BAREC Final Decision (Open Space Preservation - Santa Clara) (public event)

Everyone,

We need you now.....for two minutes. You will be getting one or two more emails from me about the upcoming Santa Clara City Council meeting this Tuesday, June 19th at 7:00pm. If you've never made it to a meeting or been able to help us before, now is the time to change all that. WE NEED YOU!!! We not only need you, we need you to bring your friends, family, and anyone else that can attend the meeting to show our numbers. Whether or not you live in Santa Clara is not important. You do not have to be a registered voter. You simply need to show up. This is the most important meeting BAREC has had because the City Council can change the zoning in this meeting.

This is what you need to do:

1. Arrive at 1500 Warburton Ave, Santa Clara at the Council Chambers on Tuesday evening (after 7:00pm)
2. Fill out a speaker card (write BAREC and Agenda item 8B on the card)
3. Wait until your name is called
4. Get up and stand for 2 minutes, speak if you like. Use the entire 2 minutes.
NOTE: You do not need to say anything other than your name and the city you live in. That's it. We will provide a detailed document you can use to read from if you like (click here for some talking points), but the only really important thing to to do is use the entire two minutes. Technically, you can talk about your job, your pets, your kids, your family, the weather, ANYTHING. If you want to read off some prepared documents, please let us know when you arrive and we will give you meaningful information to read during your two minutes. You can and should speak for two minutes.

I am organizing what is known as a filibuster. If you ever saw the Jimmy Stewart movie: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this is it. If you haven't seen the movie, the idea is we need to demonstrate to the Politicians that we are not going away until they do the right thing and listen to us, not what big business developers want to do. The way we do this is by keeping the final meeting (this one) from finishing. This is done via the "Public Comment" part of the meeting on that topic. If Public Comment never finishes, the meeting will never end and they cannot vote or change the zoning. The City Council chamber needs to be full...standing room only. Please reach out to your friends and neighbors to attend this meeting.

As a "Thank You" for attending this meeting and speaking for those two minutes, A Slice of New York on Stevens Creek in Santa Clara will give ANYONE that speaks for the two minutes a card redeemable for 2 slices of pizza. Remember, you can speak about anything or nothing. The key thing to do here is to be there and use your allotted two minutes.

Since BAREC is not the only item on the agenda, it may be a little while for public comment to begin. I anticipate we will need people throughout the evening, so if you can arrive at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, or 11pm, that would be great. Council meetings can last a long time....that is why we need all your support.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE HERE TO SHOW THE CITY WE ARE PAYING ATTENTION AND WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO STOP THIS DEVELOPMENT, INCLUDING A REFERENDUM. We will also have sheets for Santa Clara residents to sign so that if we have to initiate a referendum, we will have enough volunteers to make it easy to do.

As always, please contact me with any questions. The web site has lots of details on it (too many sometimes), so feel free to call and ask me any questions at the phone number below.

Today, the San Jose Mercury News published an OpEd article, describing some of the details behind this unique piece of property. Click here to view it. http://www.savebarec.org/docs/sj-mercury-n...une-17-2007.pdf

Thank you,

Kirk Vartan
SaveBAREC volunteer
kirk@SaveBAREC.org
www.SaveBAREC.org
888-BAREC-80, press 0

City Council Chambers [View Map]
1500 Warburton Ave, Santa Clara

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posted by SaveBAREC on 6/19/07