MEASURE A HAS BEEN RESOUNDINGLY DEFEATED

Mendocino County clerk recorder Susan Ranochak has issued her final preliminary vote count just after midnight on election eve. With 38 percent of registered voters being counted, Measure A has lost 62% to 38%. Absent an outlikely turnout of over 90%, the corporate sponsored measure to rezone the Masonite site has been resoundingly defeated.

Developers Diversified Realty of Beachwood Ohio purchased the property to develop a shopping center in 2007 knowing it was zoned industrial. Last year, supervisors voted 3-2 to scope the Ukiah Valley Area Plan to allow major buildout of a mixed use shopping, industrial and residential park there. But two supervisors who supported the project were not re-elected, and the company opted to appeal to county voters to enact its custom designed zoning designation.

They formed a dummy front group of political wanna bees organized as "Mendocino County Tomorrow"  who were encouraged to lend their names to DDR's "Mendocino Crossings" initiative in return for promises of future support if they chose to run for office.

Then, the company hired a bunch of thugs from southern California to obtain 10,000 local signatures on the petition with guile, deception, intimidation and flattery.

Just after supervisors following state law qualified the initiative for the November ballot, DDR's lawyers terminated the MTC candidate PAC.

At the outset of the campaign, county supervisors and city councils in Fort Bragg, Willits and Ukiah urged a no vote on the measure. At the same time, LAFCO issued a critical report warning that critical services would be impacted by the project and the developer would escape responsibility for the costs. Soon,  county staff did the same. These documents can be viewed at www.mendocinocountry.com.

Since then, Developers Diversified donated over $800,000 to its controlled campaign committee through another front corporation called Mendocino LLP incorporated in New Jersey. "Yes on Measure A, citizens to bring jobs, etc" spent all that money on canvassing, research, polling, legal, accounting, advertising, graphic designing, printing and mailing services.

Their ignominious defeat is a national news story.

Over the Top Spending

DDR created a separate corporation called Mendocino LLP to donate funds to its local campaign committee called Citizens to Create Jobs, etc, and gave it $769.000 all of which will be spent on polling, research, canvassing, printing and mailing. This established a record for campaign spending in Mendocino County in a single election.

In June they terminated their local front group called Mendocino County Tomorrow which had nominally circulated the petitions to get Measure A on the ballot.

The SOLE committee raised and will spend an impressive $85,555 including on media advertising.


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from:
Save Our Local Economy - No On A

Measure A Goes Down Hard!

We did it! 

 

MEASURE A -18,750 votes counted out of a possible 49,151 equals a 38.1 % turnout to date. 

 

Total Votes 18632
YES 7029 37.73%
NO 11603 62.27%

 

So with probably 3,000 voters left to be counted over the next couple of weeks we can all pat each other on the backs and thank our friends and neighbors for being so involved in this effort to protect our local communities.

 

Congratulations to us all! 

Thanks

Richard 

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Save Our Local Economy- No On A (SOLE) is "The Home Team" and is a politically diverse group of Mendocino County citizens and who have organized to work for a "No" Vote on Measure A.

 

We can STOP Measure A with your help!

 

Contact us at:

462-1900 OR 

sole@pacific.net OR www.NoOnA.com

 

Mail Contributions to:

  Save Our Local Economy - No On A

POB 1530, Ukiah, CA 95482