Join us! Tuesday, February 23rd from 4-8 PM @ City Hall inside Council Chambers @ 100 Santa Rosa Avenue, Santa Rosa. Oppose the Reunification of Santa Rosa COURTHOUSE SQUARE! Public funding review is not complete, which means we have time to STOP this expenditure and divert it TO HOUSING. Santa Rosa needs AFFORDABLE HOUSING! ~~~RENTERS... WE MUST ACT NOW!~~~ Many voters and taxpayers mistakenly believe that since trees have been cut down at Courthouse Square, that the OPPOSITION is over, OR that we are powerless to STOP City Council. Not true! WE STILL HAVE TIME to thwart the second phase of the process, called the "funding phase", which is the money needed to begin construction. With enough public pressure we can stop the funding process long enough to COMPEL City Council to answer our questions regarding UNDER-disclosure of financial information. HOW CAN WE STOP CITY COUNCIL? We believe that two Santa Rosa City Charter codes were violated; section 10 and 11. These sections would have allowed full public disclosure to the financial impact of the proposed $10 million dollar reunification of Courthouse Square. Most of all, public participation would have allowed citizens a much bigger voice in where this money should be allocated for URGENT needs. WE WANT OUR VOICE BACK! Tell City Council you DEMAND a PUBLIC VOTE in HOW $10 Million of YOUR TAX DOLLARS will be spent. We want TRANSPARENCY and FULL DISCLOSURE! We have not been given adequate detail to the financial impact of this enormous expenditure, which may cost up to $20 million dollars over 30 years.*** *** Definition of Certificates of Participation (COPs): a method of leveraging public assets and borrowing all or a portion of the value of a public agency's equity in those assets in order to finance other assets. Borrowing equity by way of Certificates of Participation is paid by taxpayers through the city's General Fund at a HIGHER INTEREST RATE than a voter-approved tax. This finance scheme is a NO VOTE form of taxpayer indebtedness typically used when a city government knows it cannot get the 2/3 required vote from a conventional referendum. "A $10 million project, if fully funded with such certificates, would cost the city’s general fund about $670,000 per year for 30 years, or a total of $20 million." Source: Press Democrat, Sept. 15, 2015.