LETTER TO THE EDITOR

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

by Laura Blackburn

Monday evening’s City Council meeting reached a new low, even for this group. The unanimous decision to amend the “Good Neighbor Ordinance”was bad enough to sink the Good Ship City Council, but it got worse by the end of the voyage.

This ordinance is a travesty. It exposes renters who have family members with mental illness, alcohol, or drug issues to a real possibility of losing their homes. If there are two incidents that involve police runs, the entire family can be evicted by the police. In some cases, that will render an abused mother and her children homeless. It can do the same for elderly parents who are caring for a mentally ill or intellectually challenged child. The scenarios that can render innocent people homeless are endless. If being evicted is not bad enough, the fact that most landlords will not rent to people with evictions on their record really makes life impossible for a lot of people. Many of those who are evicted will not be able to afford all of the deposits and other costs associated with moving on short notice, even if they can find someone who will rent to them.

There is also the constitutional rights issue of “innocent until proven guilty” that is being violated in our local “law.” How often do you read that someone who was charged with a crime has had the charges dismissed? So, if someone is accused of a crime and the prosecutor finds some “probable cause”, their family gets evicted while they sit in jail awaiting trial. Then, for some reason the charges are dropped and the accused goes free, but it doesn’t repair their and their family’s lives. It doesn’t even put them back in their homes and remove the eviction from their background check. I hope this ridiculous miscarriage of justice is reconsidered, but I suspect it will take several millions of dollars in legal fees to bring the local “patriots” to their senses.

The grand finale to the show came when Missy “1st Amendment” Mosby shut down an attempt of activist George Lumley to address the Council, and topped it off with a threat to deny all citizens their right of remonstrance before Council on a permanent basis. If the voters knew before the last election what they know now I doubt Missy would be an elected official.

FOOTNOTE:  This letter was posted without opinion, bias or editing.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Good letter explaining things that go unnoticed or more likely uncared about when a little clique of marginal political hacks are turned loose with enough power to actually affect innocent people’s lives.

    The steamroller has left the pole barn. These folks are perfectly capable of passing even more egregious, poorly thought out ordinances. Last I looked we already had laws against marijuana and the other drugs originally cited before the ‘Good Neighbor Ordinance’ was amended. The christening of this piece­­–o’ is reminiscent of Reagan calling the MX ICBM the ‘peacekeeper’. Putting a bow tie on a penguin doesn’t make it Fred Astaire.

  2. Wasn’t the Good Neighbor Ordinance written and passed by the previous council, which Laura Blackburn supported and endorsed? Does her opposition to an ordinance depend on what the law says or on who votes for it? All this council did was make some slight changes.

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