Ashley's Committee is Done

In a surprise move tonight, Marion Ashley's We'll Find A Way Gateway Committee became a thing of the past. One month and two meetings was all it took for the majority of the committee members to realize these meeting were a waste of time. After an hour long presentation by The Shopoff Group and about 40 minutes of public comments, all in opposition to the warehouse project, Beaumont Council Member Brian DeForge made a motion to end the committee. He moved to recommend against the project and recommend the best use of the land for the community was to leave it as is, zoned for residential. No Way Gateway leader, Nancy Carroll seconded the motion and Councilman David Castaldo, Four Seasons Resident Anita Wortham, Beaumont School Board Member Wayne Hackney, and CVAN President Patsy Reely voted with DeForge and Carroll to provide the six votes needed to approve the recommendation.

As Mr. DeForge pointed out to me afterwards, the committee has no binding power, but this is a great win. Now we can go back to the Calimesa City Council and the Beaumont Unified School Board who told us they wanted to wait to see what the committee did. If these two  elected bodies come out in support of their constituents, who are overwhelmingly against the warehouse in Cherry Valley and next week the Beaumont Cherry Valley Water District follows suit, it will be harder, but definitely not impossible for the County Supervisors to approve the land zone change.

Many people tonight wanted to take some time to celebrate, and they should. But, there is still a lot of work ahead of us. Mr. Ashley hopefully will see the writing on the wall and finally come out against the Gateway Center, I'm not holding my breath, but the four other Supervisors need to get the message that the people want them to honor their contract with the people. That contract is the County General Plan.

The General Plan was a big part of tonight's story. Two community members, Mary Daniels and Pat Doherty, quoted from the plan the language that makes it clear the spot zoning being attempted by The Shopoff Group and supported by the Supervisors, who approved the fast tracking of the Gateway project, is illegal and breaks the trust the people have with their elected officials. I think if you ask the six who voted to end the committee tonight, that the General Plan argument had a big influence on their decision.

Thank you Brian DeForge, Wayne Hackney, Nancy Carroll, Anita Wortham, Patsy Reely and Committee Chairman David Castaldo.

*I am having trouble locating video of tonight's meeting on YouTube. I know some times it takes a little while for the video to be processed and published. I will keep looking for it and once I have located the url link, I'll post it here.