixed development, including retail space on the ground floor, commercial office space on the second and third floors, and residential space on any higher floors. But very tall buildings weren't necessarily the right solution for Berkeley, they said.
Lots of entrances to the streets, retail stores at the street level with housing above, and high-density development were ideals the city should establish, the panel said.
-- East Bay Daily

[For more on tier state-sponsored community soviets see What is a Soviet?]

Mayors as Mentors
February 6, 2006
By Camille Giglio

The U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C. ended a few weeks ago. Attendees, including the Mayors of Oakland, Walnut Creek and San Francisco, to name a few, came back home filled with ideas, described by Walnut Creek mayor, Kathy Hicks, to “make this a wonderful place [to live]” So, it should be no surprise that the cities of Oakland, Walnut Creek and San Francisco are capturing headlines proclaiming new programs and goals to help the residents live gracious and fulfilled lives.

One wonders if Hicks thought our town was not so wonderful before she went to the Mayors’ Conference.

All the Mayors proclaim that their city and its residents are so unique but if instituted all the so-called innovative programs will create a dreary sameness across the country.

In an interview for the Times Mayor Hicks is quoted as declaring that “It would be very arrogant not to listen to the different opinions. We on the City Council do listen to a wide variety of input and we have to make the best decisions we can. We can’t agree with everyone.”

Though she and other small town mayors like her, may indeed listen, in fact have to listen to the opinions of residents, in truth it is the opinions of professional Planners protected from the ballot box planning other people’s lives in their ivory think tank towers to which these mayors actually listen and subscribe. http://www.usmayors.org.

The Times article continues with the interview of Hicks. “I believe our entire City Council has a great deal of integrity,” said Hicks. “We serve Walnut Creek because we care deeply. We love Walnut Creek.”
Hicks apparently believes that Walnut Creek’s residents can’t get along without her and her vision of a “healthy community.”

Walnut Creek and Contra Costa County, in general, according to the County web site, boasts a favorable income level and education for the majority of residents especially in the central, eastern and southern parts of the county. One would think that with that kind of background we would be able to achieve the good life on our own. Not Hicks apparently, she seems to believe that not only did she get elected to the City Council to guide its infrastructure; she believes that the job carries the title of mentor as well.

The main purpose of this US Conference for Mayors is to promote the latest gimmicks for linking up local communities into one big, cooperative global public/private partnership. This is accomplished by bringing elected officials and non-governmental agencies - NGOs’ - together to form a union so to speak to bring every community into line with the globalization of the world following the agenda set down by the U.N.’s Agenda 21.

Public/private partnerships merge the authority of the government and often the funding of programs together with those private sector groups who are seen to have the closest association with the public as well as the public’s trust, to provide “services” to everyone. What people are failing to understand is that these local agencies are now tied to the government through these partnerships, implementing programs not so much designed to be beneficial to the individual resident of small town, USA, as to benefit the visions of elitist governing bodies at the expense of the individual.

Hicks as much as admits that in the Times article when she says, first in regard to the Regional Arts Center: “The goal is to continue to improve the arts and acknowledge it as an important and special part of our community that contributes to the heart and soul of our community.” She then reveals her messianic vision by saying: “One of the most satisfying things about being on the council is bringing people together to form collaborations and make this a wonderful place....My goal for the future is to promote partnerships and city alliances.”

Local officials attending national conferences get wined and dined and treated like royalty by advocates and lobbyists trying to sell their programs. The little guys from the suburbs begin to believe all the laudatory praise seeing themselves as great and innovative leaders when actually they are mere pawns in the aggressive game of politics.

For an in-depth understanding of the UN and Agenda 21 goals go here,
http://www.freedom21santacruz.net/site/downloads/sd-guide-web.pdf

Conference of Mayors Promotes City’s Use of Eminent Domain
Tom DeWeese excerpt from News with Views February 14, 2006 http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom44.htm

The Supreme Court shocked the nation last Fall by issuing a ruling that upheld local government’s right to use eminent domain powers to evict homeowners and demolish their houses for community development. The practice, necessary to implement the ugly policy of Sustainable Development, has created an unholy alliance between local officials and wealthy, politically-connected developers. Now they are free to build projects that promise to pad the pockets of politicians and government coffers, while enriching the developers. The property owners be damned.

The decision opened the way for local officials to move at full speed on projects in communities across the nation. The National Conference of Mayors has led opposition to legislation in Congress that would halt federal dollars to fund such projects, arguing that the legislation would diminish government power to control community development.

More Kelo Shenanigans by Mayor of New London, Connecticut
From Liberty Matters News Service February 10, 2006 www.libertymatters.com

New London's mayor believes she has come up with a solution to the thorny problem the city created when it seized the homes of Fort Trumble residents to replace them with high-dollar development. The mayor has proposed a "compromise" that will allow four of the six remaining homeowners to stay in their homes on the condition that they pay rent to the city. Neither Susette Kelo, the namesake of the infamous eminent domain case or another plaintiff, Michael Cristofaro, has any intention of paying rent. "The ongoing battle of the last eight years has not been to allow us to live in our homes and pay rent to the city of New London until we die," Kelo said. In September, the New London Development Corp. sent letters ordering some homeowners to vacate their premises, a move that angered Governor M. Jodi Rendell enough to pressure the agency to rescind the letters. The city council dug a deeper hole last Monday when it voted to collect the rent from the remaining homeowners, even as Law Director Thomas Londregan looks into the legality of the mayor's proposal.

Michael Shaw's Comments

Through interviewing experts on the Freedom 21 Santa Cruz Radio Show, I have learned that the core of the political globalist movement relies on the establishment of a regional system of government where cities are governed by a global network. Hence the University of Iowa slogan that Santa Cruz wore out; “think globally act locally.”

Radio guest Erica Carle described such a system in the Philosophy of Positivism as formulated by French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857). Comte’s work was designed, in his terms, for the purpose of reclaiming control over all human action. In her compilation of Positivist progression by use of quotes during and since Comte’s life, Carle gives a direct view of Positivism and political regionalism in her writing, “A Work in Progress: SIX GRENERATIONS TO SERFDOM”.

Consolidate City and County Governments: “We recommend that city and county governments be consolidated into area-wide governments with size and boundaries appropriate to natural ecological divisions, and with the power to interrupt and apply land use policies throughout the area. We recommend that each government develop and establish a Community Development program. Ecologists must now take their part in the planning, and planners must be educated about man and his environment.” Report to the President - White House Conference on Children, Washington D.C. 1970

Global, Regional and Neighborhood: Citistate is the name Neil Pierce and Curtiss Johnson coined in 1993 to describe how metropolitan regions have begun to operate in the new, post-Cold War world economy…Definition of Citistate:- A region consisting of one or more historic central cities surrounded by cities and towns which have a shared identification, function as a single zone for trade, commerce and communication, are characterized by social, economic and environmental interdependence…Citistates would have made little sense under the old paradigm of America thinking – federal, state, local. But they emerge as the center of a new paradigm – global, regional, and neighborhood. Citistate become the focus of how our world is now organizing itself. The Citistate Group, Inc http://www.citistates.d/

If America is to survive, responsible mayors, have never been so important.