Uneasy Rhetoric

Don’t you love it when you get mail, addressed to you, that makes you go “huh?” Once I received an autograph picture of George W. and Laura Bush with the inscription “we need grassroots leaders like you.” Huh? Somebody didn’t check their voter registration records.

Today I received a flier saying “Stop the Squeeze!” It asked me to go to the General Plan Public Hearing at McClatchy High because:

Currently, the city’s “preferred regional scenario” packs new development into existing neighborhoods, even those that are already densely populated — which will crowd schools, increase traffic, erode quality of life and create new dangers for children walking to and from school.

Awesome! Increased density means people will live closer together which means there will be more housing options that allow people to live and work within walking distance…I am so there!

Probably not the response they were looking for. In fact, given that a third of the front of the flier was taken up by a picture of a very alarmed looking woman squeezed into a box, I felt like they might even be the kind of organization that would want to build more freeways because I gotsta gotsta git me some elbow room.

But then I did something they probably weren’t counting on. I flipped the flier over and read — not glanced at but read — what was on the B-side. On the back was a fact sheet about the General Plan, looking for all the world like it was regurgitated from a city brochure.

And two of the bullet points were:

• Sacramento’s population is expected to grow by an estimated 240,000 people and 150,000 more jobs in the next 25 years.
• In 2003, the average commute time for Sacramento motorists was 20 minutes — but growth has now pushed it to 26 minutes.

How is stopping the “squeeze” going to help bring down commute times?

It isn’t. The is one shoddily written flier. If you use one side of your document to establish a tone (fear, in this case), then the rational “facts” on the other side of your document had best play to that tone.

For example: Sacramento’s population is expected to grow by more than 200,000 people, and if the City has its way, they’ll be moving in to your neighborhood! Driving down your streets! Eating your ice cream!

Whoever paid for this political mailer should ask for their money back.

But who paid for it? The flier comes from a group calling itself the “Safe and Clean Schools Coalition.” Figures there wouldn’t be a website, right? Instead, I found this story in the Modesto Bee about another flier from the same group in a school debate down there. The article said:

The flier’s return address belongs to a firm in Sacramento. A woman at the company said it was paid for the use of its address by McNally Temple Associates Inc., a political consulting agency.

No surprise there. I wonder who did pay for the flier? I wonder if it will get people coming out to protest packing new development into existing neighborhoods?

Probably. I’ve talked before about this same sentiment in East Sacramento:

This region is growing, we’re going to add more people whether you like it or not, and they have to live somewhere. If they all live in Cameron Park and Dixon and Galt and Placerville, then they’ll have to commute for work. If you oppose infill developments…then you are implicitly supporting sprawl. Sorry, but that’s how it goes.

On the same day this flier appeared in my mailbox, I found another leaflet on my porch. This one read like a personal blog post. The author, who identified himself as a “Committee Chairman” (I assume for the Maple Park Neighborhood that was referenced at the top), talked about how great Maple Park was when it was surrounded by farmland, before McClatchy High School, when everyone would gather around the one neighborhood radio to listen to the old shows.

I love hearing stories about the way things used to be. Don’t you? But when they’re part of a poorly implemented attempt to push my buttons? Not so much.

I should point out that I am a renter and my opinion doesn’t count for anything and no one will listen to it anyway. As everyone knows, renters don’t give a crap about their neighborhoods or their communities.