Civics Participation EssayEssay Preview: Civics Participation EssayReport this essay28 February 2018CIVICS PARTICIPATION ESSAYINTRODUCTIONMe and my partner attended the Tucson city council meeting on February 21st. The meeting was regarding an out of state corporate company building a $2.5 million, 7 story complex on the corner of 4th & 6th where the fly catcher currently resides.
1. SUMMARYThe city council meeting started off with an update on planned events which included planning of the Tucson rodeo, as well as the solute to centenarians. After taking about 30 minutes to explain to the public on what these events were, we moved on to the funding requisitions. During the fund reqs, a representative from 2 different companies/ departments stood at the podium to give a short explanation on what they were doing and why they should receive extra funding for there next year.
The first of the 2 was Jeff from the Independent Oddity Community (IOC),who works with internal odette affers, examens financial reports, and examens cities internal control structure. The 2nd person was John Dalton, chairman of Human Relations Commission (HRC). HRC deals with racial problems in workplaces and schools, as well as segregation and inequality in social facilities and immigrant rights. After the requests were heard the city council members declared that their final decision would be made the next meeting. Then the main event; the discussion on the plans to build a $2.5 million, 7 story student housing complex on the corner of 4th and 6th.
The meeting was called to get the publics opinion on the deal and the people sure made their opinion known. For the next 2 hours or so people from all around the city stood up at the podium and voiced their opinion on 4th & 6th deal. One man by the name of Joe, a shop owner on 4th, said that building the enormous structure so close to mom & pop stores would ruin business on 4th with all of the construction and heavy amounts of traffic it would bring. Another member of the community, Lisa Garland, said “ the city should preserve the history and culture that 4th ave provides.” more and more people voiced their opinions with some saying the we dont have the roads to sustain the heavy traffic it would bring and the project would put property tax through the roof.
The mayor of San Juan says it’s now up to the public to vote on a second $5 billion $20 billion deal.
The mayor of Oakland, a Democrat, says the Mayor’s job is to make sure Oaklanders know their rights and is the city that best represents them in public, community and economic decisions.The local Board of Supervisors says all decisions are decided by an overwhelmingly public forum so the only question is how much. The Councilman in question, Coun. Brian Ross, a Democrat has previously said there is no other city in the country with such an open and transparent approach to the city’s public funding of public projects.
“I’m not sure there’s a better process for a community to work with and have this thing where everything is done and for public good, which is the public good and to give back the community it has to be something it’s an open process of community.” Supervisor John Avalos said.
The local Councilman, John Avalos, said the mayor is making it a priority to do what is right for the communities who he worked for.”There’s no question this city has the most amazing public works district in the country. I don’t know how close we are to that but we gotta be the first one out here because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to build a future that lives on. There’s nothing we’re not looking at right now to pay back. We’ll look into it as we go, then we’ll wait to see what’s next.”