[Vision2020] City Elections

[Jack Porter]

[As published as a letter to the Daily News today]

The Greater Moscow Alliance is making a well-financed push to take over the 
Moscow City Council in November, and voters need to pay attention.

The GMA gave us another example of its skewed priorities at the City 
Council meeting on Sept. 4.  The Council invited public comments on the 
"boarding house ordinance" that has been drafted to deal with absentee 
investors who buy up houses in single-family neighborhoods and rent them to 
rowdy crowds of college students.

One after another, residents told horror stories of how their 
family-friendly neighborhoods have been degraded by this process of 
commercial exploitation.  But a GMA representative got up and read a 
statement opposing the ordinance because it might limit the "property 
rights" of absentee landlords.  Never mind the rights of ordinary citizens 
to protect the character of their neighborhoods  what matters to GMA is the 
right to maximize profits.

I hope voters will remember this in November.  The GMA candidates are 
well-meaning guys (yes, they're all guys), but do they share GMA's extreme 
pro-development philosophy?  When they have to choose between "property 
rights" and the quality of life in Moscow's neighborhoods, which do you 
think they will choose?

Jack R. Porter