Hi. Many of you signed our 2018 informal petition to Council, which helped get it on the ballot, and it passed 71-29% -in 2018. But staff has done everything, legal and illegal, to derail, delay and destroy it. I've put over 30 hours into a presentation that has video, audio and documents to prove it. Here's a shortcut URL to the presentation that you can easily tell people: tinyurl.com/petitionstory.
Please sent emails to Council@bouldercolorado.gov asking them to get staff moving to implement what the voters overwhelmingly want, whether you still live in Boulder or not. People worldwide have signed the petition and we want them to know the whole world is watching! I give some email suggestions in Slide 21 of the presentation. You can also come to the Council meeting this Tuesday March 3, during Open Forum, 6-7PM-ish when I will speak (if I make it thru the lottery) or during the staff snow job and Council discussion, Agenda item 7A, probably starting 8-8:30 and slated for 45 minutes. You can sit in support or sign up to speak for 2 minutes during Open Forum
I've spent over 1300 hours on the petition project, 1100 more than I should have as a member of the City's Campaign Finance and Elections Working Group, because of staff. I've lost months of sleep, 10 pounds I need, thousands of dollars putting the rest of my life on hold, and the time I intended to get back in shape after breaking my hip in Hawaii.
If you can't tell I'm on the warpath, here's what I intend to tell Council in my 2 minutes Tuesday:
In recent weeks, your new Transportation Director quit after just 6 weeks, you're interviewing to find a new Police Chief, and your Information Technology Director left on Jan 22, apparently because her lying to the city's elections working group about why staff rejected the free online petition system offer were blatant and obvious, unlike the word salad lies in the memo that staff will try to con you with tonight. And the camera reported that you cannot find volunteers to fill your boards and commissions.
Word is getting out, finally, that our government, under the tyranny of the City Attorney [see slide 22 of the presentation for details including the opinion of CU's Nobel physicist Eric Cornell] and City Manager has become a laboratory for government against the people and greenwashing.
Since the state and County have blocked access [see slide 15 of the presentation to the voter registration database the online petition system needs, Council should order staff tonight to implement longtime former councilman Steve Pomerance's plan for an online petition system that uses only publicly available data that anyone can buy from the county clerk. You should terminate the contract made under fraudulent circumstances and accept the free offer [see slide 12 of the presentation.
In the late 90s, long-playing council member Spence Havlick said here, "The truth is not as important as people's perception of it." The last Council talked constantly about "optics." You've inherited a government reliant on propaganda and cover-ups. That is coming to an end and you should help. Come into the light!
Boulder is our town, or used to be when petitions for ballot initiatives and referenda were much easier. As more and more space is privatized, and politics gets more heated, fewer places allow petitioning. Boulder's more famous initiatives include the Country's first voter-approved Open Space and the first gay rights law. Online petitioning will make the process much easier, as in Switzerland, where they vote four times a year on dozens of local, regional and national initiatives and referenda, and where petitioners aren't required and petitions are left open to sign in offices and stores, or can be downloaded and mailed in. Paid petitioners, which insure that only the wealthy, like George Soros and Jared Polis, can get on the ballot, are almost nonexistent.
Please consider forwarding this to your lists and social networks...
Happy Sunday!
Evan
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Evan Ravitz: Guide, Photographer, Writer, Editor
http://EvanRavitz.com
720-403-5594