The following post is from the comments section of a story in the Press Democrat's Watch Sonoma County website.  The story details how councilman Jake MacKenzie attended an out of state conference on Smart Growth and still champions redevelopment and high density development---although Andres Duany, the self-appointed master (the PD calls him 'visionary architect') of New Urbanism has doubts.

Bradley Miller
February 16, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Another hot air balloon goes up for high density vertical sprawl and ‘vision’. These guys need glasses, their vision is a nightmare that they think they have the power to impose on us.

Duany is a guy who created an ‘institute’ and then gave himself credentials from it. He ran around and got in front of the environmental movement so that he could get work as an architect. All it took was saying that everything you already have is bad, and all the new stuff will be green.

Green. Is that all you have to say in Sonoma County and everyone salivates like Pavlov’s dog? What’s so green about taking existing buildings down and dumping them in a landfill?

Orin Thessen’s ‘vision’ for Windsor included duping old ladies out of their money so that he could build some failed fake Disneyland idea of a main street. And then go bankrupt. Alan Strachan, visionary, ha, bankrupt on that Courtside Village new urbanism junk over on Sebastopol Road. Now he’s reinvented himself as a Green Loan banker.

MacKenzie is a menace and a danger to all of us. We can’t afford these visions, both environmentally and financially.

This is the United Nations Agenda 21/Sustainable Development machine. A manipulation, crafted so that if you object to it you are somehow a bad person who would drill oil wells in your grandma’s living room.

What a PR triumph. Wake up. Google: Stop UN Agenda 21.

From the Watch Sonoma County website comments on Michael Allen:

Villager with Pitchfork
February 17, 2011 at 6:04 pm
The bottom line is that the entire thing was a farce from beginning to end.
Sonoma County Water Agency ‘hired’ Allen to do a job that:
1) Did not need to be done since the City was planning to rezone that site anyway
2) Allen had absolutely NO experience in doing
3) Was a totally ridiculous exercise in sky-gazing since the building is not adaptable for residential uses. It’s an office building.

WHY? Why did SCWA pay Michael Allen $95,000 and try to get another contract through the Supes for ANOTHER $75,000?

That FPPC filing and investigation was not only on Michael Allen. Both Randy Poole and Mike Thompson of SCWA were named as well. What happened to the investigation on Poole and Thompson?

Were they funneling money to Michael Allen for his campaigns? He was running for city council and for Assembly during the term of the contracts.

Why did they want Michael Allen in office? Was it because the SCWA wanted to be the lead agency in the solar water heater legislation proposed by Sen. Wiggins while she was ill with dementia and Michael Allen and Sean McNeil were playing in her office?

SCWA was going to make a lot of money on SB 730. Proposed by alzheimer-ridden Pat but probably written by Mike and Sean, it named SCWA as the lead agency. It was going to make it MANDATORY for every home in Sonoma County to have a solar water heater. How much money would SCWA have made on that? Would Poole and Thompson have benefited financially? Professionally?

Senate Bill 730 was pulled on the day that Michael Allen was reported to the FPPC.

Don’t believe it? it’s all true.
Go to http://www.SantaRosaNeighborhoodCoalition.com for details.

Since we launched this website in August 2010 we've gone from about 50 hits a day to over 300, with occasional views of over 500.  Our totals are over 50,000. Who's looking?  Although most are here in the San Francisco Bay Area, people from all over the US and across the world have been checking this site and emailing us to say that they are excited to see activists courageous enough to take on the local government and local NGO's that dominate the landscape---and talk about it!

We are contacted by many who feel that their communities have been taken over by advocates of high density development (sprawl painted green and built vertically to tower over rural and small towns).  Anyone who objects to heavy handed siphoning off of property tax dollars to the hands of big corporate interests and labor bosses through redevelopment is labeled 'tea partier' or 'hater.'  It would be amusing if it weren't so prevalent, and such an effective way of closing the ears of liberals to the message of their neighbors, who may also be liberal, but not spouting the party line.  Anyone who questions the connections between special interests and the legislators/council people they pay to elect is attacked.  

Fear of attack keeps some quiet.  But not all.  

The corruption is endemic to our government---here in Santa Rosa the Redevelopment Agency, a slush fund for developers, bought the old ATT building and then sold it to developer Hugh Futrell for over a million less than the city paid for it.  Millions were just handed to the Simon Group, the world's largest shopping center owner, half owner of Coddingtown Mall, for 'renovations' as a 'loan' with over a million as a gift.  Part of their idea of 'renovation' is to remove local business owners from the Mall---they're considered blight.

Ending redevelopment will drive a stake through the heart of Agenda 21 at this time.  Redevelopment is a major funding source for this community-destroying plan masquerading as 'green.'   Redesigning community through force and manipulation, through corruption and fraud, is a watchword here in Sonoma County.  

You don't have to support New Urbanism to preserve your liberal credentials.  At best you come off as a hypocrite if you're advocating tirelessly for high density development while sitting in your single family home.  Riding a bike is a pleasant exercise not an excuse to tear up streets, oust longtime businesses, reroute traffic through residential neighborhoods, and send existing buildings to the landfill.  The operative word in Smart Growth is GROWTH---it's development backed by big business bent on demolishing and homogenizing our towns.

That's not green.  And it's NOT smart.

Take a look at what some citizens in El Dorado County are saying about Smart Growth and the transformation of their rural towns.

The Fair Political Practices Commission has found Michael Allen guilty of conflict of interest charges and is in the process of fining him.  He is guilty of lobbying the City of Santa Rosa for land use changes to a parcel owned by SCWA.  His campaign slogan of 'Our Values Our Voice' is a farce, as is his appointment to the Assembly Ethics Committee. 

Those who thought we had some sort of vendetta against Michael Allen should ask themselves now why they would defend someone who is guilty of vote selling and secret lobbying.  The FPPC doesn't investigate, find guilty, and fine innocent politicians.

KEEP YOUR EYE ON MICHAEL ALLEN.