On February, 4th, 2025, the UNELECTED Downtown Review Board rubber-stamped the OneVeLa Luxury Apartment Skyscraper, ignoring the community. On February 14th, 2025, an appeal was filed to force a public hearing before City Council—so our elected officials must go on record for their betrayal of the voters, nearly 7,000 of which signed this petition opposing skyscrapers and asking to be allowed to vote on building height limits.  If only to answer question 11 that changes to question 12 when you start the survey, please answer that one question as "No".  It's an absurdly leading question to generate yes answers prior to the One VeLa appeal projected to be 3/11; so, they can claim the majority of people agree.  Buildings over 8 stories (not really skyscrapers) belong downtown, but that ISN'T the real question.  It's whether we want a building height limit.

Many neighborhood leaders have been asking for the building heights portion of the Downtown Master Plan to be addressed for the last year.  Finally, a meeting was set to start those discussions - last week.  However, the day before the meeting, those with opposing view were disinvited.

Rewriting history:
Now, Councilmember Nancy Henjum is attempting to rewrite history. In a misleading email, she disingenuously claims that “a request was made by Council to utilize a planning process” instead of putting building heights to a vote or allow a discussion.  What really happened is a "Master Plan" process was noted would be happening -- but, conveniently, not until AFTER the OneVeLa approval.  Moreover, she failed to call out the numerous survey biases which many citizens have called out.  Councilmember Lynette Crow-Iverson as she told the citizens to go pound sand noted we could do our own petition to get a vote on building heights knowing that those cost about $300,000 to do.

Here are the key facts being omitted:
✅ It was Councilmember Donelson, NOT Council, who pushed to let voters decide.  Those paying attention may recall this ultimately led to an embarrassing public flogging of Donelson for calling out campaign donations with Henjum and Leinweber at the tip of the spear. 
✅ Henjum, Talarico, Leinweber, Avila, Helms, Crow-Iverson and Risley ALL voted against both the public vote AND allowing even a public discussion on building heights.
✅ While courting favor with a local neighborhood group last week, she disinvited Dana Duggan of Integrity Matters and the very Councilmember who raised this issue, her colleague, Councilmember Donelson, from a mere discussion about building heights and the Downtown Partnership and the Downtown Development Authority which you should learn more about and see who the board members are here.
✅ The One VeLa skyscraper was approved BEFORE the Master Plan update—proving the so-called "planning process" is a sham.
✅ A biased survey is being used to create manufactured consent for skyscrapers.

As a reminder, in her last election, as the HBA candidate, Henjum took $20,000 in developer/dark money donations, including $2,000 from the O’Neil Group—the developers behind the first downtown skyscraper project.

Now, she has the audacity to disinvite neighborhood groups, her own colleague on City council and  limit public input from those who disagree with her, while falsely claiming she wants to hear from constituents. This is not open and transparent leadership—it’s a textbook example of everything wrong with a developer-funded City Council.

Don’t Fall for the Manipulation—Fight Back!
✅ Take the City's biased survey before March 4th at midnight. Don’t let them claim your silence as support.  Pay attention to the survey bias outlined here.
✅ Donate to the One VeLa URA Lawsuit to stop this taxpayer-funded giveaway. While all legal work is pro bono, there are hard costs to fighting this abuse of power.

Enough of the word parsing and game playing. If we don’t fight back now, this will set a dangerous precedent for unchecked overdevelopment, corporate influence, and the continued silencing of residents.

Let’s hold them accountable. Let’s stop this deception. Let’s protect our city. 🚨