The Invocation
I’ve never blogged the opening prayer before! I usually just skip past it.
If you’re going to have prayers in your public space, you’d better allow any church, or else you’re definitely opening yourself up for a lawsuit. Which is how we found ourselves in the delightful position of having Mayor Hughson introducing Lanzifer Longinus, co-congregation head of the Satanic Temple, and I hope he doesn’t mind me borrowing this photo from his facebook post:
Here’s a transcription of what he said:
Let us stand now, unbowed, and unfettered by arcane doctrines, borne of fearful mind and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge, and dissipate our blissful and conforming delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticisms in all things, holding fast to only that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is done. Hail Satan.
The sharp-eyed reader will note that everything he said is entirely sensible and reasonable. (The Satanic Temple generally fights for a lot of great political causes. If you haven’t yet, you should familiarize yourself with them.)
Onto Citizen Comment!
Well yes, there were a number of speakers who were very freaked out over the idea of Satan. There was a whole protest out front:
Crushing thy head! That seems like a disproportionately violent response – he only asked that we be judged by concrete actions and reason our solutions. Gee.
(PSA for the kids: there was once a wonderful sketch show called Kids In the Hall, which had a relevant Crushing Your Head skit. If you’re so inclined.)
There were several fire & brimstone prayers during Citizen Comment. I wanted to cherrypick extreme lines from the most frantic prayers, but I started to feel bad. I think these guys honestly are picturing slithering little oily shadows emanating from an air conditioning grate, like 90s era Buffy animation, spreading all over the room and maybe even getting in your nostrils. Must be stressful; let’s just let them be.
Next! Several speakers have some serious conspiracy theories going about Mano Amiga. These speakers were not just pro-police or pro-Meet and Confer contract, but genuinely deranged about Mano Amiga specifically.
A few themes:
- Why do they all say “Mano Amigas”, with an extra “s” on the end?! Why pluralize “amiga”? (And wouldn’t the plural be “manos amiga”?)
- They are convinced that Mano Amiga is getting millions of dollars, and one of them specifically cited George Soros. (As well as the VERA institute and the Institute of Justice, which are both good organizations, incidentally.)
- Several of them mentioned the Marxist agenda. Aw, shucks, guys! I couldn’t help but feel flattered. Now, I’m not actually affiliated with Mano Amiga, but… [bats eyes invitingly in all directions]
Finally we had some regulars: a number of members of Mano Amiga and other pro-transparency speakers spoke up against the current Meet-and-Confer contract. The Meet-and-Confer contract gets voted on tonight. Other speakers are pro-police and pro-contract. And several regular anti-SMART Terminal speakers to give updates.
SMART doesn’t really come up on the agenda tonight, so let me give some updates:
- Last time, Council reopened the development agreement and said, “let’s send the entire citizen list of requests over to the negotiation table!”
- The developers wrote back a short letter: “Fuck off. PS: You signed a contract, dumbass.” (You can read it here.)
- The developers announced that they were changing their name to Axis Logistics and also that they are now open for business.
- (Keep in mind that they haven’t actually gotten their zoning for Heavy Industrial passed yet.)
To summarize: Council worked on this project secretly for years, and totally lost track of the fact that the public had no idea this was coming. They then announced and passed the development agreement before the community had had their first cup of coffee that morning. The community is absolutely furious, and Council is shocked, shocked that it played out like this.
…
Item 15: Rezone 104 acres of a giant parcel, out on 123.
This is weird and infuriating. So there is a giant housing development that’s been approved, called Riverbend Ranch. It won’t materialize for a while. We’ve discussed it here and here.
Here’s the original plot from when it first came up in April 2022:
It’s very big – 1,142 acres. It runs adjacent to Redwood on the southern end, which is a concern, but possibly there’s an opportunity to get some sewer infrastructure to the good people there.
The plan has always been for it to be mostly housing, above the red line. (McCarty extension/Loop 110) (The part south of the red line is zoned industrial, which is the concern for the people of Redwood.)
Here’s how it’s currently zoned:
What do those letters mean? CD-3 is single family sprawl.
CD-4 and CD-5 supposedly look like so:
ie the charming mixed use downtown from Sesame Street. Or picture San Antonio street.
But in reality it usually looks like so:
Large scale apartment complexes. This is because our land development code lumps together those two types of zonings. So you can’t approve charming Sesame Street-scapes without giving developers the right to build large scale complexes. This is an unforced error – no one made us lump those together in the code.
Anyway, back to this picture:
The striped bits are supposed to be apartments and commercial. The developer is asking to change them the CD4 and CD5 bits to also be CD3. In other words, instead of having pockets of commercial and apartments, the whole thing should be single family sprawl.
THIS IS 1200 ACRES! It will now be 1200 acres of relentless single use housing! This is really shitty! The planning department knows better, because when Riverbend Ranch originally came up for zoning, they had to offer up certain percents at denser amounts, and they had to talk about amenities and commercial areas.
It turns out that you just have to wait a few years until everyone forgets, and then politely ask to get it rezoned into the cheapest and most profitable suburban sprawlscape.
THIS MADE ME SO MAD. This is why we need the comprehensive plan already in place. This should never have been allowed.
The San Marxist 