The Plans Were Sprung On Us
Why Wasn't The Public Clearly Informed Earlier? We've been told even some aldermen weren't clearly informed either! Walmart's interest was known for over a year but then in June 2011, they announced they were backing out due to the contaminated soil. In hindsight, we suspect it was a ploy to fake out the opposition. They actually went right into a series of secret closed door meetings with the City who then agreed to split soil remediation costs see Welfare for Walmart??
Three aldermen, who realized the public was uninformed, moved to hold a public hearing about Walmart. Unfortunately, they were outvoted. Instead the City proceeded with minimum legal notification of meeting agendas for the re-zoning the Walmart plan required. We assume Gatlin Group, Walmart's developer, urged the City to keep it quiet to avoid any chance of a referendum. Note: Gatlin has paid extensive fines for tampering with other city board decisions. see Link 1 Link 2
On October 3rd, the plans were finally announced at a Common Council meeting. Only a handful of people in the community were aware. They then worked very hard to distribute leaflets around the city to alert neighbors. Despite such a handicap, on 10/18 a crowd of nearly 400 outraged citizens packed City Hall, the largest turnout in the City's history. The aldermen, though surprised, assumed we represented a vocal minority. see TV Coverage They passed one re-zoning but at least did agreed to postpone another required vote until the following meeting November 1st.
Unfortunately for us opponents, that two week period was just not enough time. We managed to conduct a door to door petition which raised 1,300+ signatures among people at home that weekend. However we failed to properly compile the statistical data we were seeing. Even though some areas were nearly 75% opposed, all we could present to the aldermen was the total signatures. They still didn't believe we represented the majority and voted in favor of the Walmart plan on November 1st. see TV Coverage
Three aldermen, who realized the public was uninformed, moved to hold a public hearing about Walmart. Unfortunately, they were outvoted. Instead the City proceeded with minimum legal notification of meeting agendas for the re-zoning the Walmart plan required. We assume Gatlin Group, Walmart's developer, urged the City to keep it quiet to avoid any chance of a referendum. Note: Gatlin has paid extensive fines for tampering with other city board decisions. see Link 1 Link 2
On October 3rd, the plans were finally announced at a Common Council meeting. Only a handful of people in the community were aware. They then worked very hard to distribute leaflets around the city to alert neighbors. Despite such a handicap, on 10/18 a crowd of nearly 400 outraged citizens packed City Hall, the largest turnout in the City's history. The aldermen, though surprised, assumed we represented a vocal minority. see TV Coverage They passed one re-zoning but at least did agreed to postpone another required vote until the following meeting November 1st.
Unfortunately for us opponents, that two week period was just not enough time. We managed to conduct a door to door petition which raised 1,300+ signatures among people at home that weekend. However we failed to properly compile the statistical data we were seeing. Even though some areas were nearly 75% opposed, all we could present to the aldermen was the total signatures. They still didn't believe we represented the majority and voted in favor of the Walmart plan on November 1st. see TV Coverage